Leah here from leah4sci.com/mcat . And in this video, I wanna talk to you about content
or Phase 1 in your MCAT prep.
Not just how to get through content, but also how to evaluate where you are every step of
the way so that you can have a clear idea of what you still have to do and how long
it's going to take.
When it comes to MCAT Prep, I have a three phase approach to make sure that you're ready
on test day where content that foundation of the material that you have to know is only
the first phase, but it can be the longest and hardest because there's so much to cover.
On the MCAT you will have to go through a year's worth of general chemistry, organic
chemistry, biochemistry, many semesters of different topics in biology as well as psychology
and sociology.
Not to mention cars, which isn't a science, but it's something you want to start practicing
from day one.
Here's the thing about content.
You do not need a 100 percent mastery.
Let me say this again.
You do not need 100 percent mastery in the sciences.
Let's face it, the average student will get accepted to medical school with a competitive
score that's anywhere from just over five hundred to the five tens.
This means you just need the upper 120s in the sciences to be okay.
Now, I'm not telling you to sabotage yourself and not study enough by aiming low.
But most students are fighting the clock, trying to get through content as quickly as
possible.
And if you think about what it takes to master the information, it will take you longer to
go from 90 to 95 percent mastery.
Than it will go from zero to 80 because zero to 80 are learning the basics.
Most of it is easy to understand, but 90 to 95 and higher.
Now you are going into all the tiny little nuances which your books probably don't cover
everything.
The videos are watching probably don't cover everything, and it becomes way too much pressure
before you panic thinking you were going to miss something.
Remember that phase 1 is only the foundation.
It's only the beginning.
When you get to practice passages and Phase 2, every time you miss something in a passage,
you're going to go back and study.
So if there's a little detail that you missed because you were only aiming for 90 percent
mastery and Phase 1, you're going to catch it and practice in Phase 2 and again in Phase
3.
So you're not going to completely miss out.
This will help you get the pressure off.
This will allow you to move through content quickly enough, but still make sure that you
know it.
So how do you know when you've done enough?
Or more importantly, how do you know that you actually got it?
I worked with a student who said she wanted to get through content in one month.
That was her goal.
She insisted that she can get through everything.
And in order to do that, she watched videos at 2 times speed and sped through her and
mcat books.
By the time the month was over, she reached her goal.
She got through everything, but when she took another full length, she did not see any improvement.
Why?
Her entire focus was Let me get through it.
But she didn't stop.
She didn't do practice questions.
She didn't ask herself.
Do I know this information?
And when she was done, I had to send her back to page one in every subject because she hadn't
learned anything.
So as you're going through content, first go with a gut check.
How do I feel about this information?
Does it make sense?
Do I understand it?
Is it intuitive enough that if I had to explain it to someone else, they would understand
what I'm teaching them?
Don't focus on regurgitation, not talking, memorization.
I'm turning about the logic of what the heck is going on.
Memorization should happen separately.
Dedicate time every single day to active writing, which I explain in the link below so that
you slowly but surely commit the facts to memory.
But keep the facts separate from the concepts when you study so that you're not so overwhelmed
trying to memorize that you're not actually paying attention.
Gut feelings will only get you so far.
We want numerical data to back it up, and that's where practice questions come in.
If you're studying from an Mcat book, you will see questions in and at the end of the
chapter.
Do not skip these questions.
Take the quiz and evaluate how you did.
Did you hit at least 70 percent?
Correct.
If you score less than 70 percent, you haven’t mastered the information.
It's OK.
It's better to know that now than when you finish and have to restudy everything.
If you have less than 70 percent, go back and restudy the chapter, making sure that
you really and truly get it.
The ideal score is between 70 and 90 percent of the questions, correct.
But that doesn't mean you're a good move on.
You still want to go through every question and understand what did I get wrong?
Why did I miss it?
What am I not yet understanding that I need to go back and review?
And if you consistently score above and 90 percent correct.
Well, first of all, congratulations.
But you're probably going too slow.
Not what you expected to hear, I'm sure.
