Will it hurt my test score if I cram for the MCAT?
Nutmeg: I’ve never understood this mentality. If you cram ’til the last minute, you can rely on information in your long-term memory and your short-term memory. I always do much better on a test if I enter the test in the mindframe of the subject–it helps wake up all of the relevant mental machineray, so you don’t need to wait for the engine to warm up before you start cranking and firing. It makes you more tired by the end of the day, but I can’t imagine remembering all of the random-ass conventions for chemistry for a week or more. I say focus on comprehension of material in the prereq classes, and cram your brain with facts and conventions immediately prior to the test.
jmugele: For me, it wasn’t a question of keeping things in my short-term or long-term memory (although one week really shouldn’t be out of the threshold of short-term). For me it was about managing stress. If I study right up to the minute of the test, I start worrying myself about one last thing I didn’t cover, or do I really know a certain formula. Then I go into a test more stressed out. If I can take a test in a more relaxed state of mind, I find I usualy perform better, especially on those sections like VR where you’re not relying on past knowledge.
QofQuimica: Cramming doesn’t work for me, either. I actually didn’t study at all for the last three weeks before the MCAT. I was feeling tired and burned out at the end of July, and my practice test scores were going down rather than up. So I just stopped studying altogether: no more practice tests, no more review, no more anything.
I guess the most important thing is to know yourself well enough that you know what YOU need to do to get yourself ready mentally and psychologically for the MCAT. No one strategy is going to work for everyone. Some of my students swear by the flash cards that come with their prep class; I never used them even once. I’m just not a huge flash card fan for most things. Some people time themselves religiously after every passage or every few passages; I never timed myself at all. Some people don’t annotate their passages, or don’t skip around the section; I did. My way of doing things isn’t necessarily better or worse than theirs, but it’s what worked for me. Overall, I’d recommend that you students studying for the MCAT try several of these strategies (on practice tests, not on the real thing!) and play around a little to figure out what works best for you. Then practice your strategies of choice consistently between now and test day.
