Most Commonly Asked Questions

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The spreadsheet calculates the number of hours needed to study based on what I’ve found to be true for the average student. For instance, the average student will improve at a rate of 1 scaled score point increase per 50-75 hours of studying. This rate may be higher for the average student based on other factors such as difficulties with certain subjects, history with English, etc. We take these factors into account in the spreadsheet, but obviously, we can’t take into account every factor under the sun and for this reason, we can’t know with exact certainty what your unique rate of improvement will be.

That being said, with my private tutoring students, I plan for the average. This means, I’d recommend making your plan based on the recommendations in the spreadsheet and then adjusting along the way if once you begin to discover that your unique rate of improvement is different from the average student. You can always adjust your plan down the road based on this new information, but at the beginning when we don’t know yet, I believe it is best to plan based on what is true for the average student.

This may mean that you will need to adjust your goal score to be lower so that the spreadsheet will give you a number of study hours that is more realistic given your situation. It may also mean extending your test day to give yourself the amount of time required to truly succeed on this exam. If you’d like some one-on-one help deciding which actions to take, I’d recommend signing up for one of our low-cost tutoring packages.

When it comes to being ready to take the MCAT, more important than the number of months you spend studying is the total number of hours that you study, and the number of hours required to achieve MCAT success varies greatly. Some students who are already close to their goal may only need to study a couple hundred hours while those who still have a long way to go may need to study over one thousand hours. To determine how many hours YOU should study, several factors need to be considered such as your GPA, academic history, score on an MCAT diagnostic, history with English, and several more.

We will consider each of these factors in my Create-your-own Study Plan Course, which will help you develop an individualized study plan that will lead you to achieving your goal MCAT score. It will provide you with an exact estimate regarding the number of hours YOU should study in order to succeed, allowing you to determine when you will be ready to take the MCAT. It walks you through the exact same steps that I use to help my private tutoring students create their study plans. I’d strongly recommend starting this course before you dive into your MCAT studying.

The number of hours required to achieve MCAT success varies greatly. Some students who are already close to their goal may only need to study a couple hundred hours while those who still have a long way to go may need to study over one thousand hours. To determine how many hours YOU should study, several factors need to be considered such as your GPA, academic history, score on an MCAT diagnostic, history with English, and several more.

We will consider each of these factors in my Create-your-own Study Plan Course, which will help you develop an individualized study plan that will lead you to achieving your goal MCAT score. It walks you through the exact same steps that I use to help my private tutoring students create their study plans. I’d strongly recommend starting this course before you dive into your MCAT studying.

The time it takes to work through each lesson and module should be personalized to your unique needs. For this reason, I’d suggest working your way through the Create-your-own Study Plan Course in order to generate a personalized study plan. In this course, I will help you determine exactly how much or how little to do for each lesson based on your ongoing performance on AAMC practice problems.

Each lesson contains a playlist of approximately 10 to 30 videos from Khan Academy, AK Lectures, Udemy and Crash Course. Whether you should watch just the Khan Academy videos or all of the videos contained in each playlist depends on how much you struggle with that topic.

The basic idea is to do more for the topics that are challenging for you and less for the topics that are easy for you. But, because knowing how much YOU should be doing for each lesson can be challenging to discern, I’d suggest working your way through my Create-your-own Study Plan Course in order to generate a personalized study plan. In this course, I will help you determine exactly how much or how little to do for each lesson based on your ongoing performance on AAMC practice problems.

For instance, let’s say you are performing within 2 points of your goal score for the Behavioral Science Section, I might simply suggest that you just watch the Khan Academy videos from each playlist and then study my pre-made Quizlet flashcards. On the other hand, if you are 7 points away from your goal score, I would instead recommend that you watch all the videos from the video playlist while making your own flashcards, read the Kaplan book reading assignments while making your own flashcards, and study my pre-made flashcards. Through this approach, you will be focusing more of your time and energy into the sections that need it most.

For access to both my Create-your-own Study Plan Course and my collection of 5,000+ Quizlet Flashcards (a huge time saver), I’d highly recommend upgrading to the Advanced Pro Plan. It is my very most popular plan.

Each lesson contains reading assignments from the Kaplan and Princeton Books. Whether you should do one reading assignment, both, or neither depends on how much you struggle with that topic.

The basic idea is to do more for the topics that are challenging for you and less for the topics that are easy for you. But, because knowing how much YOU should be doing for each lesson can be challenging to discern, I’d suggest working your way through my Create-your-own Study Plan Course in order to generate a personalized study plan. In this course, I will help you determine exactly how much or how little to do for each lesson based on your ongoing performance on AAMC practice problems.

