Luke ScherzPremed BIOSC senior I remember the day I scheduled to take my MCAT examination. It was a terrifying, yet exciting moment because I not only just signed myself up for an extremely difficult exam, but also, I was one step closer to becoming a physician! Before scheduling my exam, I had heard countless stories and comments about the MCAT, many of them contributing to my application anxieties because they mostly portrayed it as an immensely challenging exam that will consume your life for three months and end up being one of the most important components of your medical school application. I decided to write this blog post because I wanted to let you all know that this exam is extremely doable if you put in the proper amount of time to study for it and effectively organize your studying schedule. I emphasize its manageability because I found out that through this entire journey, it’s just like studying for and taking a final examination for one of your courses. Walking you all through my journey with the MCAT, including all of the ups and the downs, I can hopefully alleviate some of the anxieties associated with this exam by offering some advice on how to study, use prep material, and crush test day! After studying and sitting for the exam, I have found that the hardest part of this whole process is finding where to start – that is, how to determine and organize your study plan with the overwhelming amount of material tested on this exam. I ended up scheduling my exam for the second week of May so I decided to begin studying in January. I knew that the recommended studying time was three months, but I decided to start in January because I was also taking classes at this time and knew that I would need more time. At the onset of all this, I asked my older peers who had already taken the exam for advice on how they prepared for the exam, including what prep material they ended up using and how helpful it was for the real exam. I also did research on the various prep materials and compared reviews and the prices of these products. I ended up using the ExamKracker books, UWorld question bank, and AAMC question banks for content review while purchasing the NextStep and AAMC full length practice exams to help simulate and practice the real thing. If possible, ask around and see if any of your peers would be willing to sell their study materials to you for a cheaper price since buying new can be rather expensive. Once I figured out the materials I would be using to study, I began to draft my studying plan for the next five months. Now this sounds like an extremely daunting task but there are a multitude of free resources out there to help you organize this plan. Often times, prep companies provide study plans with their materials to help keep you on track and organized. The provided study schedule from ExamKrackers helped to guide my plan but did not determine it – that is, I adhered to their subject-specific review days but did not take practice exams at the conclusion of each week like they suggested I do. I advise you to do something similar with the resources that you use and be sure to make it specific to and workable with your schedule. Constructing an effective and long-standing study plan is the key to your success on this exam! I repeat that again, your study plan is the key to your success on this exam! The reason I emphasize this is because things will get hectic and may seem overwhelming at times but having a solid study plan will hold you accountable and ensure that you are staying on track with the material. I can tell you from my personal experience that my study plan saved me when my semester began to pick up and work began to pile up. By having it, I knew exactly what I had to accomplish each and every day, making things extremely manageable during hectic times. After confirming my study plan, I began the long process of studying and working through practice questions and full-length exams. At first, I was overwhelmed by the sheer volume of material that I was expected to know but learned through my studying that it was digestible because of the amount of time I gave myself to work through it. Taking a look at what a typical week would look like, I have attached a sample week schedule provided by the ExamKrackers prep company. Like I said before, you do not have to follow this sample schedule perfectly. Rather, be sure to extract the important components and integrate them into your schedule accordingly. Remember, this entire process is not a sprint, but a marathon! If you take the time at the beginning of this process to construct a strong and comprehensive study plan, the rest of the process will be less stressful because you are now aware of exactly what you need to do in order to succeed.
