
Some MCAT-prep companies will offer a half-exam. Half-Length Diagnostic MCATs DO NOT COUNT! Only a realistic full- exam will give you this experience and starting point.
#Blueprint half length mcat full
When you take your next full length and the one after that, you’ll have a foundation for comparison, a means to measure the effectiveness of your study strategy and schedule. You’ll never feel READY but you need to get in there and get started! I know you’re scared and don’t feel ready. Take 2-3 weeks of solid immersion into the material for a refresher and then take a test. The only time I’d recommend studying for a few weeks prior to testing is when a student has been out of school for at least a year or more. You will use this baseline to map out your desired improvements and the exact path required to get you there. If you take the exam under realistic conditions, you’re giving yourself a baseline of where you stand right now. This first exam serves a another purpose too. Argument #2 for Starting With A Full Length You need to get first-hand experience of the MCAT style, passages, questions, duration, as well as your endurance, your mood, and your ability to still pay attention by the time you reach the psychology/sociology section of the exam. You must know and understand what is coming,and the best way to understand is to sit through a full exam. I need for the student to really and truly understand the undertaking that is the MCAT.Īnd the same goes for you. When a new MCAT student signs up to work with me I have them take a full-length sample test right away.

You will not understand until you're, confined to your computer for 7.5 hours (with appropriate breaks), sitting there at hour three pulling your hair out because you’re having a tough time sitting still long enough to absorb the umpteenth passage and wacky passage based questions for the day. No matter how much I try to explain what you should expect from the 7.5 hour exam in terms of its style, format, and duration, no matter how much you believe me regarding the difficulty of this exam, deep down you cannot truly understand what is feels like to sit for the new format MCAT until you’ve been through it for yourself. You can think of the MCAT as an exam of how well prepared you are to take THIS exam! Argument #1 For Starting With A Full Length

Not how well you know your content, but how well you’ve prepared yourself physically, emotionally, and mentally to take this particular test. Think of the MCAT as an exercise in how well prepared you are to take this exam. It’s about taking what you know, mixing the topics together, and applying logic and derivations to real world scenarios, case studies and experiments. It’s about more that just knowing content in 8 different disciplines. Simply put, the MCAT is an overwhelming exam. However, as an MCAT tutor who’s worked with hundreds of MCAT students, I’d like to present a different view and make the case for taking a full-length at the very start of your MCAT studying.

After all, if the MCAT is 7.5 hours long, covering 8 different topics ranging from physics to biology to psychology, what is the point of torturing yourself with a nearly 8-hour long exam before you’ve mastered the content?

This argument seems to make sense at first glance. I often hear premed students say, “I’m not ready to take a full length MCAT yet because I haven’t finished reviewing all the content.”
