When you sit down to study for the MCAT, you should think in terms of units. That way you can assess how much you got done and whether or not you are improving. Psychologically this will keep you more motivated because the worst thing that can happen to you is for you to feel like you’re not getting anything done or that you’re not making any progress and eventually you’ll give up or be more prone to procrastinating.
The unit I want you to think about is practice exam sections. As you know, the MCAT is organized into four sections: C/P, CARS, Bio/Biochem, Psych/Soc. Use UWorld like this. Load up a practice test for a specific section (e.g. 59 C/P questions) and complete them untimed. Pay attention to how much time you took (e.g. 45 minutes). Pay attention to how many you missed. Calculate your score out of 132 to see what you hypothetically would have got (https://www.medschoolcoach.com/mcat-score-practice-exam-conversion-calculator/). Review your questions, focusing on what you missed first.
The unit is a single section. So when you sit down to study, make it a goal to complete a section and figure out what your score would be on a 132 scale. You may notice that your score is relatively stable either around 126, 128, or 130. Figure out where you stand for each section. During these sessions, focus on moving as fast as you can without losing accuracy. You will start to develop an internal sense of whether or not you got the answer correct. Once you have settled on an answer, keep moving forward and start thinking about the next question. Don’t bother double checking your answers for these practice sessions because that’s not what this is about. Try to speed run these sections as fast as you can because it makes them go by faster and you will feel less fatigued.
When you review, focus first on what you missed. Try to understand why you missed it. Was it: 1) concept you have never heard of? 2) got distracted by something that sounded fancy because you weren’t certain in your answer choice 3) keep re-reading the passage because it didn’t make sense but it turned out the actual question was simpler than you thought? These are examples, but try to group them into broad categories. You could make a spreadsheet of these, but I wouldn’t really recommend it because you want to make studying easy, otherwise you will hate studying. Just keep a simple sheet of paper of the reasons why you keep missing questions and think about how you can avoid that. If there is a concept you don’t understand (e.g. amino acids), take the time to read about it and delve into adjacent topics so that you don’t miss similar questions.
When you talk about refining the approach to the exam, I would use this technique because if you can speed-run individual sections while getting a satisfactory score and taking less than the allotted time, there is nothing you need to change about your strategy on test day other than ensuring you get proper sleep. At appropriately-spaced times, you should make sure you take all four AAMC FL exams just for a reality check, but I wouldn’t worry about doing more than that.
AAMC cars, develop a very strong feel for how AAMC operates, and be able to recognize when you are coming up against a third party passage/question/answer choice that does not adequately fit the type of things you'd see from AAMC. Dude.... Who writes the test? Is it kaplan or TPR? No. So while kaplan or TPR or EK might try to emulate the style of question that AAMC uses, it will never be quite the same. Do at least all the question pack shit for CARS asap. You can always do it again later. In fact I would suggest doing the AAMC stuff more than once -- You're not going to remember every detail from every passage of a test that you took ~1 months earlier. I took my real test on May 6 and got a 129 on cars. I mean it when I tell you that you could put a gun to my head right now and ask me what was on that test, and I would not remember a single passage. Buy the EK full length tests for like 25-50 bucks or whatever they are online. I used 1 and 2 before my test and I remember thinking that they were fairly good representations of what I saw on the test. CARS isn't some mysterious beast that can't be conquered. It's also not a section that you should attempt to conquer by using bullshit tactics. Don't fuck around and start applying princeton review and kaplan methods for mapping the passage or previewing the questions or reading the passages out of order or any of that horse shit. Please. I beg of you, don't even try it at all. Journal your incorrect answers. Retrace your flawed logic for incorrect questions and your neat logic for correct questions. If you guessed something right, see what made you guess it right. Find trends in your missed answers. What types of questions are giving you trouble? Why? How can you fix this? If you are missing the main idea completely, then you need to stop and figure your fucking shit out. The MAIN IDEA IS EVERYTHING. Find that motherfucker in every passage and use it on every question you possibly can. You might be asking, "But how do I find the main idea, cabronazo?" Let me tell you how. Read the passage in an animated voice. Read in your head like you're reading to a room full of children. Enunciate syllables, bounce from transition word to transition word, notice transition words // changes in topic // when the author is being a dickhead. All passages are constructed like normal essays. They are just ESSAYS. Remember that. X didn't come down and write these essays so that we could answer MCAT questions about them. The passages were mostly written by academic weirdos who have devoted their lives to some small corner of some obscure field of study. JUDGE THEM. Read their essays like you're ans evil professor who is going to give them a shitty grade. Notice when they change paragraphs. They are probably