Using Practice Tests to Simulate Test Day

All of your MCAT practice tests should lead to you to test day. Your prep material should mirror the material that AAMC expects you to know. MCAT practice tests should lead you to test day as well. Most students who have taken the MCAT will consistently cite taking practice tests as the most important part of their preparation. However, MCAT practice tests can improve your MCAT score even more if you use them to simulate test-day conditions. As part of our FREE online MCAT course, we walk our students through every aspect of the material on test-day. But how can you simulate the test day experience if you’ve never taken the real thing? Here are a few pro-tips and aspects of test-day that will help you maximize the benefit from your MCAT practice tests. You can trust me, I scored a perfect 528 using only MCAT Self Prep and self-studying. I maximized my score because I spent hundreds of hours trying to understand the AAMC and how they think. Before test day, you can understand their logic too. 

MCAT Self Prep Free ecourse

Using the Tutorial Time to Your Advantage

Before your MCAT practice tests, you will encounter a 10-minute tutorial that walks you through every feature of the MCAT software. For your first MCAT practice test, we recommend that you use this time to learn about all of the features at your disposal. You can highlight text using ALT+H (Option+H for Mac users) and strike-through using ALT+S (Option+S for Mac users) and many other keyboard shortcuts. Once you’ve familiarized yourself with these features, you can skip through this introduction to get right to the test in future practice scenarios. Most MCAT prep courses will recommend that you skip this section on test day as well. But on test day, every minute that you’re given is precious. 

One pro-tip that can boost your score is using this 10-minute introduction to create a cheat sheet for your test day. On test-day, you are given a booklet of dry-erase sheets (I bought these sheets online and found it to be very helpful to practice with). During the introduction, you can write down every memorization-heavy concept that you find difficult to remember. Some examples are:

  1. all of the amino acid R groups, 
  2. stages of development according to various psychologists (Piaget, Erickson, Freud) 
  3. a list of 10-20 physics equations 
  4. a prototypical voltaic cell
  5. brain regions and their functions

Spend an hour during the day or two before your test to create this list ahead of time. Then practice copying this list down from memory over and over again until you can do so effortlessly. This allows you to memorize this information in your short-term memory, to augment your long term memory of these memorization-heavy concepts. Bring this list with you to the testing center so you can glance at it one last time before you head in to take your test. Copy it down again right before you sign in. This way you’ve written your cheat sheet down only 3-5 minutes before you start your test! Once you are seated in the exam chair, advance to the introduction section, and you will be given 10 minutes to copy this cheat sheet down before starting. Let the time slowly run down while you copy everything that you’ve practiced. Now you’ll have a cheat list that will save you plenty of time once your exam starts! 

Again, we want to simulate test-taking conditions as much as possible when taking MCAT practice tests. If you start with the end in mind, you will know that on test day, you will have your cheat list in front of you. So an option is to take your MCAT practice tests with this reference sheet in front of you! Hooray! Spend time crafting your reference sheet now to help with memorizing pesky physics equations! (However, we do recommend that you don’t take MCAT practice tests with the amino acid R groups in front of you as you should know them like the back of your hand even without the reference sheet)

COVID-19 testing addendum: If you are taking the MCAT with the COVID length sections, you will only be given 3 minutes + 90 seconds for the introduction and opening section page. We recommend only copying one memorization-heavy concept down in this time (all the amino acid R groups, 10-20 physics equations etc.)

Noise Cancelation and Screen Dimensions

The next two things you may notice when you sit down to take your test is the noise cancelation options and the dimensions of your screen. PearsonVUE testing centers offer two methods of noise cancelation for every student: over-the-ear headphones and ear-plugs. I tried both. In my experience, the headphones they offered were fine. They feel like ear protection for construction workers, not high-quality over-the-ear headphones. However, most people don’t like using ear plugs and opt for the headphones. I, however, decided to use ear-plugs. It’s a personal preference, but you should decide what method you’ll use right away and use that form of noise-cancellation for your MCAT practice tests. (But if you like studying with noise-canceling headphones, they buy a good pair and practice with them before test-day. I bought the pair that I linked and they’ve completely changed my studying game.) 