For instance, let’s say you are performing within 2 points of your goal score for the Behavioral Science Section, I might simply suggest that you just watch the Khan Academy videos from each playlist and then study my pre-made Quizlet flashcards. On the other hand, if you are 7 points away from your goal score, I would instead recommend that you watch all the videos from the video playlist while making your own flashcards, read the Kaplan book reading assignments while making your own flashcards, and study my pre-made flashcards. Through this approach, you will be focusing more of your time and energy into the sections that need it most.

For access to both my Create-your-own Study Plan Course and my collection of 5,000+ Quizlet Flashcards (a huge time saver), I’d highly recommend upgrading to the Advanced Pro Plan. It is my very most popular plan.

The basic idea is to do more for the topics that are challenging for you and less for the topics that are easy for you. But, because knowing how much YOU should be doing for each lesson can be challenging to discern, I’d suggest working your way through my Create-your-own Study Plan Course in order to generate a personalized study plan. In this course, I will help you determine exactly how much or how little to do for each lesson based on your ongoing performance on AAMC practice problems.

For instance, let’s say you are performing within 2 points of your goal score for the Behavioral Science Section, I might simply suggest that you just watch the Khan Academy videos from each playlist and then study my pre-made flashcards and review my practice questions. On the other hand, if you are 7 points away from your goal score, I would instead recommend that you watch all the videos from the video playlist while making your own flashcards, read the Kaplan book reading assignments while making your own flashcards, and study my pre-made flashcards. Through this approach, you will be focusing more of your time and energy into the sections that need it most.

For access to both my Create-your-own Study Plan Course, my collection of 5,000+ Flashcards, and all 120 end-of-lesson mastery quizzes featuring 2,500+ AAMC-style practice questions (a huge time saver), I’d highly recommend upgrading to the Advanced Pro Plan. It is my very most popular plan.

I highly recommend completing one Content Module at a time from start to finish. There are three major reasons for this:

1. Your brain will learn best with structure. The MCAT covers a vast amount of material, and as you learn your brain is trying to organize all the information into semantic networks (networks of connected information). The network that is created within your brain is often related to the order in which you learn the information. For instance, if you jump from topic to topic, your brain’s semantic networks will be disorganized similar to an office with papers scattered all around the room. On the other hand, if you learn one topic in a clear order, your brain will be able to create a neatly organized semantic network similar to a filing cabinet. Think of each concept like a piece of paper, each lesson like a folder, and each drawer like a Content Module.
2. You’ll be better able to stay on top of your reviewing of previous material. Our eCourse has a carefully structured system of review. In each lesson, you will review the current lesson’s flashcards as well as review the previous lesson’s flashcards. For instance, you’d review the flashcards from lesson 1 at the end of lesson 1 and at the end of lesson 2. Then, after completing lesson 1 through 12 of the Content Module, in lesson 13, you will review all the flashcards from lessons 1 through 12 again. And once you’ve completed all ten content modules, you’ll start MCAT Bootcamp. During MCAT Bootcamp, in addition to taking Full-length exams, you will also review every single flashcard from the 10 Content Modules again. By completing the Content Modules in order from lesson 1 all the way to lesson 15, you’ll be better able to follow this system of review.
3. You should regularly take AAMC Mini Exams. After you finish that first content module, you’ll take your first AAMC Mini Exam, which acts as a diagnostic exam. The Create-your-own Study Plan Course will then help you use your results on that AAMC Mini Exam to determine which Content Module to study next and which materials to utilize while studying that module. You will then map out the next few weeks of studying using the Study Plan Spreadsheet. And the cycle continues with you completing a Content Module, checking your progress using the AAMC Mini Exam, adjusting your plan for the next Content Module, and on and on until you’ve completed all ten Content Modules. Taking AAMC Mini Exams regularly at the end of each Content Module allows you to have a study plan that is adaptable and adjusts over time to your changing needs. It is also important to practice on AAMC practice problems regularly throughout your Content Review Phase in order to develop test-taking skills and an AAMC mindset.

The instructions for taking your first diagnostic exam can be found in the Create-your-own Study Plan Course, which will help you use your results to craft an individualized study plan.

For your first diagnostic exam, I’d suggest taking the AAMC Official Guide Questions as a half-length diagnostic. Using the score converter in our Create-your-own Study Plan Course, you can convert your percent correct on each section into a predicted scaled score. This gives students a very accurate idea as to where they are starting from.

