There is no magic MCAT book, only magic MCAT practice ;)

I was replying to someone about MCAT stuff, including use of flashcards. Thought I would share.

1. Don't use full length practice exams as your only source of practice questions. Some of it (about 50-60%) should be from question banks where you do blocks of 15-50 questions at a time. You can use a full length practice test for blocks of practice questions by breaking it up and not using it as a "full length exam." Doing blocks of 15-50 questions at a time has distinct advantages over doing just full lengths.

2. Dive into practice questions at the beginning (again, as blocks of 15-50 questions at a time). A common mistake students make is thinking they need to refresh their memory on everything before diving into practice questions. You'll get a lot of practice questions wrong at the beginning and that's good. Better to refresh your memory by also getting practice questions wrong than just by reading content review books. There is a fair amount of research showing that testing yourself improves memory & recall FAR BETTER than reading/reviewing. The findings from that Science paper are quite stunning ;)

3. The exact brand of review books you get matters less. To be honest I couldn't give you a clear recommendation because I haven't sampled them all. Keep that in mind when people make strong recs for one brand of review books over another. Have they thoroughly sampled a variety of brands in order to give you a truly informed opinion? Whether you get brand K or brand T or brand G will matter much less than how much time you invest in doing practice questions. I'd prob just go w something like this, has decent Amazon reviews. If I were taking the MCAT now, I wouldn't stress out about it too much bc i know that's NOT where the strength of your training comes from. By that same token, don't think that just bc someone tells you that "X book" is the magic book that it will do magic for you. I promise you it won't. There is no magic book, only magic practice :) .

4. Flashcards help the most if you make them yourself using something like Anki. Anki is a free software that uses the concept of spaced repetition to improve recall (again - based on actual research you can look up w p-values and everything). Buying a set of premade MCAT flashcards from a company helps, but less. Prob ok to spend time doing flashcards at the beginning of your MCAT training. But as time goes on I wouldn't, especially not using premade MCAT flashcards. Let's say you do 100 questions in 3-4 blocks. As you review the ones you got wrong, you'll be taking notes on why you got them wrong. From those notes you can create flashcards using Anki - flashcards that target your specific weakness in that question and the knowledge surrounding it. Yes, it will take time, but will be much higher yield than buying MCAT flashcards. As you get closer to the exam (last couple of months) I would ditch flashcards altogether in favor of more MCAT practice questions. Doing flashcards does not help you develop the skill of answering MCAT style questions NEARLY as much as doing MCAT practice questions. It's like trying to get good at tennis by practicing with a baseball instead of an actual tennis ball. You still practice swinging the racket, you still use a ball of about the same size, but totally different feel and ultimately not as good use of your time as practicing with a tennis ball.

As always, would love to hear your thoughts, experiences, & disagreements.