5 Ways To Study for the MCAT Using Your Smartphone

You can do almost anything with your smartphone these days. You can video call a friend in China, order pizza with the click of a button, and even see in the dark! So, if your smartphone can help you do these and an infinite number of other things, then why can’t you use it to study for the MCAT? In this article, I am going to show you not only that you can use your smartphone to study for the MCAT, but that you should. In fact, many students using our free ecourse work through lessons and even meet with tutors from their mobile devices. Beyond that, here are 5 ways that you can start using your smartphone to study for the MCAT right now:

1. Watch Videos

Although many students choose to utilize bulky textbook-sized study materials in their effort to get a top MCAT score, these massive books can be incredibly inconvenient for on-the-go studying. And let’s face it, you are an incredibly busy student who is trying to get A’s in your pre-med classes, shadow doctors, get service hours, and watch silly cat videos on Facebook all while trying to fit in studying for the MCAT. For this reason, videos are a great option for a while-you-walk, while-you-ride-the-bus, or even a while-you-sit-on-the-john study tool. My top-recommended YouTube Channels are Khan Academy, AK Lectures, Crash Course, and Udacity. And if you are looking for a structured, step-by-step format to watch these in, I combined the best of these videos into easy-to-digest YouTube playlists that match up with MCAT content categories. These playlists are embedded into each lesson of our FREE MCAT Prep Course. 

2. Study Flashcards

As many students studying for the MCAT understand, the MCAT covers a vast amount of material. So much so, that your typical pen and paper note-taking style will be insufficient. You will need a systematic system of review that allows you to test yourself regularly on what you have been learning, and notecards are the perfect way to do this. And you can easily download a flashcard app that will allow you to review your flashcards on the go. I would recommend either Anki or Quizlet, both of which have their pros and cons. Anki is a little less sleek but it will automatically remind you when you should review a notecard. With a small upgrade, Quizlet will do the same for you, and I am a huge fan of the Quizlet user-interface. It allows you to easily add pictures to your notecards, and Quizlet makes sharing notecards with your friends a breeze. Feel free to utilize my Quizlet sets for free, which will test you on the content covered in the previously mentioned YouTube playlists. These Quizlet sets are also embedded into each lesson of our FREE MCAT Prep Course, allowing you to do all your studying from one place!

3. Practice Problems

If you were to only study and learn content, you would be ill-prepared for the MCAT. Those who succeed on the MCAT utilize many practice problems. Although I strictly recommend the official practice problems from the AAMC to my private tutoring students, there are a handful of other good options in terms of practice problems that you can do from your smartphone. This article will walk you through 8 different apps that you may want to utilize for this purpose. And using the score tracker built into our FREE MCAT Prep Course, you can convert the percent correct on AAMC practice problems into a predicted scaled MCAT score! 

4. Read a Book

I have met many students who are able to conquer the science sections of the MCAT, yet struggle to handle the Critical Reading and Analysis Section (CARS). In order to feel more confident in this section, I would recommend reading as much as you can. You don’t necessarily need to spend your time reading academic journals and papers. The key is to simply read – read a bunch! Even if Twilight is your cup of tea, go for it! You can download all sorts of books onto your smartphone using the Kindle app or various other book platforms. You can even try purchasing a physical Kindle if you want too!

5. Utilize Online MCAT Forums

There are so many pre-meds out there just like you that are going through the same things as you. They can be one of your greatest assets as you work through your MCAT prep and medical school applications. For instance, as I was studying for the MCAT, I found great value in this SDN forum where 509+ MCAT scorers share their MCAT score as well as how they studied to achieve it. Along with SDN, Reddit also has a strong and active MCAT forum. Both of these forums can easily be accessed and used from your smartphone, providing you with helpful information as you continue along your pre-med journey. You can even join our FREE MCAT Facebook Study Group!

There you have it—5 easy ways to start studying for the MCAT from your smartphone. So, next time you are sitting in line at the grocery store stuck on the subway, or even sitting on the john, why not pull out your smartphone and start racking up points toward a higher MCAT score. Best of luck studying and feel free to reach out with any questions during a FREE consultation along the way!

Warm regards,

Andrew  George

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How we Matched up the Khan Academy Passages with the eCourse Lessons

Each lesson of the eCourse contains links to 1 to 5 Khan Academy science passages for the purpose of providing you with non-AAMC material to practice your science passage reading skills on. By completing all the linked passages within every lesson, you will have finished all the freely available Khan Academy science passages.

To match up the Khan Academy Science Passages with the eCourse lessons, we carefully examined the passage and question content of each one. Then we decided which lesson of the eCourse best correlated with that content. You may notice that some passages don’t match up perfectly with the current lesson. If they don’t match up with the current lesson, they should match up with one of the previous lessons in the module. We did this carefully so that you could practice your science passage reading skills on passages that contain the content you’ve already learned.

Why we don’t recommend non-AAMC CARS practice questions

We recommend practicing CARS by reading non-AAMC CARS passages but not doing the associated practice problems. The reason we don’t recommend doing the practice problems is because the MCAT is written by the AAMC. They have a very unique style in which they write CARS practice questions that third-party companies (try as they might) are unable to replicate. When students spend time on non-AAMC CARS practice problems, they get familiar with the wrong style of questioning, leading them to overthink and incorrectly respond to the questions written by the AAMC. Thus, it is in your best interest to solely practice on AAMC CARS practice questions.

That said, we highly recommend practicing your reading skills on non-AAMC CARS passages. In our Ultimate CARS Strategy Course, we provide you with 1,000 free CARS passages and 100+ homework assignments, giving you ample material to practice on. Reading countless passages while practicing the proper reading habits and strategies will prepare you well to conquer the CARS section as it was written by the AAMC.

Which books do the lessons match up with?

The books we use in each lesson are linked below. We plan to stick with these older editions of the books since very little has changed and the older editions are much more affordable:

First Edition of the Kaplan 7-book Series
First Edition of the Princeton 7-book Series

Do the chapters match up perfectly?

The Kaplan Books, Princeton Books, and Khan Academy Videos were all produced by different authors. For this reason, there are some chapters in the Kaplan Book or Princeton Book that are not even found in the Khan Academy Videos and vice versa. For instance, the Kaplan and Princeton Books have chapters that cover certain experimental procedures that the Khan Academy Videos do not cover.

Our goal in matching up the books with the videos was to correlate the content as best as possible while also covering ALL the content from every resource. For this reason, when nothing in the Kaplan Books matched up with one of the video playlists, instead of leaving the reading assignment for Kaplan blank, we inserted material that did not fit in anywhere else (i.e. one of those chapters on an experimental procedure that was not covered by Khan Academy). So, when the assignment doesn’t appear to match up right, please know that this was intentional.

*If you follow the reading assignments outlined, you will finish the entire Kaplan 7-book series and/or Princeton 7-book series by the time you finish all 10 content modules.

Do the sections match up perfectly?

If the sections assigned in our eCourse do not match up with the sections contained in your content review book, you may have a different edition. The sections should still match up the large majority of the time, but in the rare instance that they don’t, I’d recommend simply reading sections that do match up and saving the ones that do not for a future lesson.

MCAT Launchpad Required!

Before jumping into our free eCourse, you’ll need to complete orientation by watching MCAT Launchpad. During this free 35-minute intro session with Head Tutor Andrew, you’ll learn 6 Keys to Earning a Top MCAT Score, the 5 Essential Elements of an Effective Study Plan, 12 Tips for Taking the Best MCAT Study Notes, and more! Andrew will also provide you with a detailed overview of the Free MCAT Prep Course, teaching you how to get started.

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