You can buy the AAMC Official Guide Questions for $10 as a stand-alone product here.

If you want to save money in the long run, however, I would suggest buying the complete AAMC online practice bundle and the AAMC flashcards. This will give you access to every single AAMC practice question you need including the AAMC Official Guide Questions.

I strongly recommend gaining access to every AAMC practice question by purchasing the (1) Online Only Official MCAT Prep Bundle, and the (2) AAMC Official MCAT Flashcards. These low-cost resources are the highest yield because they are made by the creators of the actual MCAT.

The AAMC Mini Exams are composed of questions from AAMC (I recommend gaining access to all of the AAMC’s practice problems by purchasing the Online Only Bundle and the AAMC Flashcard Pack). There are 12 AAMC Mini Exams total, and you will complete two during MCAT Bootcamp one at the end of each of the 10 Content Modules (during lesson 15).

For instance, after completing your first Content Module, you’ll complete your first AAMC Mini Exam by completing problems from four different AAMC question packs as outlined here (lesson 15 of each Content Module contains an outline for all 12 Mini Exams):

AAMC Mini-exam 1

• For Chemistry/Physics Section, take 30 minutes to complete problems 1 through 19 from the Official MCAT Chemistry Question Pack (5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 13).
• For Critical Analysis and Reasoning Section, take 33 minutes to complete problems 1 through 21 from the Official MCAT Critical Analysis and Reasoning Skills Question Pack, Volume 1.
• For Biochemistry/Biology Section, take 30 minutes to complete problems 1 through 20 from the Official MCAT Biology Question Pack, Volume 1.
• For Behavioral Sciences Section, take 20 minutes to complete problems 1 through 12 from the Psychological, Social, and Biological Foundations of Behavior Section in the AAMC MCAT Section Bank.

By completing all four sections of the Mini Exam, at the end of each content module, you will gain a fresh perspective on your overall MCAT score, and you will begin to see how you are progressing within each individual subsection.  I strongly encourage the completion of an AAMC Mini Exam at the end of every Content Module.

There are two main phases to studying for the MCAT: (1) Content Review Phase, and (2) MCAT Bootcamp. During the Content Review Phase, your focus is on developing a very solid content foundation. Only once this foundation is fully established should you start doing full-length exams as part of MCAT Bootcamp, your final month of MCAT studying.

Now, this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t do any practice problems during the Content Review Phase, but the purpose of doing them is different than during MCAT Bootcamp, when you are trying to mimic test day and develop stamina. Practice during the Content Review Phase has several purposes:

1. Gain a feel for how the AAMC will test you on the content you are learning. By doing the AAMC Mini Exams at the end of each Content Module (lesson 15), you will begin to gain an idea as to how you need to understand the content in order to properly tackle questions from the AAMC.
2. Adjust your studying based on your progress. By taking AAMC Mini Exams at regular intervals, you will be able to see how and in what ways you are progressing. In lesson 15 of each module, Basic Pro Plan Members receive guidance as to how they should adjust their studying for the next Content Module based on their AAMC Mini Exam results. Adjusting your studying every step of the way based on real-time progress is an essential aspect of a solid study plan.
3. Test yourself to confirm that you are correctly learning the content. Oftentimes, students will learn a concept from a video or book, think they understand it, but then fail to answer a question based on that concept. This reveals that the student didn’t truly understand the concept as it was taught. To prevent this from happening, I believe it is crucial to test yourself immediately after learning concepts to confirm that you learned them correctly. Advanced Pro Plan Members are easily able to do this using the Quizlet sets at the end of each eCourse lesson. They are completely comprehensive for all the content taught in the Khan Academy videos, Kaplan Reading Assignments, and Princeton Reading Assignments contained within each lesson.
4. Practice passage-reading strategies. Developing passage-reading skills should not wait until MCAT Bootcamp. They need to be developed slowly over time through consistent practicing of proven comprehension strategies. I teach these strategies in my Ultimate CARS Strategy Course and Science Passage Reading Strategy Course (half-price as part of the Deluxe Pro Plan Bundle). Each course includes 10 Strategy Modules, each walking you through an essential and proven comprehension strategy. Learning the strategies is important, but practicing them on a daily basis is the key. This is why each course includes 100+ homework assignments that allow you to slowly practice these strategies over time in a consistent, proven manner. The best part is that the 10 Strategy Modules integrate perfectly with the 10 Content Modules of the eCourse. For instance, within each lesson of the eCourse, you’ll find science passages that relate to the content of that lesson, on which you can practice your passage reading strategies while reviewing the content you just learned. It is very effective.