Med School Confidential
Page 7
How to structure your course work as a postbac
Once you enroll in a postbac program, you should immediately schedule a meeting with the premed advisor. This is an absolutely critical step. Planning the sequence of your courses as a postbac can be a confusing process, since restrictions on when and how you take each class vary at different institutions. Time and financial constraints may also limit your window of opportunity to pursue and complete your prerequisites. Do not end up being forced to delay your MCAT administration or completing your applications because you were unable to fulfill a requirement in time!
During your meeting with your premed advisor, declare your intentions, review your undergraduate record, and get advice on how to chart the course. You should also contact the premed advisor from your former undergraduate institution (if it is different from where you’re taking your premed classes) to coordinate your efforts. If you do this, the premed advisor from your undergraduate institution can speak about the merits of the balance of your undergraduate record in a letter of recommendation from the premed committee of that school—which will enhance your record.
As a postbac, you should also coordinate your studies with your MCAT preparation. You’re back in school for one reason and one reason only—to bang out your prereqs and pass the MCAT. Get a good MCAT review book on day one and start targeting your postbac studies toward the concepts covered in the book. When you’re reviewing for your exams in school, use a bank of MCAT practice questions to hone your skills. Read the next section on taking the MCAT carefully, and schedule your study and test taking to fit into your compressed premed curriculum.
Finally, it may have been a while since you’ve been enrolled in full-time classes. Be honest with yourself and evaluate your progress as you go. If you feel like you’re slipping or getting into academic trouble, put ego aside and ask for help. Avail yourself of tutoring, get extra help from your teaching assistants, or check in with your professor during office hours to remedy the situation promptly.
CHAPTER 4
Beating the MCAT
At college age, you can tell who is the best at taking tests . . .
but you can’t tell who the best people are.
That worries the hell out of me.
—BARNABY C. KEENEY
AS YOU’VE PROBABLY heard, the MCAT is one of those monolithic, life-altering, gatekeeper experiences. But is it really as horrible as people say it is? Let’s separate fact from fiction.
The MCAT will be, without a doubt, the longest and most difficult exam you will have taken to date. Your pent-up anxiety after months of studying, and the overwhelming sense of anxiety of everyone around you, will add significantly to the challenge. In the weeks and days leading up to the administration of the exam, it will seem like it’s all anyone can talk about, and that the only thing worse than actually studying for the MCAT is the paralyzing fear that this one seven-hour exam could actually stymie your dream of becoming a doctor.
Don’t let it.
There are kernels of reality to the MCAT hype, but if you take to heart the advice that follows, the experience need not be one that lands you in therapy. This chapter will familiarize you with the basics of the test and arm you with a strategy and some useful resources. There are literally hundreds of MCAT preparatory books available on the market, and this book is not intended to be another one of those. Our goal with respect to your MCAT preparation is simply to dispel some myths and provide a direction for your intensive, independent preparation for the exam.
“It is just something you have to do,” Kate counsels. “Get through it.”
WHAT THE TEST IS ALL ABOUT
As in nearly all academic admissions processes, medical schools seek a universal objective measure of their candidates. Just as the SAT was your ticket into college, the MCAT is your pass into medical school. And, just like the SAT or any other standardized test, the MCAT is highly imperfect.
Its makers, the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), claim that the MCAT is “designed to assess problem solving, critical thinking, and writing skills in addition to the examinee’s knowledge of science concepts and principles prerequisite to the study of medicine.” Proponents of the MCAT, mostly within the admissions world, claim that MCAT scores correlate well with students’ actual success in medical school. And as you might expect, there are many who question this assertion and examples too numerous to recount of people who underperformed on the MCAT and went on to become stars in the medical profession. That said, like it or not, performing at least passably well on the MCAT will be a make-it-orbreak-it factor in your application. Schools may claim they don’t screen on MCAT scores, but the reality is that with too many qualified applicants for too few slots, most med schools do, in fact, prescreen applicants on some objective criteria, often including the MCAT score.
So how should you approach this beast?
While you do need a solid base of science knowledge in order to score well on the test, the truth is that like any standardized test the MCAT does a better job of assessing how well you take standardized tests. Preparing for the test thus becomes a game of rehearsing the basic information you need as background to the test, and then mastering the games the test makers play with the questions. The test is comprehensive, but it actually covers a fairly limited set of specific information from a wide range of subjects. With enough time and a direction, you can review and master this information. The trick is training yourself to become an expert at taking the MCAT. This will mean understanding the types of questions asked, knowing and learning to recognize the tricks, and, you guessed it—practice, practice, and more practice.