Before moving on to discuss test day, I would like to briefly discuss the importance of full-length practice exams and how effective they are in simulating the real thing. I advise taking as many full-length practice exams as possible because they not only help familiarize yourself with the test format, but they also help you to apply the information in a critical manner that is essential to your success on the real thing. Moreover, they help train you in working under the pressure of a time constraint and serve to identify areas of content weakness. I completed six NextStep practice exams before completing the four AAMC official practice exams, which were as close to my test date as possible because they offer the best prediction of what your score will be on test day. After each practice exam, I would spend a day reviewing them and understanding where I went wrong with the question and my approach to it. I would then make a Quizlet of my missed questions and review them weekly. Reviewing your practice exams is also critical to your success on this exam because it helps to further identify your areas of weakness while also reinforcing your areas of strength. Leading up to test day, I stopped doing all things related to the MCAT two days prior. I decided to take these two days for myself in order to ease my stress and get into the right headspace for test day. I highly recommend that you do something similar a few days before your exam because it allows you to clear your mind and head into the exam feeling calm and energized. By doing this two day prior to my real exam, I felt extremely relaxed and was ready to tackle the exam. While I was taking the exam, I was able to remain focused because of the self-care I indulged in for the two days leading up to my exam. I was sure to get a solid night of sleep the night before and eat a light breakfast the day of. Be sure to emphasize self-care through this entire process. If you are not taking care of yourself, how can you expect your score to reflect to best self? After completing the exam, I was sure to treat myself to a night out with some friends and celebrate this accomplishment! After reading about my journey, I hope that I have provided you with some insight into this exam and helped show you that it is extremely doable if you put in the time at the beginning of this process to devise a strong study plan. Before I leave, I want to re-emphasize the importance of taking time for self-care throughout this process. It is going to be a long and challenging time but that does not mean that you should sacrifice your well-being for it. I wish you all the best of luck on this exam and am confident that each and every one of you has the potential to knock it out of the park!
0 Comments
Jacob FrenchmanJunior BIOSC major and pre-med I got involved in my lab at the UPMC Center for Clinical Neurophysiology through a friend (NETWORKING!!) in the fall of my Sophomore year. I was scrambling to find research because I felt as if I was behind the curve (which I wasn’t!) and she happened to be looking for two new research assistants to help analyze data for her Honors thesis and urged me to apply. At first, I was nervous to join the lab because, as a Biological Sciences major, I had no educational background in neuroscience whatsoever. But, working in my lab has been a fantastic experience for me because it continues to challenge my understanding of the medical field, forces me to study topics I otherwise wouldn’t such as using neurological monitoring like SSEP and EEG, and to think about how different topics may be related such as understanding how cardiovascular health impacts neurological health during surgery.
During some cardiovascular procedures there is a supervising neurologist who analyzes electrical activity in the central nervous system in real time in order to detect stroke and other neurological complications that may occur during the procedure. This is a very interesting area of medicine that I did not know existed prior to joining the lab and it’s also an active area of research and improvement because IntraOperative Neurological Monitoring (IONM) can improve patient post-operative outcomes significantly when it accurately predicts stroke. Furthermore, while stroke is the largest concern for most surgical teams there are also more subtle changes that can have life-altering impacts post-operatively such as limb numbness or losing the ability to smile, which can be identified earlier through the use of IONM in surgery. My first role as a research assistant was largely data entry and analysis, I would read thousands of physicians’ logs from surgeries and then compare the patients' brain activity throughout the surgery to the baseline values collected prior to surgery. I would also characterize any significant change that was identified by the surgeon in their notes. In my lab, I work with international physicians applying for American residencies and supervising UPMC Neurologists, which gives me a valuable library of information to answer my questions. This role provided me with the opportunity to learn about a variety of procedures from a physiological and surgical perspective. Most recently, I have been working with my PI to understand the clinical challenges in the delivery of IONM throughout the country. I have spent the last few months working closely with my PI to construct questions and collect qualitative data from neurologists, surgeons, and anesthesiologists to better understand the shortcomings people experience with using IONM. I have even gotten the chance to observe a few surgeries! This experience has been amazing for me because I am learning an immense amount about neurological monitoring, gaining experience in professional interviewing with physicians, and learning about qualitative data collection. When I was a first year student, research was a recommended extracurricular that I was in no-rush to get involved with. But, after working in my lab for most of my college career I can say it has been one of my favorite activities. It’s never too late to get involved in a lab and try your hand at research. I highly recommend finding a lab investigating something you find interesting (even if it is a topic you aren’t necessarily familiar with or something you don’t view as your future career goal) because you will learn valuable lessons and techniques about science you might not learn in a lecture hall. If you have any questions about getting involved with research or just want to talk about random stuff (maybe enrollment since that’s coming up this week?) feel free to swing by Luke and my office hours on Monday at 2-3 PM! |
Pitt Bio BlogThe Pitt Bio Blog is maintained by the Department of Biological Sciences Advising Office. Posts are authored by our students Archives
January 2022
Categories |