But again, the amount of effort it takes to master between 90 and 95 percent is so high
that if you allow yourself to go a little bit faster on the next chapter, sacrificing
just a small fraction of what you can learn, that time will be better spent allowing you
to get through the next chapter more quickly.
Again, this assumes you're racing the clock if you'd like the pace that you're going and
you want to be scoring 95 percent or higher by all means, right?
The more you know, the better.
Are you racing the clock?
Well, let's see.
How much time did you set aside for Phase 1 and how long is it gonna take you to finish?
So let's break out the trusty calculator and see how to evaluate your Phase 1 timeline.
The first thing we have to know is your STARTING POINT from today.
For every single subject specifically, we're looking to see what you've already studied
for the MCAT and we're not counting any classes that you've taken.
If you took physics and you got an A in physics 1 in physics 2, great, you're going to have
a much easier time resetting physics for the MCAT but if you haven't started yet, that's
still 0 percent.
Let's back it up.
If you're starting fresh, either because you're just starting to study or because you're giving
yourself a clean slate and starting over, just put zero percent for every subject and
start tracking from today.
If you've already been studying, but you don't know exactly where you are, let's first figure
out your starting point.
I like to use MCAT books, but you can use your books, your videos, the AAMC outline,
whatever you want so long as you're consistent.
What we want to do for every subject is figure out the number of pages or videos or whatever
measurement you've completed divided by the total number available.
This will give us a fraction, so we multiply by 100 to turn the answer into a percent for
percent progress.
Let's say you got to topic 4.3 Monosaccharides, which is on page 113 in the 2015 MCAT Kaplan
Biochemistry Review book.
This means that you have completed one hundred and twelve pages divided by four hundred and
thirty one pages, which is the last page of content explanation before the glossary.
Punching this into the calculator.
I have one hundred and twelve divided by 4:31, which equals to 0.2598... and the numbers
keep going, honestly don't care.
We just want to have two numbers.
That's it.
We then multiply by 100 percent using the decimal trick that I teach in the MCAT math
series linked below which gives me 25.98 or 26 percent and this would be specifically
for the biochemistry review book.
As another example, let's say you're working through the exam cracker physics book from
2015 and completed up to page 109 waves sound and light.
This means you have one hundred and eight pages divided by two hundred and twenty nine
pages, omitting the last few that have photo credits and whatnot.Punching this into the
calculator, we get one hundred and eight divided by 229, which is equal to 0.47161..... way
too many numbers let's take the first two, apply the decimal trick, which gives us 47.1
or simply 47 percent through MCAT physics.
Do this for every subject so that you know exactly where you're starting.
The next thing we want is to understand your weekly percent progress.
You want to know if you're studying is consistent.
How much do you get done in a given week?
And based on that, how long is it going to take you to complete?
Continuing with the example above, let's say you did this for every subject and you realize
that you are at twenty percent average progress.This is because some subjects are faster, some
are slower, but you just added them all up, divided by the total number and that gave
you the average.
Then you'll look back to the last two weeks and you asked yourself, have I been consistent
with my weekly study?
If you haven't, then it's not fair to judge based on that.
If you spent most of the last two weeks partying, hanging out with friends or binge Netflix,
we're not going to count that.
Instead, I want you to use today as a clean slate.
Start fresh.
Study the way you hope to study every week moving forward and see what you come up with.
Let's estimate that with week one solid progress, you manage to hit an average of 4.7 percent
and with week 2 of consistent studying, you hit an average of 5.3 percent.
The two numbers are pretty close, which is amazing.
So first ask yourself, what did I do the second week that let me go faster than the first
week?
Because if you improved your studies and you can continue to improve, that would be even
faster than we're going to estimate.
But for the sake of this example, I'm gonna take the average of the two, which is conveniently
5 percent a week, and use that to figure out progress.
So first, how much do we still have to do?
Well, we had 20 percent average from evaluating what you've already done.
We added another 4.7 and 5.3 for 10 percent in the two weeks that we were evaluating.
