One of the biggest problems that students have in the test is that they run out of time. The first thing you need to practise is speed, especially in the reading and writing sections. Whenever you read something in English, give yourself a time limit. While you are reading, stop at the end of every paragraph and summarise it to yourself. By forcingyourself to read with time limits you will find your reading speed increases, and reading under exam conditions will get easier.

In the same way, practise writing quickly. Every day, sit down and write as much as you can for 5-10 minutes on any subject. Don’t worry about accuracy when doing this — the idea here is to increase your speed, not your accuracy.

Use your classes

Speed without accuracy, however, is not enough. Not only must you use your present language skills more quickly, you must gain new skills, and improve old ones. This can be done through classwork and personal study.

When I was practicing for my MCAT, I found that having a good running list of examples basically let the essays write themselves. So I thought that having a list of topics would be a good idea. That way you can avoid using cliches like Hitler and MLK

Here’s a few that I really liked that you can research and use for your own essays:

1. Triangle Shirt Waist Fire:
Crappy conditions in the factory based on utility and lack of safety concerns for the employees resulted in a massive fire that killed a lot of workers.
Uses: Speedy economic development, lack of government restrictions, money vs safety.

2. Bombing of Coventry*
Brits crack Enigma and discover that Coventry is going to be bombed. Churchill wrestles with the idea of whether to let Coventry be bombed or tell people to evacuate and reveal that they have cracked the code.
Uses: Greater good vs. the immediate gain, sacrifice, governmental control.
*This never actually happened (the cracking of the code at that time), but the story is such a widely held misconception (lots of books written saying it was true) that I would not hesistate to use it since it would be an honest mistake at worst.

3. Nelson Mandela (good replacement for MLK)
Fought against apartheid, led a violent uprising which resulted in his jailing, then became the big cheese through peaceful means
Uses: MLK replacement if you need an antiracism example, achievement of political aims through peaceful means, reformation of idealogy, one person vs. government/system/"the man"

4. Qin Shi HuangDi, First Chinese Emperor
United China through war and basically beating the crap out of everyone. Developed standard system for language, measures, money. Developed dynastic system
Uses: Argument for possible big government (antithesis most likely). Safety over liberty. Greater good over personal freedom.

5. Stalin (good replacement for Hitler)
Major asshole
Uses: Anytime you feel like using Hitler, use Uncle Stalin instead.

Pre-medical and pre-pharmacy students often want to know how much the essays count, or how the medical and pharmacy schools use their writing scores in evaluating their applications. Unfortunately, we cannot give you a very informative answer on this point.

MCAT: On the MCAT, the essay section is scored separately from the three multiple choice sections, and it is reported as a letter from J-T instead of numerically. Many people believe that the medical schools do not place very much weight on this letter score, especially in comparison to the importance given to the three numerical subscores.

PCAT: For the PCAT, information is even more scarce. The essay section used to be optional until June of 2005, but it is now required, and your essay score will be reported to the pharmacy schools along with your science, reading, and math subscores. It is not known how individual pharmacy schools will evaluate the writing scores.

My personal feeling is that students should err on the side of performing well, or at least competently, on the essay sections of the PCAT and MCAT. It certainly cannot hurt you to do well on the essays, and it may even help you to some unknown degree. However, I do not recommend studying for the essay sections of these tests at the expense of preparing for the multiple choice sections. The medical and pharmacy schools definitely do care about your science and verbal/reading subscores, so it behooves you to score as well as you possibly can on those sections.