Other Resources For Studying

Hey friends!

Here's my two cents on a few common resources available for studying for the MCAT.

• Quizlet: a lot of people use Quizlet in college instead of making actual flashcards. My best recommendation for Quizlet is this: if you don't already use flashcards when you study, don't bother starting now. The MCAT is at its heart a quick thinking, critical reasoning test. The only real rote memorization it rewards is on free standing questions, which obviously do not make up the bulk of the test. The first time I took the MCAT, I made Quizlet decks for certain topics that I knew would come up that were 100% memorization, like NMR shifts, amino acids, hormones, etc. I didn't even bother the second time around. The point is, in my opinion, you don't need Quizlet or to make flashcards if that isn't how you study best. You're going to need to know topics like the ones I listed, but you will memorize them through sheer repetition from doing practice problems and tests already. Flashcards will be overkill and take away from more effective ways of studying in my opinion.

• The Khan Academy: this wasn't available for the old MCAT and was just released through a partnership with AAMC for the new MCAT. USE THIS RESOURCE. I didn't start using this until about 2 weeks before my exam and I totally regretted it. It has so many great resources in it: detailed video descriptions, hundreds of practice passages and problems, and very detailed answers and reasoning for everything. I highly recommend this for the psychology and sociology section for students who do not have a psychology background like myself. While I used it more for the chemical and physical section, I perused the psychological sections and found they did a thorough job in explaining topics that were not covered well or at all in my TPR material. Don't make this your only resource obviously, but make sure to utilize this as a source for extra problems and quick and easy clarifications (especially since it is endorsed by AAMC).

• Student Doctor Network: I would steer clear of this as much as possible. While I would cautiously recommend this site once you get to the application process, this in my opinion is not a good resource for the MCAT. While there are plenty of threads on the site dedicated to MCAT topics and questions, to me there is no way to get clarification on the credentials of a lot of the sources, and it is not an accredited, established MCAT source. Stick to companies and websites that are established and devoted 100% to MCAT.

• AAMC website: this goes without saying, utilize every single thing available that AAMC has to offer. As of now (June 2015) there is very little available compared to what was available for the old MCAT, but definitely take advantage of any practice tests and sample questions they offer, and keep checking the website for updates. Also, a good resource (more for FAQs and procedural/official questions) is the AAMC Twitter Feed. It offers links on how to study, responds to any user's questions, and posts dates for score releases, deadlines, etc.

Hopefully this helps! These are the main resources I wanted to mention, but if there's any other resources I didn't touch on, let me know and I can talk about those in more detail!

~If you can find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn't lead anywhere~