The next thing that may throw you off is the screen dimensions. The MCAT will be administered on Windows desktops (remember ALT+H for highlighting if you use a Mac!). If possible, take your MCAT practice tests on desktops with a mouse instead of a laptop. This will actually help you save time as you can navigate faster with a mouse. The dimensions of the test will also be squared (like an Instagram picture) with black bars on either side. While this may seem like an unimportant detail, the squared dimensions makes the CARS passages seem longer because you need to scroll more to get through them. Pro Tip: all CARS passage word counts are within a 50-word range, so they are actually the same length. So when taking MCAT practice tests, square your browser screen to simulate this effect.

COVID-19 testing addendum: If you are taking the MCAT with the COVID length sections, you will be required to test with a mask on. Using a mask and over-the-ear headphones simultaneously can hurt your ears and so we advise against this unless you practice beforehand. With social distancing, there will be half the students in your testing room and so you may not even need any form of noise-cancellation. We also recommend using a high-quality and BREATHABLE mask to help with breathing instead of face-fitted N95s.

Taking Breaks

Because the MCAT lasts almost an entire day, you will be allowed to take 3 breaks during your test-day experience. Your breaks will last 10, 30, and 10 minutes after your Chemistry and Physics, CARS, and Biology and Biochemistry sections respectively. To make the most of these breaks, successful test-takers will fuel up with both foods and liquids. We think of taking the MCAT as running a marathon. It’s long. It’s hard. This endurance requires a constant and consistent output of energy. Marathon runners refuel by eating protein bars and other healthy foods. As you may know from your studies, sugary foods burn fast and bright but lead to physical and cognitive crashes after they are used up. We recommend eating and drinking as you would for a marathon (including frequent bathroom breaks). However, finding your own balance is the most important aspect of MCAT nutrition. Experiment with nutrition during your breaks for your first few MCAT practice tests until you find out what works for you. For test-day, bring more food, water, and caffeine than you think you’ll need. Don’t forget to bring a water bottle too! 

A word on caffeine: Just as you want to maintain consistent levels of blood sugar to prevent crashes, make sure to keep a consistent caffeine intake if you choose to use it. It’s much better to sip on a caffeinated beverage at each of your breaks rather than chugging 2 coffees right before the test starts. I personally practiced with caffeinated Cliff Shot blocks so I didn’t have to pee as often from drinking too much liquid (caffeine is also a diuretic). If you feel yourself crashing before the final section, feel free to pound caffeine to get you over the final hump because you can always crash later. As a natural alternative or supplement, I also did push-ups and jumping jacks during my breaks to wake my body up. Keeping the blood flowing can restart your focus after sitting in front of a computer for hours on end. 

At MCAT Self Prep, we are committed to helping you succeed on test day. That’s why we’ve created dozens of resources that we give out for free. If you have any specific questions, feel free to reach out to me using the form at the bottom of my tutoring page.

Warm regards,

Theo Bennett

 

Theo Bennett scored a perfect score (528) on the MCAT and has been accepted at Harvard, UPenn, Columbia, UCLA, and other top 10 medical schools across the country. You can learn more and sign up to work with him one-on-one here.

For more MCAT Tips:

Sign up for our affordable elite MCAT tutoring.

Sign up for our FREE MCAT Prep Course.

Follow us on:

   

MCAT Prep Course - MCAT Tutor
MCAT Prep Course - MCAT Questions
MCAT Prep Course - MCAT CARS
MCAT Prep Course - MCAT Behavioral Science

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.

Are you sure you want to skip today's special offer?

You will forfeit your 30% off coupon by continuing with Free Forever.

Save 20% off select tutors for this month only!  Save on Tutoring
close
open