With the depth and breadth of its many topics and types of questions, the MCAT requires months of preparation prior to sitting for the exam. And though some prospective medical school students are naturally organized, with no need for external reminders about studying a certain subject or completing a set of practice questions, most individuals will require a system to ensure that they adequately prep for the MCAT.
Luckily, in our technology-saturated world, several organizational apps exist that can help streamline your MCAT review. As you begin to plan an MCAT study schedule, consider using one or more of these apps to remain accountable to your prep plan.
[Follow a three-month MCAT study plan.]
— Your device’s native calendar app: This app is free on virtually any device that you might own, including an iPhone, a laptop and so on. Most calendar apps allow you to input your daily schedule and set alerts for appointments or events.
How you use one for MCAT review is entirely up to you. Perhaps you schedule your day hour by hour with alerts that signal when it is time to shift from one topic or activity to the next.
Or perhaps you input the large milestones in your MCAT study plan — like taking a practice test or finishing a major review topic — so that you are only alerted about these central structural components of your prep plan.
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— Things: Things is a task manager available only for Apple products that allows users to easily construct to-do lists. Each day, Things presents you with the tasks that you have included on that day’s list, while also offering the flexibility to add to your list as you go.
Unlike a calendar app, Things, which costs $50, enables you to more easily divide your schedule into small components, which is ideal for those pesky but necessary MCAT topics. You can even prioritize to-do items.
For example, if you remember most of the amino acids and only need a short review, you might place that topic in your “Someday” folder as a reminder that this is a less important but still necessary task. Things also allows you to assign labels to to-do items — “biochemistry” or “physics,” for example — and priorities, ranging from high to low.
— MindNode: If you are a visual person, MindNode may be a good way to organize your MCAT prep. MindNode, which costs $30, allows you to create a map of interrelated concepts or thoughts that stem from one central idea so that you can view the connections between content in a vibrant, color-coded format.
This kind of mapping is useful not only for studying biochemical pathways that may crop up on the MCAT, but also for visualizing how to build your study segments. Can you make a connection between some aspects of organic chemistry and biology tested on the MCAT?
Your mind map may help you realize that it is best to study these topics together. You can then plan to group them as a weeklong review segment. MindNode may be best used as a means of mapping out which topics to study concurrently — remember that the MCAT emphasizes interrelated knowledge — and which to review independently.
[Check out these strategies for studying for the new MCAT.]
— Cold Turkey and SelfControl: Cold Turkey, which has both free and paid versions, and the free Self C ontrol are apps available for your computer that block specific websites that may interfere with your studying. Both apps can be used during MCAT review sessions to avoid distracting emails and notifications.
Because you can manually input any websites that you would like to block, you are free to access those that are related to your studying — such as video explanations of certain complex biological and chemical processes. These apps are especially useful during tedious topic review, when it is all too easy to procrastinate or to choose more enjoyable subjects over topics that you struggle with.
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Use Organizational Apps to Help Streamline MCAT Prep originally appeared on usnews.com
