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Studying for the MCAT/DAT/OAT/GRE/etc
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For those of you who have taken it or are in the process of doing so... where did you begin your studying? Verbal reasoning on any standardized test was always a weak point for me, which is why I began reading this year. But as far as the sciences go, where do you start? I plan on studying on my own starting this summer and possibly take a kaplan online test prep course toward the end of summer. I'm also going to be tutoring physics throughout the year next year so hopefully that will keep all my physics knowledge fresh in my mind. I plan on taking the exam next year late January so I can possibly take it again a couple months later if I'm unsatisfied with my score.
And for anyone who isn't already aware of this, the MCAT will be revamped so that the writing and verbal sections will be taken out starting 2015... according to what I've heard it will include a much broader science-based scope of subjects. This includes biochem, cell bio, microbio, etc, and even statistics, sociology, and psych. From what my prehealth advisor has told me, she thinks it will be easier since it will be testing data analysis skills for the most part.
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Yeah, I will be starting at verbal reasoning as well. English is my weakest part.(Don't base my writing skills off the internet, I don't give a shit on here) I need to review chemistry, and study it a lot just to catch trends that they will test me on. However, organic is my favorite subject(yeh, I'm weird) so that should hopefully go decently. But yeah, I'm deciding against taking a Kaplan course, I normally teach myself things better anyway, so figure I might as well just put time and effort into the books and save the 2 grand.
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Good luck with your studying. I'm dreading it already and haven't even studied yet. I'll be taking a free practice MCAT just for shits & gigs in a couple weeks so I can motivate myself some more to study my ass off over the summer. Have you taken any practice tests yet?
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For my DAT I took a Kaplan course and it definitely prepared me well for the science (biol, general chem, o-chem), reading comprehension, and quantitative reasoning sections. It wasn't that great for the PAT section however (PAT on my actual exam was much more difficult than any problems from the Kaplan practice tests).
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I took the GREs before I applied for school. I bought one of those kaplan books and said I would study 30 minutes a day or something. ended up opening it the night before the exam and doing some practice problems. test was a pain in the ass
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I always thought the kaplan courses only focused on the sciences... guess I was wrong. What's the PAT section?
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Perceptual Ability Test. 100 questions that test your ability to discern 2-D/3-D shapes, patterns, angles etc. It's a little bit like an IQ test. It kinda sounds silly, but it's pretty important in dentistry to be able to work with/rotate weird 3-D shapes in your head.
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This is what I did:http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=623898
I didn't use the BR Biology books or the EK 1001 books. This method has worked really well for a lot of people but you have to really stick to the plan. No matter what you decided to do for studying you absolutely have to get the full length practice tests available at the AAMC website.
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