How to Study for the MCAT – The Ultimate MCAT Study Guide

Posted on by shannacyeung

It’s MCAT season. Disclaimer: I got a score I was proud of but remember, This is just the way I studied for the MCAT and there are many ways you can improve it to fit your personal preferences. While preparing for the MCAT, I relied on blog posts like this to plan how to study and so  this is how I will give back 🙂. Good luck everyone! Comment if you have more MCAT questions!

When should I take the MCAT?

  • I recommend late June. I took mine July 28th because I thought I wouldn’t be able to study enough in May while attending a research conference, running a research project, shadowing for full clinic days. Retrospectively, I wish I had taken my MCAT earlier so I had more time at the end of the summer to take a long  vacation because time to take vacation once in medical school, residency, etc is much more limited than in undergrad. Another reason is finishing the MCAT earlier would have given me more time to work on medical school applications, which take a lot of time!
  • More factors you should consider when  picking your MCAT date in this post: When to write the MCAT

How long should I study for the MCAT?

  • I studied intensely for 2.5 months.
  • I think burnout would have unavoidable if I studied any longer.  If you’re just too sick and tired of studying for so many months and have trouble focusing/feeling motivated, your score might go down. You also start to forget material that you learned early in your study regime. This is similar to the experience of trying to remember something you learned all the way back in September when you’re studying for December finals.

What should I do if I’m still not sure when to take my test or how long to study? 

  • If you’re not sure, do a practice full-length before you register for your exam date.
    Ideally In January or February if you’re aiming to test in the summer.  I think it’s important to get a feel for the exam early on rather than wait until you’ve finished all your content review first before taking an exam.
  • Try to avoid taking the test more than once. There is a popular suggestion on the forums to test without studying at all or only studying for a couple weeks just to “get a feel of the test” and then re-taking the test. I think you should just do once but do it right. Here’s why:
    1. It is very expensive  as it costs ~$490 to write the MCAT each time.
    2. It can un-demotivating to write a test when you feel unprepared and come out with a score you are not happy with.
    3. You can’t erase a bad score from your records and some schools look at all your scores regardless of a better score on a later re-write.

How do I stay motivated to study for the MCAT?

How do I study for the MCAT? What books did I study with? 

    • Self-studying is so much better than taking an official course because you have the freedom to study wherever, whenever, and however you want.
    • Here are the books I used to self-study. I ordered them off Amazon where they were cheapest. Invest in getting the newest edition and getting the best study resources!
    • I loved the Examcrackers complete package. People say it’s not comphrensive enough but I found it enough. I found Princeton Review too long for my taste. My approach to the MCAT was “Tell me what I need to know. No more, no less.”

I struggled with the Physics and Chemistry so I did a lot of practice questions from this book. If you’re struggling with any section, go buy that 1001 questions book for that content and spend lots of time beating your weakness.


I did passages from this book because I only took one semester of biochemistry and I never took any biology wet labs. Highly recommend getting this book and doing all the questions on lab technique and questions around experimental design.I wished I spent even more time on this because the biology on my real test was harder than I expected.

 

Though I liked Examcrackers for Science Content, I used Next Step for Psychology/Sociology and CARS. I was really happy with how I did in these sections so thanks Next Step!!!!!


How I studied for CARS