They taught you the wrong way to learn in school.
Over the years we have worked with thousands of students and the most common issue with their study plans is that they aren’t learning using effective methods.
The difference between 90th%ile scorers and average scorers comes down to one thing:
The role of recall vs recognition in their study plan
For our entire educational career starting from kindergarten through college we have been primarily taught in a “recognition” based system. This is one in which we know terms and definitions if presented with a strong enough memory aid i.e multiple choice answers.
Recognition based learning works fantastically for exams that have limited range.
On the first test of college biology you know that any question you
get will be from ch.1-3 no matter how hard it looks. You will just need
a memory aid like the answer choices to unlock the answer.
Most students learn MCAT in a recognition based fashion because we just transfer over our learning skills that we have used to succeed in normal schoolwork. Unfortunately, the AAMC knows this so they built the entire MCAT exam to test recall based knowledge.(Many students also do flashcards incorrectly leading to recognition based learning instead of recall based learning)
So here's how Recall based knowledge differs: If knowledge is "recall" based it is knowledge that we can access with minimal or no memory aid i.e a fill in the blank question.
Lets try an example, students familiar with P/S will probably recognize this content.
Which of the following is Erik Eriksson’s third stage?
Trust vs Mistrust
Concrete Operational
Phallic
Generativity vs Stagnation
If you are confused that’s ok because the answer is none of the above(it’s initiative vs guilt). We built this example so students could acutely grasp the feeling of “recognizing” all the terms given but possibly being unable to answer the question asked because they can’t “recall” exactly which stage was Eriksson’s third one. That feeling of "recognizing"(recognition) all the answers but being unable to come up with the EXACT answer(recall) is a central focus of AAMC's question development methodology.
Everyone who has taken the exam before is probably pulling out their hair in frustration since this type of question appears EVERYWHERE. Every single answer choice will be material that you are familiar with and by making all the answers familiar(recognizable) the AAMC negates your ability to pick out any single answer over others without having explicit knowledge of the specific definitions of each answer choice. So all your habits from college/highschool actually lead you to pick answers that "feel" like they would work on a standard school exam but unfortunately won't work on the MCAT.
In the previous example only 2 answer choices were even Eriksson’s stages. One was from Piaget and one was from Freud. This question only drew on content from the subject of psychology. Imagine if you were in C/P and AAMC could mix topics from over 3 different subjects?
Recall based knowledge is the key to breaking AAMC's questions
since it works much better than recognition based knowledge
when there are less limits to what subject/what material
the AAMC can use to write questions
At any time AAMC can ask you any question about ANY topic they want as long as it's relatively close to the subjects in the section you are testing in (of course there are limits to what they can test in each section, but there aren't limits to how they can COMBINE that information to create new question types). So if we are unable to come up with the information with minimal or no memory aid we won’t be able to answer the question.
One of the key differences between naturally intelligent students and average students that greatly contributes to their scoring capability is an innate propensity for learning material in a “recall” based format to start. This way their content knowledge, even if it’s EQUAL to an average student, is better suited for testing on the MCAT which allows them to score more.
Learning information in a recall based format is actually quite easy once students get the hang of it and to even the playing field for average students, we have gone through alot of effort to make our free study plan course available to everyone.
80% of a students scoring capability in the content based sections (C/P, B/B and P/S) ties directly into their content knowledge so we want students to be sure they are setting themselves up for success by using a “recall” heavy study plan. We hope this information helped and feel free to check out our other free strategy resources as well!
