December 20, 2006
In truth, this process all boils down to eight hours of your life – you may prepare for months beforehand and know all of the material backwards and forwards, but if something goes wrong during the 8 hours of test day, all of your work yields nothing. (Now granted, I took the paper version of the test, and that was 8 hours – I've heard the new computer version may be shorter.) So, in addition to learning all of the biology, physics, and chemistry for the MCAT, I also prepped for the actual day:
- I got plenty of sleep. Test day began early, and I made sure I didn't wake up a zombie.
- I ate breakfast to build up energy for the first part of the exam.
- I dressed comfortably. The exam required me to sit for a LONG time. I wore sweats and a T-shirt and felt pretty relaxed.
- I didn't do anything that I wouldn't normally do (ie, drink coffee). I was afraid of any unexpected consequences of changing my routine.
- I made sure not to have any turkey for lunch (turkey has tryptophan, which makes you sleepy.)
Now, on to my strategies for the actual exam.
- I underlined and circled key words in passages and questions – not so much to highlight important concepts, but more to keep focused. My mind tends to wander ("Whoa! I'm taking the MCAT! I'm awfully hungry. And thirsty. This girl in front of me keeps tapping her foot. Please stop tapping your foot!"), so this was necessary for me to do.
- Because time is a limiting factor, I didn't dwell on questions that I couldn't figure out the answer to. I made my best educated guess and moved on. I figured that missing one question would be much better than missing the last 5 or 6 because I ran out of time.
- My Kaplan friends recommended a strategy they had been taught in the course – "triaging." Basically, in triaging, you quickly scan different passages and then do the easiest ones first to rack up points. For once, I did find a Kaplan strategy useful, and I used this strategy on my exam. (I am not sure if you would be able to do this with the computer version, though…does the computer let you skip around?)
- I took a deep breath after each passage. I sometimes found that when I began a new passage, I would think back to the previous passage. By taking a deep breath, I helped myself "let go" of the previous passage, and this helped me to concentrate on the next one. So, by spending one second refocusing, I saved myself a whole bunch of time wasted re-reading sentences due to lack of focus.
If you find any of what I did useful, feel free to steal these strategies. Everyone has a different test-taking style, though, so if you don't think what I did would work for you, try to find what does work.
I'll be back in a few days to talk about what I did in college to keep my GPA up. See you soon!