By the end of this preparatory ordeal you will feel like you are eating, living, and breathing test questions. You’ll do so many practice exams you’ll feel like a day without multiple-choice questions is somehow lacking. And when you reach that point, you’ll be ready. But you’re a long way from there now, so read on.
Let’s start by looking at how the test is put together and how it is administered.
HOW THE TEST IS STRUCTURED
The MCAT has approximately 214 multiple-choice questions and two writing sections. It is broken down into four separate sections. When all is said and done, you will spend seven hours taking the actual test, with two short breaks and a lunch hour interspersed in that time. Count on a full eight-hour day when you consider getting there, getting registered, and getting oriented.
Each section of the MCAT covers a different subject area or skill set. The sections, and the typical structure of those sections, are listed in the following chart.
MCAT Section
Questions
Duration
Physical Sciences
77 questions
100 minutes
—Break—
10 minutes
Verbal Reasoning
60 questions
85 minutes
—Lunch—
60 minutes
Biological Sciences
77 questions
100 minutes
—Break—
10 minutes
Writing Sample
2 essays
60 minutes
The question formats are fairly typical of any long standardized test. The physical and biological sciences sections are all multiple choice questions, often referring to a reading passage relevant to the subject matter. The verbal reasoning section is also all multiplechoice, but these questions relate exclusively to fairly extensive reading passages from the social and natural sciences, as well as the humanities. In the verbal reasoning section you are not tested on your science and humanities knowledge but on your reading comprehension, reasoning, and critical-thinking skills. Finally, the essay section is composed of two brief topic statements. For each statement, you are instructed to write a roughly one-page responsive essay to “elicit a unified, coherent, first-draft essay exploring the meaning and implications of the statement.”
The A
AMC draws on many resources to help write MCAT questions. Contributors include the AAMC staff, medical-school admissions officers, medical-school faculties, college faculties, and practicing physicians. As with all standardized tests, your test will contain some new, experimental questions. Your answers to these questions will not be reported as part of your score but rather used to evaluate their merit for inclusion on future MCATs.
HOW THE TEST IS SCORED, AND WHAT THE RESULTS MEAN
You will receive an individual score from 1 (lowest) to 15 (highest) on each of the three multiple-choice sections. You receive full credit for the questions you got right and no deduction for the questions you got wrong, so guessing is always preferable to leaving questions unanswered. Your raw score for a given section is then converted to the 15-point scale. The actual conversion formula is a complicated and closely guarded secret that takes into account variations in the types of questions used on the actual test you take, and evens out minor variations in test administration, personal performance, and test quality. Your scaled score will then be used to derive percentile ranks specific to your test date and to the year you took the test. These are perhaps the most useful numbers to the admissions committees, since they are the best evaluation of your test aptitude relative to that of your peers taking the same test at the same time. Medical schools will total the numeric scores on the three multiple-choice sections and use this as an estimate of your overall performance on the exam.
The writing sample is scored a bit differently. Each essay is read by a reviewer who assigns a series of numeric scores that reflect your organization and style in the essay. The numeric scores from both essays are then converted to a single-letter score from J (lowest) to T (highest). Why the AAMC chose the letters J through T is one of life’s great mysteries. Nonetheless, your score report will bear one of these letters as the score for your writing samples.
So what do these scores mean, and how can you judge how well you did?
Almost all schools now require the MCAT for admissions. Most will publish a range or average score for their entering classes, giving you a general sense of how strongly they weigh MCAT performance and, indirectly, how competitive their candidates are. In 2004 the mean cumulative score for the combined April/August administrations was 24.6 with the individual means being 8.1 for physical sciences, 8.0 for verbal reasoning, and 8.5 for biological sciences. The average writing sample score was an O, with prominent peaks at the M and Q levels. In general you should hope to score at least 9 to 12 on each section.
A general rule of thumb over the years has been that a combined numeric score of 30 gets your application over the threshold and into the files under active consideration at most schools. This means you could, theoretically, bomb the verbal with a 4 and ace the physical and biological sciences with 13s respectively and still make the 30 cutoff. Med-school admissions committees do review the individual section scores, though, so if you really bomb one section, it will get noticed.
