Hey guys, what I wanna discuss today is scientific Journals for the MCAT as a twist on the newspaper
strategy which is something you can find on my website, I put the url in the comments
so let me know if you find that helpful.
Uh let’s see what we have in a quick outline.
So the first question, why Scientific Journals?
If you’ve been following the changes to the MCAT in the last few years in 2015 the
new MCAT came out where there’s a lot more focus on research and data analysis.
And many of the passages are actually taken out of research articles so there’s the
aspect for MCAT prep where you study the content and you do practice passages but then a lot
of students say that they can follow along for the most part but the experiments become
overwhelming.
One way that you prepare for this type of passages, one way that you get comfortable
following the logic of a confusing and in-depth experiment is by reading scientific journals.
The more you read, the more you get familiar with the language, the data, the structure,
the format, the less confused you’ll be on the MCAT.
So the purpose is to practice in advance so that you’re confident with that aspect and
you can take your mental power and focus on questioning, on the reasoning on all the other
good stuff that’ll give you points.
When should you be reading the journals and how often?
The closer you are to your MCAT, the more you want to do it especially if this is something
you’re just starting out.
For those of you testing this year you don’t have a lot of time I would recommend if possible
even one hour a day if you can.
And the way you’ll break it up would be ideally every other day, a scientific journal,
and every other day something related to CARS like boring articles on.
I say boring because I find them boring anywhere from economics, politics, religion, arts,
music, history, anything that’s not science coz you’re premed, science is our thing
right?
So these are the other topics that you’re not interested in but you wanna get comfortable
with.
Today I wanna focus on the Science aspect though.
Every other day expose yourself to some type of scientific journal.
If it's long, if it is detailed.
If it’s tedious, if there are graphs, tables, and chart, you’re on the right track.
If you’re bored and you hate it, you’re on the right track unfortunately that is what
it’s going to take.
If you’re just starting out because you’re preparing for next year then you don’t wanna
go as crazy, you wanna do a long term integration, a long term strategy.
For example maybe set aside one to two days a week where you spend an hour or so reading,
and then as you get closer to the MCAT maybe up until three times a week but you should
be okay.
I mean if you’re thinking between now and January you have months and months, two to
three hours a week you will be very very comfortable by the time your MCAT rolls around.
How to read them?
That’s a very good question.
So you don’t want to treat this like your textbook where you read it from start to finish.
You fly through you don’t follow anything and you get overwhelmed and you don’t remember
anything.
You also don’t want to read it from the perspective of let me learn what this is about
because this article could be on something that is very very in-depth and if you try
to learn every term and every enzyme, every crazy little thing you’re going to be overwhelmed.
So I want you to treat this like you do any other Science passage on the MCAT.
You are reading for the single purpose of getting the main idea, understanding what
is going on but not looking up every definition, not looking up every factor.
So start the article from the beginning and just read the first sentence ask yourself,
what was the point?
What was the main idea?
Don’t worry about the names, the enzymes, the molecules, the pathways none of that.
What was the main idea?
Why did they bother writing this?
Then go to the next sentence, the next sentence.
When you get through the entire paragraph stop for a minute and think, what was the
purpose of all this?
Then go to the next paragraph, the next one.
Now here’s the thing, some of these articles will take a long long time, you don’t have
to finish them.
If your goal is to reach for an hour and the first article it will take you 40 minutes
and the second article takes you to the top of the hour and you’re only halfway through,
you can stop there.
It’s about the exercise of doing it rather than completing the story coz you’re not
looking to learn the Science, you’re looking to learn how to understand when you read the
science.
So the purpose again is not to learn, it’s to learn how to read, how to be comfortable
with it.
Which subject should you be reading?
Ideally, everything.
So each day, try to focus on one type of Science that relates to the MCAT.
For example a Chemistry passage, a Physics, a chemistry journal article, a Physics journal
article, Organic Chemistry, Biology, Biochemistry, Psychology and Sociology.
If you can continually expose yourself to each type of research then no matter what
they throw at you uh during the MCAT you will be prepared because you will have seen everything
in some format and it won’t scare you when you see those big words or multiple steps
and crazy experiments that they ran.
You’ve seen it before, that’s the goal.
Where are you going to find these articles?
That’s the million dollar question.
There is so much good research out there.
That to tell you to stick to one is limiting yourself.
So instead, give yourself a very simple role.
If it’s long, if it’s hard, if it’s boring, if it looks legit it’s good enough.
So where do you find them?
Honestly?
Anywhere!
For example if you have friends who are doing research, either in class or work in a lab,
ask them what’s some of the sources are that they use for their research and if they
recommend it, you can read some of that.
Go on.
Here’s one that I like to do.
If you hear about a scientific topic that interest you, go on Wikipedia and not necessarily
focus on the Wiki article because they’re not always the type that you want instead
go to the very bottom and look for the sources.
For example, I was looking up a Zika vaccine and there were some interesting sources which
led down the rabbit hole and I got to read some pretty interesting research.
Then you have a, you can do a google search like Scientific evidence for and you can follow
anything that interest you.
Look up diabetes medication, look up viruses vaccines, uhm, honestly the Genetics whatever
interest you try to find a Scientific research subject related to that and you can use that
don't always find what interest you though, you want to get comfortable reading what bores
you as well.
Try to look for articles that were published within the last 5 to 10 years because students
who have taken the MCAT say that’s typically what they see.
If it’s too old, the research might be outdated, if it’s too new, it might not show up on
the MCAT coz they’re looking for the last 5 to 10 years is ideal in terms of a general
rule.
It could be exemptions that’s the general rule
If you want specific examples.
Here are some of the ones that I have seen and used with students in sessions.
Google NCBI, and Pubmed there’s a site AAON.co and nature.com.
These are just the ones that I have on top of my head and again, anything legit works
so if you have any questions on scientific journal reading as it relates to the MCAT
go ahead and post it here.
Um, I know that I picked a random time during the day were not a lot of students are on
so I’ll give you a chance to watch it later and read all your comments and hope to answer
all your question.
If you need help preparing for the MCAT, I have seen and heard so many horror stories
of students not being prepared the right way and frankly I got sick and tired of hearing
their horror stories so I took matters into my own hands and I have made it so you have
no excuse.
I published a guide called the Ultimate Guide to MCAT Prep.
And the goal is to have everything that you would need to know, to understand what the
MCAT is all about, When to study, how to study all of that and it’s free on my website
so you have no excuses.
The URL, I’ll put it in the description, leah4sci.com/Ultimate and that will take you
to the homepage and that will link all the chapters.
With that guys, have a great day!