Standardized Testing Advice by Mayank Aranke

"Standardized tests were bad enough to worry about in high school with the SAT and ACT but as it turns out, there are even more options to choose from in your undergraduate career. Since a bulk of my experience with professional level tests (GMAT, LSAT, MCAT, DAT, GRE, etc) lies with the MCAT, I’ll answer this from a pre-med perspective and then try to generalize to a few key points.

The biggest advantage of taking an exam during your undergraduate years is one of testing rhythm. I’m taking the liberty of coining this term, and now, of defining it: testing rhythm is something I like to call the sum total of a few things, including experience with relevant material, practice with and being in the habit of taking tests and studying, and the gift of time to study exclusively for the particular test in question.

This is particularly true for tests that emphasize content in addition to logic. Three tests I’m familiar with that do this are the MCAT, DAT, and OAT. The sheer volume of information that the test taker needs to be intimately familiar with on these tests is overwhelming. The MCAT, lists close to 128 topics and subtopics across the disciplines of physics, general chemistry, organic chemistry, microbiology, molecular biology, and human physiology.

Given this intensity of focus, it makes sense that taking these tests during undergraduate years, when the tester has learned and been tested on these very subjects, is very advantageous. Taking advantage of this undergraduate testing rhythm means being able to crack an organic chemistry problem in thirty seconds, which is something you pretty much have to do on the MCAT."

Bachelors of Science, Public Health with a Concentration in Biostatistics from The University of Texas, 2013