The MCAT is a must take if you want to go to medical school and for many, this is a test that requires lots of studying and you may be wondering “What is the MCAT?” and “What prerequisites do I need for the MCAT?”. Well, today I’ll be going over the structure of the MCAT, the classes you need, and my recommendations for additional classes I found helpful in studying for the MCAT that you can take ahead of time. Read through and you’ll have a better understanding of how to approach and prepare for the MCAT for a killer score!
Taking the MCAT was easily one of the most stressful things I did as a pre-medical student. Even worse was trying to learn how to be eligible for the MCAT and best prepared as I had nobody in my family in the medical field. I knew nothing except what I’d heard from friends or looked up online. The good news is, you’ll find out everything you need to take class wise to best be prepared for the MCAT.
To start, no classes are “required” for the MCAT. The only requirement is that you sign up through the AAMC website and pay the $335 registration fee. However, unless you are intensely self-studying on all of the subjects covered on the MCAT, you will want to take the pre-requisite courses (they’re required for medical school anyway).
The MCAT has four major sections:
- Biological and Biochemical Foundations of Living Systems
- Chemical and Physical Foundations of Biological Systems
- Psychological, Social, and Biological Foundations of Behavior
- Critical Analysis and Reasoning Skills (CARS)
Here’s the courses I think directly apply to the MCAT’s major test topics:
- Introductory Biology I and II
- Biochemistry I (I would take the second too as it covers the complete mechanisms of stuff like Krebs cycle, ketosis, fat breakdown, etc)
- General chemistry I and II
- Organic chemistry I and II
- Introductory physics I and II (can be calculus or algebra based, but the MCAT does not allow a calculator, so algebra based is much easier to do!)
- Introductory Psychology
- Introductory Sociology
- Any english classes
Honestly, the psychology, sociology, and behavioral section of the MCAT can be completely self studied as it’s mostly just memorization. However, I minored in psychology and felt like this was a HUGE benefit while studying for the MCAT because I knew most of the psychology terms already.
English classes will help with the CARS section and help you decide on the meaning of a story and messages behind it. You can’t go wrong with just practicing speedreading or reading lots of books in your freetime. This section really just comes down to interpreting passages for their meaning and how quickly you can read large paragraphs. The quicker you can read, the more time you’ll have to interpret questions!
The rest of the classes will be preparatory for each section of the MCAT. Do your best in them not only because you get a grade for it, but also because all of the info in that class will most likely show up on the MCAT in one way or another. If you learn it now, that’s less you have to learn junior year when you go to study specifically for the MCAT!
A few helpful notes are that anatomy classes likely won’t help here as anatomy is pretty much nonexistent on the MCAT save for maybe one question out of the hundreds. Also, environmental biology or anything like that may only indirectly help as very few, if any, questions focus on plant biology. I also don’t find it necessary to take a sociology course because it’s easily self-studyable and your time is best spent taking other more comprehensive biology/chemistry classes.
You’ll want to plan out when you are taking the MCAT to adequately plan when you’ll take these recommended courses. If you are taking the traditional route and taking it Spring of junior year, make sure you take all of them before then. If you are taking a gap year, you’ve got a little more time.
Overall, the classes you take for preparing for the MCAT are just the typical pre-medical prerequisite classes and now that you have a list of the classes, you are well on your way to taking the MCAT! Do well on these classes and you’ll find yourself a lot less stressed when it comes time to study for the big exam.