That means right now you're sitting at 30 percent total progress with an average expected
increase of 5 percent per week, with 100 percent representing completion of all of the sciences,
minus the 30 percent that you've already done tells us that you have 70 percent to go.
If you have 70 percent to go, divide that by 5 percent per week, which is what you estimate
that you can realistically complete.
Punch that into the calculator.
Seventy divided by five tells you 14, 14 weeks is the estimate to complete content, but that
doesn't include a buffer.
So as you're figuring out your timeline, ask yourself, can I afford to add in maybe one
or two weeks as a buffer so that if something comes up like a birthday or holiday, if you
get sick, right, no one plans to get sick, or if your family from out of town surprises
you, it doesn't completely derail your schedule, it simply eats up the buffer that you've already
built in.
Most students who calculate this tend not to be happy with this number.
But it's better to figure this out now when you can still make a change than to realize
a week before your MCAT.
Oh, I'm not ready.
If you're happy with your results.
Great work.
Very hard every week.
But don't stop there.
Ask yourself, how can I do even better next week?
But if you're not happy with the results because you were hoping to finish faster.
I want you to figure out what it's going to take.
In our example we had 70 percent still to go and a 14 week timeline.
Let's say you're looking at your calendar and you're thinking, I can't afford 14 weeks.
I want to finish in nine weeks.
What's that going to look like?
Take the total that you still have to complete, divided by the ideal number of weeks.
And this is going to give you your new weekly target percent progress.
This is going to tell you how much progress you have to make to stay on track with your
faster goal.
If we have a target of 70 percent looking to complete that in a total of nine weeks,
that's 70 divided by nine, which is equal to seven point seven seven or seven point
eight.
That means your new weekly progress is seven point eight percent per week.
What does that actually look like?
Keep in mind you're going to move faster in some subjects or slower in the other.
But for the sake of our example, how many more pages per week do you have to complete?
In our Kaplan Biochem book with four hundred and thirty one pages to figure this out, You
want to take the total number of pages and multiply that by your weekly percent target.
Remember to turn your target back into a decimal.
Which means you take your percent and you divided by 100.
Going back to our Kaplan biochem example, if we had four hundred and thirty one pages
total and we want to complete seven point eight percent per week, we do four hundred
and thirty one times 0.078 or 431 x 0.078 or 431 x 7.8% divided by one hundred.
This comes to a weekly goal of 33.6 and change which we're gonna round up to 34 pages.
Just so you understand the difference at five percent.
We were looking at four hundred and thirty one times five, divided by one hundred or
times point zero five, which was only about twenty two pages per week.
Look at the difference and ask yourself is this number realistic?
Looking back at exam cracker physics with two hundred and twenty nine pages.
First, let's see what five percent per week gave us.
So we do two hundred and twenty nine times five over one hundred or point zero five,
which gives us eleven point four, five or twelve pages per week.
Notice that I'm always rounding up.
There are going to be days where the content is really difficult and the going is slow.
So if you're aiming for a higher number of pages, you build in that buffer for when the
going gets tough at 5 percent, you're completing twelve pages that week.
But now that you're looking to bump it up to seven point eight percent, we're looking
at two hundred and twenty nine times seven point eight, divided by one hundred or 0.078.
This comes to seventeen point eight six or eighteen pages per week.
Again, ask yourself the difference between 18 and 12.
Is that something doable?
And realistic?
Excellent.
Let me see what it's going to take to hit that new number.
Once you're about 70 percent through content, you're ready to start mapping out a detailed
timeline for Phase 2, meaning when you're going to take your full lengths and how you're
hoping to score before you run to get your books and see how much you've already covered.
Make sure you give this video a thumbs up and subscribe to my channel so that you don't
miss out on any new videos.
Then let me know in the comments below.
How much time you were initially thinking to alot for Phase 1 and what your timeline
looks like having run through this math, if you need help with the rest of the MCAT process
because you're overwhelmed by all the conflicting information available online.
Visit my website.
leah4sci.com/ultimate to check out my ultimate guide to MCAT prep and download the free companion
workbook to make sure that you're always on track.