Sometimes a ‘gap year’ isn’t a year at all. Sometimes it’s more than one year; sometimes it’s less. No matter the case, the period of time between your graduation from college and the time you begin med school can offer a ton of value. The idea of a gap year sounds great on paper, doesn’t it? A year reprieve following a grueling and competitive four years...
You’re so close! You are now one month away from your MCAT exam. Now—what should you do? While the beginning of your MCAT studying will be focused primarily on content review (with some strategy/practice questions throughout), your last month of studying is the final push to refine your test-taking skills. We like to call the final month, and conclusion to...
It’s no secret that studying for the MCAT can be expensive. Signing up for the test, purchasing study materials, working with tutors, and buying practice tests can add up. In addition to paying for prep material, many MCAT test-takers also dedicate hundreds of hours to mastering the test that they could’ve used to earn money in other ways. At MCAT Self...
When I was starting my MCAT preparation, I sought out high-scorers in the grades above me like a bloodhound. I wanted to know what worked. Now, having scored in the 99th percentile myself, other students frequently seek out me for the same reason, and I find myself giving two types of advice: studying tips and performance-enhancement tips. In regards to...
For most people, Holiday vacations mean taking a break from school and doing something fun. For students who are in school while studying for the MCAT, however, getting time off from school is a great time to ramp up your MCAT studies. In this week’s MCAT tip, I’m going to outline 3 simple things that you can do this Thanksgiving break to get a (turkey)...
Many premeds are infatuated with Anki, but I found it to be extremely difficult to use as I was studying for the MCAT. Because of this, I simply decided to make all of my notecards by hand. Here are pictures of all the notecards I made while studying for the MCAT: And yes, those are all separate boxes and bags of different notecards. Didn't I tell you the...
You’ve worked your way through all the content required for the MCAT. You’ve started learning how the AAMC wants you to think on test day. Maybe you’ve even gone through our FREE MCAT prep course! But despite all of these accomplishments, you still can’t get a handle on the timing for some or all of the sections on the MCAT. We are here to help! While we...
I wish I had been warned of common MCAT mistakes before I started studying for the MCAT. As the first pre-med student in my family, I had no one to help me filter out the good MCAT advice from the bad. The summer before my junior year of college, I had three or four friends start studying for the MCAT they would take in January, and I started to realize...
Many pre-med students are more oriented towards STEM than the behavioral sciences. This can make psychology and sociology content on the MCAT seem incredibly daunting! From behavioral neuroscience to systems and institutions, there are so many concepts that need to be mastered, and it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. As a psychology major and tutor, I’ve spent...
When I first began researching the medical school application process, I was completely overwhelmed. Between the MCAT, primary applications, secondary applications, interviews, and more, it was all very daunting! I wished I had a straightforward guide when I was planning my senior year of college. As a current applicant to medical schools, I felt that it...
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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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