The writing section is generally not used as a screening tool. If you absolutely bomb the writing section, schools may look to other indicators in your academic record and your application essay for further information about your writing ability. If you do poorly here, it won’t kill you. On the other hand, an exceptional writing sample score and a strong application essay will be definite pluses in your application. Anything in between will probably neither hurt nor help you.
PREPARING FOR THE MCAT
There is an infinite array of strategies for preparing for the MCAT that all boil down to three essential ingredients: time, determination, and hard work. The exact quantities of each that will be required of you will depend on your past test-taking performance, your anxiety level, your time constraints, and the freshness of your premed coursework. Of the essential ingredients, time will be the most critical to get a handle on early.
First a basic, seemingly obvious, but absolutely crucial point: never ever take the MCAT cold!
The test is simply too long, too complicated, too comprehensive, and fundamentally too important to take lightly. Even if you have a long history of acing standardized tests, it will be well worth your while to spend some time understanding the scope of the information covered on the MCAT and the structure of the test. Preparing can only improve your scores, which will improve your candidacy in the highly competitive med-school admissions process, and, thus, likely reduce your anxiety in the long run.
You should start preparing for the MCAT and developing a study strategy at least a year ahead of the time that you anticipate applying to medical school. This will give you sufficient time to self-evaluate, develop a study plan, and remedy any weakness you may have. Most students allot approximately three months of dedicated study time to preparing for the MCAT Since the test is offered only twice, in April and August of each year, you’ll have to pick the test date that works best for you and coordinate your study schedule accordingly. Most people take the test in April of their junior year, since they will then receive their scores during the summer and can evaluate their results before the August/September application crunch time.
“I took the MCAT as an undergrad,” Deb recalls. “Then, when I decided to reapply for medical school, I unfortunately had to take it again. I think there was a five-year limit for how long your scores were valid, and of course I was past that. That was my biggest woe of reapplying. I remember sitting on my porch in the middle of summer trying to review calculus and physics, which I didn’t really understand when I took them in college and surely didn’t remember six years later after not having to use them or think about them in any way, shape, or form in my job or everyday life. That was a drag!”
Getting started and doing a diagnostic test
When you begin formulating your study plan, start by gathering the basic information about the test. The AAMC Web site (www.aamc.org) provides excruciatingly detailed information on the test as well as some downloadable banks of sample questions. You should also consult your premed advisor or premed office for their list of recommended resources for study. Finally, there’s a wide array of MCAT preparation books that offer review information, test-taking strategies, and sample tests. We provide our recommended list of study aids in the appendix.
Once you get a basic feel for the exam’s scope and coverage, you should think about taking a diagnostic practice test. This needn’t be a simulation of the entire MCAT, only a representative exam covering each of the sections. You can use the AAMC versions or any of the commercially available versions of practice tests.
Before you start this first practice test, take this fact to heart: you will probably bomb it.
It’s okay. Don’t panic.
This test is designed just to give you a feel for the questions, a sense of how they test the knowledge, and, most important, a list of areas you need to improve on. Your scores will get better, so hang in there. You’re only just beginning.
The results of your diagnostic practice test will, no doubt, help you assess the time commitment required for your preparation. If you’re historically a strong standardized-test taker and you fared well on the diagnostic test, you can probably focus your preparation on taking more practice exams and reviewing the subtle concepts that may help you ratchet up your score another notch. If you’re disappointed in your performance on the diagnostic test, it’s time for the next crucial assessment: is it the test, the substantive concepts, or both that are tripping you up?
Look through the answers for your diagnostic test and scrutinize the written explanations. Try to honestly assess whether you got a question wrong because you didn’t know the information, or because the question was asked in such a way that you failed to apply or recognize facts you already knew. If it’s the former, you’ll need to prioritize your preparation plan first on a review of substantive material, and then doing more practice tests. If it’s the latter, you should still review substance, but you should focus more of your preparation on perfecting test-taking strategies.
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br /> Study strategies: deciding between self-study and commercial review courses
Armed with a sense of your initial performance and a direction for your study plan, you must next decide how to best achieve your goals and how to schedule yourself to meet these objectives. You will ultimately have to design your own preparation plan that suits your specific study needs. It is critical that your plan include a coherent structure and regular schedule. Preparing for the MCAT is a substantial undertaking. You must develop a review road map and tie it to a calendar of regular, blocked-out study times that you can adhere to. You also need to build in frequent practice exams to help gauge your progress and refine your studies.