Ideally, I would suggest devoting an entire summer to the MCAT. People interpret what that means in many ways. Some might work, research, or volunteer in addition to studying during their MCAT summer. If you can, devote your entire summer to only the MCAT and nothing else. This is a luxury, but unfortunately, a luxury that many students can afford. As I mentioned earlier, this was a luxury I, myself, felt like I could not afford. We can talk more about specifics in future one-pagers, but in general, if you have less time to devote to the MCAT each day, try to stretch your studying over a longer period. This can look like starting your studying a little earlier during your spring semester (or even winter or spring break if that makes sense to you) by spending a few hours each weekend taking notes on a couple test prep book chapters.

 

Ideally, I would suggest devoting the summer after your last class on MCAT content to studying for the exam. This is probably the best way to keep re-learning vs refreshing yourself on content in your favor. Re-learning is always quicker than learning something the first time around, and repeated exposure has personally always been one of my greatest tools for studying, but the less time you have to spend on re-learning, the better.

 

But why? What should most of your MCAT study time ideally go to then? Here’s the catch: you might remember the material from class and not need to re-learn it, but you probably will have to learn how that information will come up in the context of the MCAT. You can really only do that through practice.

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Let’s say you have three months (12 weeks) in your MCAT summer.

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 I would spend the first month to month and a half absorbing all the information in the MCAT test prep books. My personal recommendation would be the Kaplan set, but we’ll do future one-pagers on different MCAT resources! (Also, I would be very impressed if you actually got through all of those books in just one month. It’s a lot of information.) The rest of the summer, and ideally the majority of your studying, should be spent on practice - practice exams, practice questions, section banks, the works. This is when you will understand all that content in the context of the exam.

 

At the very start of that first month, I would take one of the half-length practice exams from the AAMC or a full-length that is not from the AAMC. (Don’t waste those precious AAMC full-lengths! You guys are so lucky to have 4 now!) This will bring you to reality, whether that is better or worse than you thought. You just need to have a starting point so you know how to go about note-taking and what to focus on while absorbing information in that first month or so.

 

After going through the Kaplan MCAT books once, I would take a full-length practice exam. (Again, don’t waste those precious AAMC full-lengths!) Now you know what you did and didn’t absorb in the first stage of your studying. Do not worry if you forgot things that you thought you knew from those 4-6 weeks while taking the exam. Repeated exposure is key!

 

Now, you are getting into the real studying. This is when you periodically take practice exams, but more importantly, when you review every question on those exams. Anything you got wrong or that you were unsure about, you need to go back and read up on. Do not skip this step or your score will not go up like you expect!

 

To make sure you have enough time to do this content review in between practice exams, I would not suggest taking more than two per week, regardless of how little time you have left to study for the exam. Even if you do 6-8 practice exams total, which would be about one per week in this plan, that should be plenty! Review takes a while and you also have all the practice questions and section banks from the AAMC that you need to do anyway. On the day that you considered taking your second practice exam of the week, maybe consider taking one or two section banks as a pseudo-half-length.

 

Well, that’s it! That is what I would consider the ideal MCAT study plan, at least from a very high-level. I know a lot of questions are still unanswered: Why did you specifically say Kaplan MCAT books? Where do I get those practice tests and practice questions? When do I take the AAMC full-lengths vs other test prep company full-lengths? Which test prep companies can I trust?

 

We’ll answer all of those questions in upcoming one-pagers, so stay tuned!