<p>Just wondering when everyone started studying / prepping (as in actually got a book or took a class specifically for the MCAT) and when you took it</p>
<p>Just curious b/c I have a free practice test dat's offered @ my school dis saturday and i'm only a freshman taking chem as my main pre-med course (taking bio / org chem next year, and physics jr year).</p>
<p>I'm probably going to score like a 10j but i want to see where i'm @ to begin with</p>
<p>Eight weeks before exam.</p>
<p>Late May for the (old) August administration.</p>
<p>how did those work out for u? (If u dont mind sharing dat is)</p>
<p>I thought this would b sumthing like the sat / act's where ppl prep a long time for (well there's been an increase in the amount of ppl starting earlier n earlier)</p>
<p>BDM and I both scored above the 90%ile. And neither of us were 4.0 or even 3.6 GPA students.</p>
<p>BRM's being modest.</p>
<p>"I thought this would b sumthing like the sat / act's where ppl prep a long time"</p>
<p>What? There's no way you'd prep as much for the SAT's as you would for the MCAT.</p>
<p>SAT: Six weeks. SAT II's: None. AP's: None.</p>
<p>I started in mid-January for the April administration. I did above the 90th percentile as well. (So the moral of this story is that I might've gotten away with 6 weeks instead of 18?) :)</p>
<p>Also being modest.</p>
<p>And yes, six probably would have been just fine. My scores actually peaked about five weeks into my eight and fell off a little (okay, a lot) after that.</p>
<p>I think generally 1 semester (if you're prepping while attending school) or 6-12 weeks during the summer is probably enough.</p>
<p>BTW: I did the 10 week plan during the summer. The previous posters are med students and I just got into my first med school (SLU) on Monday so I guess I'm officially a MS 0 now. Trust us, this works. No need to be taking practice tests in your freshman year.</p>
<p>i took a semester-long class during the school year, but didn't really start taking a lot of practice tests until about a month before the exam after school ended (i took the may 25th exam this year) and I did exceptionally well. I felt that method worked very well for me, but in a lot of ways your study time should be dictated by when you're taking the test. If you're taking over the summer, about two months of rigorous prep work should be sufficient. If you're planning to take it during the academic year, you should obviously start sooner as you will not be able to dedicate as much time to studying as you would when you don't have class. Even then, I think you're being pretty ridiculous if you plan on starting earlier than the start of the semester during which you plan to take the test.</p>
<p>"I took the May 25th exam."</p>
<p>The first time I read that, I thought it said, "I took my 25th exam..."</p>
<p>I felt very, very sorry for you when I saw that.</p>
<p>Wow ok thx for all the replies guys I guess I'll skip out on dis one
i'm actually rly busy dis weekend ;o</p>
<p>generally, i know it's best to just deal w/ the MCAT once, but i've heard ppl taking it twice junior yr (beg&end), since they've completed their 4 sciences during the 1st 2 yrs. so should one take the MCATs a couple of times? would it actually help?</p>
<p>i found the cbt practice tests that the kaplan course I took to be pretty analogous to the actual test, so i think if you take those seriously there's no need to take the real thing twice, and I definately think you could be hurting yourself by going into the test with the attitude that you'll just take it again if you don't like what you get (I'm not saying leaving the time to take it twice is a bad idea, but that actually planning on doing so is)</p>
<p>only some schools take your highest score, others will average them or just take all scores into account, which is something to keep in mind as well</p>
<p>hah, no i don't think i even got anywhere near 25 on practice tests (more like 10 for those), and only took the real thing once</p>
<p>Take it once. If it's a dramatically aberrant score, then take it a second time. By no means should you ever take any standardized test twice if you can help it.</p>
<p>bdm, if after i take it the one time, and it's already near the end of junior yr (april), wouldn't it be too late to take it again anyways?</p>
<p>You should never retake barring some major aberrancy. In the case of a major aberrancy, delaying your application until July/August is not necessarily unreasonable, but that's a very rare situation anyway.</p>
<p>so in a dire circumstance, the may/june test dates would still be acceptable for the app deadline (i think it's mid-Aug)?</p>