MCAT musings

A few weeks ago, I began thinking ahead for next year - specifically, I began thinking about the MCAT and how I'm going to prepare for it. In light of the recent changes being made to the MCAT requirements for our program, I've been trying to plan ahead and do my best to begin preparing early so that I can ensure that I do well on this exam, especially since now it means more than it did before.

I have decided to dedicate this summer to MCAT prep, and because of that, I will not be going to India or anywhere else for vacation. I registered with Princeton Review's MCAT summer prep course, which begins a week or two after finals end in the spring semester and ends the final week of July. This also means that I have to stay on campus for the summer, so I renewed my apartment lease this week when the housing application renewal period opened. The MCAT class is from 7-10 pm on weekdays (except Friday), so even though my Clinical Medicine II course is this summer as well, that will typically end around 3-5 pm, which gives me enough time to drive back to UTD from UTSW and make it to my MCAT class.

I had the option of registering for an MCAT course next semester, but I didn't do that for two reasons - one, I'm taking biochemistry next semester, which I need to know for the MCAT, so it wouldn't make sense for me to review material that I haven't even learned yet; and two, I wanted to be able to devote all my time to MCAT, which I can only do over the summer. Reviewing for the MCAT at the same time as taking classes and doing research and all the other commitments that I have would not have been a wise decision. I would much rather have nothing else going on, so that I can just sit down and focus on preparing for the exam. As of now, I expect to take the real thing in September, so I will have a total of 3.5 months to study. I hope that that's enough time.

I've already decided to start preparing  for the MCAT as early as possible, so I plan to try and find some CARS passages to practice so that I can brush up on my critical reading skills and anything else that I haven't done in a while that may be a bit rusty.