4-6 Month MCAT Study Plans

Session 257

On today’s episode, we talk about what a 4-6 month study schedule should look like. We’re going to dive into what you need to do in those first few weeks to a couple of months and the last couple of weeks and months.

We’re joined by Joya from Blueprint MCAT. Don’t forget to go check out Blueprint MCAT’s amazing study planner tool that you get for free by signing up for a free account. You will also get their amazing study planner tool, a half-length diagnostic, a full-length exam, as well as access to their brand new spaced repetition flashcard program.

If you would like to follow along on YouTube, go to premed.tv.

Listen to this podcast episode with the player above, or keep reading for the highlights and takeaway points.

[02:35] WHy Four to Six Months?

Joya thinks that 4-6 months is the most common study schedule for students preparing for the MCAT. She also thinks this is a good amount because shorter often feels like a rush. And if you do it longer, you risk starting to forget stuff. You start getting rusty or you’ll be burning out. So it’s a good amount of time.

For a lot of people, four to six months also aligns with the college academic schedule that they’re used to where they commit to a set of academic things for that period of time. It’s not that much longer than a semester and a little bit of extra.

Mentally, it works. And logistically, it’s easier than trying to reschedule or reformat your life for nine months or a year. Finally, it doesn’t involve the amount of cramming than a one to three month plan would.

“Four to six months is a happy medium for a lot of people.”Click To Tweet

Four to six months has some wiggle room, but not a ton of room for big errors. If your upper limit is six months, you can’t afford to get a month and a half behind at any point. You can afford a week here or there that you could maybe catch up. But it’s important to be very judicious about your time in the four to six.

[04:37] Working in That Period of Time

Joya thinks students could still be doing other things and she never recommends doing nothing but MCAT.

Joya adds four to six months is doable with other things going on. You may find yourself closer to the six month end of things if you have more things going on. And a lot is predicated on your initial incoming activity and familiarity with the concepts.

But assuming you have taken your prerequisites, four to six is doable with classes, with work or whatever else you’re doing. You just have to get creative with how that time looks.

[05:11] The Non-Negotiables

'The most challenging thing in the four to six month scheduling is how to get in all of the appropriate full-length in that time because those are the uninterrupted periods of eight hours that you can't negotiate.'Click To Tweet

Joya says that except for the full-length exams, you can negotiate everything else. You can break up a day of studying into multiple two-hour chunks easy for content or question banks. But you can’t do that for the full length.

[06:18] How the Six Months Works

First Two Months

Joya suggests that you start with a more heavy content review period in the beginning. On Blueprint, you’ll be having a lot of modules in that time. You’re learning a lot of content and you’re still doing questions, but not that many.

Your full-length exams are being taken every other week, maybe every three weeks. Don’t take them back to back to back because you’re still learning content.

3rd and 4th Months

As you get into this middle section, spend a couple of months doing very heavy content with applied practice. You’re starting to hone in on your pacing in that middle section of a couple of months.

5th and 6th Months

Your last month to six weeks is where you’re very heavily focused on applied practice. You shouldn’t be learning anything new at that point or encountering a topic for the first time.

Then you take the full-length exams every week. You’re entirely in the AAMC material world in the last six weeks. You need eight-hour chunks, at least every other week for the first two-thirds of your studying. And then you need it every week for the last third.

[08:20] How to Find Balance

Don’t Double-Dip

Joya recommends figuring out a way not to minimize the duplication of work as much as you can. For instance, Orgo 2 and Physics 2 are two things that show up on the MCAT. Try to cross-reference them so you can build connections. That way, you don’t end up doing the same thing twice.

Arrange the Content in the Least Taxing Way

If you’ve got classes that are unrelated to the MCAT, that’s the time to build a content review about things that are low-engagement, high-memorization.

And so, you’re arranging the content in the least mentally taxing way. Front load the hard topic when you still have the energy to do them. So they’re also not going to take away from the amount of time you need to be deeply engaged in the schoolwork.

'All the content is going to get done at some point so arrange the topics in a way that makes sense to you to prevent mental fatigue.'Click To Tweet

Moreover, you should block off days that you know you’re not going to be doing anything. And let the things be rearranged into maybe a few days after finals where they’re going to be a little heavier.

Don’t Let Your Grades Slip

Mix the topics up so it fits school because you don’t want your grades to slip. School is a non negotiable. You can’t just ask your professors to give you your finals next semester.

“At the end of the day, you can retake the MCAT if you need to. You can reschedule the MCAT and apply whenever you want… But you cannot do that with your finals.”Click To Tweet

Block Liberally

Joya also recommends blocking liberally. Block off more than you think you’ll need. And then you get a pleasant surprise if you show up on an off day, and if you’re not busy, get ahead on tomorrow’s work.

[12:10] How Many Full-Lengths Should You Take?

Joya has a non-negotiable bottom line, which is that you should take all of the AAMC full-length exams. Those are five in total including four scored, and one unscored.

'AAMC questions should go unturned – you should do all of them.'Click To Tweet

If you’re studying in one month, and that’s all you’ve got, drill those AAMC questions. Because those are the ones that the test makers made. They look the most like the real thing. Beyond that, it gets a little flexible based on what you need.

In the four to six months, a lot of students take eight or nine full lengths. They take all of the AAMCs plus or minus the sample, and then four third-party tests, whatever they may be.

Start with your third party materials and do them in the every other week schedule. Then do the AAMC materials every other week. This gives you some flexibility to reschedule a couple of those third party full-lengths in the early months, with a little wiggle room of a couple of weeks, which is really nice.

Building Your Stamina

Joya believes eight is a good number to build stamina. For students who really struggle with stamina, you may want more than that. Because you may not really have full-lengths that are representative of anything until you’ve gotten yourself able to do an eight-hour test.

Tack on a couple more to make all of your full length genuinely representative of your content and test-taking knowledge. And for six months. it depends on whether full-length feels like they’re burning you out or not. The main deciding factor is do you have time to review it.

'Never add a full-length into your schedule if you don't have a full day or two available to review every single question of every single section the entire way through.'Click To Tweet

[18:20] Getting Personal on Your Last Month

Your last month is when you have a lot more free time. But it also means that this is where you have to get personal. Based on how you did on your previous full length, figure out whether you need to redo a module. Or whether you need to add another QBank practice set, or a section of one of the full-length exams.

You can see that the amount of content starts to really taper off in the last couple months. And you see a lot more AAMC question banks, practice discrete sections, etc. And that’s the idea.

“Move from very content heavy to very question heavy, because as you finish the content, you're able to apply it better to your different question banks and questions.”Click To Tweet

[19:18] Self-Study Tips

If you’re doing self-study via Blueprint and you were registered for a course, your classes would show up in your calendar. The homework assignments would also be auto-populated for you.

If you’re someone who likes structure that you don’t have to make decisions for, that is what all the classes are for. You do not have to decide which module to do and on which day. You don’t have to move it around. You don’t have to decide when to do a Qbank. They give you that. Obviously, it’s up to you to personalize that and make it as effective as possible for you.

Every student realizes at some point that they need either more or less of something, and then they can start to modify

[21:07] Blueprint’s Live Online Course

If you’re looking for some accountability in your MCAT prep and a course with access to all the amazing Blueprint MCAT content, think about the blueprint live online coursework. It includes 16 live classes that you get to take with two Blueprint MCAT instructors.

And if you miss a day or you want to retake a session with another instructor to maybe get a different feel, you can do that easily all on the platform.