going to start talking about something extended yet different from whatever they just finished talking about. Isn't that what you do when you change paragraphs?!??! Notice when the author makes a garbage transition into a new paragraph or he starts talking about some fucking crazy shit out of nowhere. Be CRITICAL OF THE AUTHOR. He's probably a fucking idiot! Your job is to uncover what exactly this fucking idiot cared so much about that he felt compelled to write a boring essay about it. EVERY CARS passage i've ever read has been fucking stupid. But, did I care one way or the other? No. All you have to do is engage yourself fully with a given passage for 9 minutes or less, and then forget about it and go to the next passage. I really hate when somebody complains about how they, " don't find these passages interesting." Of course you don't! They all suck!!! Nobody finds them interesting, it's a fucking test and it's your job to find the author's main idea, gather key information from the passage, and answer some questions so you can be a fucking doctor Ignore everything from kaplan and TPR tactics. If you like mapping the passage, quit being a pussy. If you like to doodle or highlight while you read, quit being a pussy. Read the passages in order. Read every passage in 2-4 minutes, finding main ideas. You don't need to write anything down. Writing will break your concentration on the flow of the passage and you might as well just fucking start the whole thing over. If you have a brain and you read the passage with care, your brain will guide you back to the general area of the passage that you need for a later question. Trust your brain. The key to answering more questions correctly is to read the passages in an engaged manner, use animated tone inside your head, find the MAIN IDEA, then navigate the minefield of the questions without getting tripped up. Don't go back to the passage unless you have to. When you have to, you have to, but try to answer the questions without going back, especially if you struggle with timing. ANSWER CHOICES Don't pick an answer choice because it sounds confusing or because it contains something familiar from the passage. These are commonly picked incorrect answer choices. Lots of motherfuckers will sit there, look at the answer choices, then pick the one that confuses them the most or the one that has something familiar and cozy from the passage. Make damn sure that the answer is correct before you pick it, and make damn sure that it answers the exact question that is being asked in the question stem. ELIMINATE bullshit answers. Don't sit there and talk yourself into a bullshit answer. As soon as you smell fucking bullshit in an answer choice, GIVE IT THE AXE . Don't prematurely axe answer choices, make sure it's wrong, but I am being very serious about this -- if you let your brain start to analyze a bullshit answer choice for too long, you will find a way to make it fit the answer and then wind up picking it. DO NOT FUCKING DO THIS. When you find yourself lingering on a question, bubble it and go. Your brain will tell you when you're spending too much time, you just have to fucking listen. You have to keep your premed brain tame during the MCAT - yes you have a 2.97 GPA and you get 95-99% on all your exams, but this isn't fucking college. This is the MCAT. I know it's tough, u wanna get them all correct but you are not going to EVER get them all right. You shouldn't even want to try to get them all right on the MCAT. For each MCAT section you can always skip over one nightmare question and answer three cupcake questions instead. CONCLUSION: "Don't Be a Pussy" I can't tell you how much I hate it when people take this exam too seriously. Premeds taking this test too seriously is what makes it so difficult for most people. Kids get stressed out, lose their minds, get a bad score, kill themselves, whatever. It's fucking stupid. It's just a test! Your score on this test doesn't indicate whether you're a well rounded individual or whether you'll make a compassionate and wonderful physician. It's just a number that medical schools need so they can have dick measuring contests with the other medical schools. You've got to practice the right methods enough to convert yourself into a cocky ass CARS pimp who bubbles an answer and forgets about it one second later. Questions can be like ex girlfriends and try to linger in your mind after you've gotten past them. If you are a CARS pimp, you bubble these hoes and you don't even know what the last bubble asked. You just KNOW that your answer is correct because you thought about it, bubbled it, and moved on. You've got to bubble the next girl and forget your old bitch. Ok, so now you know you shouldn't take this section TOO seriously. I don't mean you shouldn't study hard and be a good student, I mean you shouldn't read the passages and answer the fucking questions like a robot. Ok? If you are a robot on this section you are absolutely going to fuck it up. You have to be the man on this section. Confidence is huge in CARS. Here's what I mean. You know when you're reading a passage and you come across a convoluted little excerpt that is discussing the minutiae of keynesian vs. classical economics and their implications on capitalistic policy? You know how there's a part of you that wants to read it so you can understand it?? Fuck that shit. You have to have the following attitude: "If I Find Something Confusing, Everyone Else Finds It Confusing." Be confident in yourself. If it's confusing to you, it's probably confusing to the dipshit who is losing his mind in the cubicle next to you. When you find something confusing ---> SKIP IT. Confidence is also huge in picking an answer. Once you have a feeling about an answer, click it and go. Don't go back and start weighing it against your second choice. TRUST YOUR GUT. YOU ARE THE MAN."