<p>^Who “she”? God?</p>
<p>My HS chem teacher</p>
<p>From the NSF link (emphasis added)
</p>
<p>Also, when/where/how old your HS chem teacher got a PhD doesn’t really say much of anything. A chemistry PhD is not a degree in teaching or writing exams.</p>
<p>Forget the focus on your HS teacher’s education history. Irrelevant.</p>
<p>You’re likely finding the first half of Chem I somewhat easy because it is largely review from AP Chem. You have a foundation so it’s easier for you to build on what you know. Someone who had a weak HS class and/or no AP, is likely seeing more stuff for the first time and is having a hard time. </p>
<p>You’re like person who’s had 2-3 years of HS Spanish taking Spanish I. The ones who’ve never taken Spanish before are having a harder time. For you, it’s review. </p>
<p>Instead of worrying about it, embrace it and use the time to learn what you didn’t know and more deeply imbed what you do. </p>
<p>^Well, Spanish analogy may not be accurate. The college Foreign language is determined by placement test and nothing else. One can have 10 years before, it does not matter. Your first college foreign language class which may end up the only one will not be easy. D’s 3rd year college Spanish was not easy at all, but it was one of her best UG classes that enabled her to speak. She had one semester to fullfill requirement. I do not remember if she had AP Spanish in HS or not, it was irrelevant, everybody had to take a foreign language test to be able to register for the first sememster of freshman year. </p>
<p>yeah, well stated @mom2collegekids<br>
@miami, irrelevant information. I understood what she was trying to say. 
</p>
<p>@plumazul how much different is the mcat then say a chem,physics,orgo,bio double semester final combined… If one gets A’s in these courses, why does one need to study hectily? Or Is that just a stereotype? </p>
<p>@MiamiDAP why doesnt your daughter make an account and share some advice and personal experience? </p>
<p>@mom2collegekids can you explain your sons road to the mcat?, which is not something to be emulated or repeated, but it turned out rather well for him… I am a ChemE major as well, so I feel this relates to me.</p>
<p>ok…despite my pleas for him to study and do practice tests during the months leading up to the exam, and to take the MCAT earlier, etc, he ended up with a test date that was the Saturday before final exams. (ugh). So, naturally that Friday was the day that many of his ChemE Final Projects, etc, were due. The exam was the last Saturday in April that year.</p>
<p>The oldies here may remember that week before the MCAT. Son was not the least bit prepared, and he was threatening to cancel his score on the day of his exam. I was begging him to go thru with the exam and not cancel his score because it was already late, he wouldn’t get the results back until the end of May, and because of two summer commitments, he would not be able to retake the test until much, much later…too late.’</p>
<p>Since I knew he had a great GPA (4.0 BCMP and a 3.99 cum), my gut (and encouragement from the great CC folks here) told me that if he got at least a 30 on the MCAT, he would get accepted to at least one MD SOM.<br>
So, with the advice from those here, I convinced him to take the exam, not cancel, and go forward with the app season. In the end, he got a balanced MCAT 32 11B, 11P, 10V (and we were super relieved with the 10V since that was expected to be the weakest link). Of course, he later lamented not preparing because he knows that with some studying/practice exams, he likely could have gotten something in the 34-36 range. </p>
<p>Then, because of the two commitments that he had over the summer, he didn’t get his app submitted until the end of July, and he only completed 6 MD SOM apps. So…lol…he didn’t do things the “right way,” but he did get 3 acceptances and 3 merit awards, so even tho I wouldn’t recommend that anyone do things the way he did, it did work out. </p>
<p>I think his saving graces were: high GPA, an OK MCAT, some good research experiences, very good LORs, and being a ChemE major helped with his thinking skills on the MCAT and kept some concepts fresh.</p>
<p>@WannaBeDocc </p>
<p>mom2collegekids, I like your story. Made me LOL and think of what my son did for the weeks before the MCAT last January. He swore he would study the entire winter break. Of course that did not happen…he started reviewing about two weeks before the exam but then school started up one week later and the preparation dropped off significantly. He told me after he got the MCAT score that he had some very bad dreams about that score prior to it being released. Fortunately, his nightmares did not materialize! </p>
<p>@Wirefox your son sounds just like me! I postponed the test twice because I never got around to studying, and only ended up studying for ~3 weeks prior to the exam (while teaching summer school and taking grad classes). I did well, but it was obscenely stressful and I would 0/10 recommend it to anyone else.</p>
