Daily MCAT Prep

I recently had the opportunity to speak to our local university’s MAPS chapter. Remember when I told you that you should join your school’s MAPS chapter? Well this is a friendly reminder that yeah…you need to do that if you haven’t already!

In preparing for my chat with them about the MCAT, I knew that I wanted to present the students with MCAT-style questions. I was pleasantly surprised to find that, with just a quick Google search, there are several options for getting access to MCAT questions. Sources like Kaplan, Blueprint, Jack Westin, and many others will send a daily AAMC-style MCAT question to you by email or text. For FREE. And they’ll provide the answer and, importantly, an explanation for the answer. I think this is a great way to start getting your mind ready for the MCAT.

Now while you certainly shouldn’t plan to take the actual exam until you’ve taken the appropriate pre-requisite courses (physics, biology, organic chem, etc), in my opinion, it’s never too early to start preparing for the MCAT. It’s coming, you may as well go ahead and get ready for it. While the length of the exam is probably the biggest kicker, a close second is getting used to the style of questions. So having exposure to questions, even before you start your intensive study, could be really valuable.

Of course, you’re going still have to put up at least 3 months of dedicated study time to the MCAT but I like the idea of daily prep and think that, if you haven’t already, you should consider this. Perhaps you can make it a part of your daily routine, a question when you first wake up, just before you go to bed, or while you’re on the bus to class…trust me, it’ll have better return than the time you’d spend on Facebook or TikTok!

The moral of the story is that each day (at least each weekday) you should be doing something to better prepare yourself to be successful on the MCAT, thus making you a stronger applicant for medical school. Daily questions are just one option…do you have other ideas for daily prep?