<p>@WannaBeDocc, the reason you need to study for the MCAT is that a) you will almost certainly have forgotten some of the minutae of the topics you learned in class, and b) the MCAT is not just a test of content, but a test of how well and quickly you can read, internalize, and analyze brand new information that builds on the content you should already know. My physical sciences portion had very little actual chemistry or physics and was very abstract, requiring analytical thinking beyond what you pick up in content classes, and the test is definitely moving more and more in that direction</p>
<p>D. had to prep for the MCAT for the very long time (she had extremely busy schedule, so it was thinned down over several months for her). She did not prep. only Gen. Ghem. At the end, she wished she scheduled it earlier, she complained that she wasted 2 weeks of her summer prior to exam, at this point she had nothing to do for review, except openning and closing books. Her diagnostic (before prep., before college Physics) test score was only 25. It was not enough even to stay in her bs/md program that required 27. Preparation (and taking college Physics) broght it up to 35. Considering that it still had a dreaded (by her) Verbal section, it was very good for her. No more verbal sections in future exams (Boards) in her life, thank goodness!!! I did not realize up to recently, that MDs are taking boards every 10 years, I guess, it never ends for them…</p>
<p>What Prep material did you use to prep for the Verbal Section? @jazzcatastrophe
As well as, what do you recommend, me, as a freshman, to start doing, in order to fully prepare myself? </p>
<p>@miamidap your daughter improved significantly! How many months did she study in between the 25 to 35 score?</p>
<p>I didn’t prep for verbal at all, but I have always been a very fast reader and read a lot for fun, so I would just recommend reading outside of classwork. Doesn’t have to be academic reading, but just read anything. As a freshman, just make sure that you really learn the material the first time around. Don’t learn something for a test and then forget it as soon as the exam is over, make sure that you learn it well enough to retain it so that you don’t have to relearn all of it when you begin studying in earnest.</p>
<p>@WannaBeDocc
</p>
<p>First, I agree with every point made by @jazzcatastrophe above. The format of the MCAT will probably be different than what you’ve seen in UG. I studied for three weeks before I took the MCAT mainly focusing on the structure of the exam. If you know all the science (I covered everything listed on this site <a href=“MCAT Review”>http://mcat-review.org/index.php</a>) and are familiar with the exam format, you should do fine. </p>
<p>@plumazul would you say that the people who really go crazy over the exam are the ones least prepared? I think ive seen many high caliber students almost dreading themselves for the exam.
All I have to do is truly concentrate in my UG courses. Take some time to get used to the format of the test, and things will fall into place? (Ofcourse, its different for everyone but generally speaking, a good month of concentrated prep after truly understanding concepts in my premed classes would do me fine?) </p>
<p>“What Prep material did you use to prep for the Verbal Section”
-Not everybody can actually prepare for dreaded (in D’s case) Verbal Section. She used whatever everybody recommended (like Economist,…etc.), but she did not improve her score. She just reads certain way and she cannot change it. It slows her down, but helps greatly absobing class material. And she is not up to current events / economy / political stuff, all of these seems not to go into her head easily, I doubt that she knows much of vocabulary associated with this type of material. Now, if they were asking in Verbal section to discuss music in some very detailed way with all the vocabulary associated with this discussion, then D. would be in much better shape, but it is not the case. So, she did not improve her Verbal, which was expected, she jsut got very very lucky to get the highest of her test Verbal scores for the real exam Verbal section - 11. What a relief that was!!! Again, being very calm has helped her a lot here. All during prep. her verbal was between 9 and 11. </p>
<p>“but I have always been a very fast reader and read a lot for fun” - this comment is total opposite for my D. She is a slower reader who read for fun only before HS. HS killed it for her, she does not like to read for fun anymore. She is a great writer, who is writing very fast and with great ease and this has helped her a lot, in ALL of her classes, in all years at Med. School.
Well, others were saying that there is a way to improve Verbal score, it just did not happen to my D.
I think Verbal score depends on your habits and interests much more than any preparation.</p>
<p>That’s a great score for someone who doesn’t like reading. 90+ percentile. There just isn’t any one formula and many people have a wide variety of reading habits… I have 3 years left to do all I can to get my targeted score which is minimum 11 in all sections. I dont know how that converts to the new MCAT, but you get the point. 85th percentile and up.</p>
<p>What ever happened to @i<em>wanna</em>be_Brown ?
His retire is unprecedented. </p>