I am a fool. I could have gone to any medical school in the country, but I spend the last thirty years teaching and developing MCAT courses instead. There is no one else in the Wild West of MCAT Prep who has been as big a fool as me! I've been growing as an MCAT teacher since I graduated from Stanford in 1992, and I've found it to be hard work, understanding and conveying the deeper teaching goals AAMC embeds in their exams, both the old and the new, but the new exam especially, which is a more sophisticated test. Interdisciplinary science is more deeply ingrained in the new MCAT, and that's my specialty! I feel like I have spent my life preparing to teach the new MCAT. Your future teachers in medical school, represented by AAMC, had to prepare themselves through their own educations and experiences to see the system-levels perspectives they want their exam to impart to you. The undergraduate curriculum is disconnected and doesn't teach you the systems-levels unity of living systems.
My partner and I at Premed Village believe our interdisciplinary Content Review and our strategy curriculum might be transformative for your MCAT preparation. Student success in our teaching program has provided good evidence this might be the case, but that's not the best evidence, because the people who would trust a fool like me as their tutor were probably going to do well anyway, so if you look at this from the treetop perspective, you will see that I won't make sense as a person, I'm afraid. If students in the wider world using our resources don't start smashing the MCAT, I will have wasted a lot of time! I need your help in this! We will do everything we can to help you succeed!
Going on three "Malcolm Gladwells"
There is Malcolm Gladwell's popular idea that a person needs to devote at least 10,000 hours to become an expert in some field. If that is true, I don't know what Malcolm Gladwell had to do to make himself an expert on experts! I think I've done 20,000 going on 30,000 by this point with MCAT. Uggh. I have suffered! In 1992 I started putting up fliers all over Atlanta colleges, and became MCAT Academy. After teaching about a dozen cycles, the general science knowledge became simultaneously present, I guess, in my brain, in my imagination! By which I mean MCAT topics all had extemporaneous fluency like a kind of stupid human trick. I am lucky I'm so smart! At this stage I started using closely related ideas to shine light on other ideas across disciplines.
This kind of interdisciplinary teaching benefited my students' understanding. The course became more effective and interesting than simple topical treatments. Ideas relating to other ideas are more present, so though my students needed to understand the topics "in themselves", this became easier when we also learned them "for each other". I learned how to do a spiraling curriculum with important themes introduced early and returned to with greater sophistication as my course progressed. A unified course in systems-levels science! That's the origin story, what became the WikiPremed MCAT Course and then Premed Village.
For nearly thirty years our company's model has been to teach, teach, teach and then release what we learn to a wider audience with open access. Creative Commons Foundation once honored WikiPremed for our contribution to open publishing and education, putting us in with a bunch of cooler people in Team Open in 2011. Below is a portrait that Creative Commons did that shows how good I am at juggling.
Now that the content review and learning design are ready for a wider audience, our main learning resources have been made free and open access and will always remain free and open access at our website. Our mission old and new exam has been to make the best MCAT course available to everyone out there at very low cost. Ultra-low-cost and open access are the way we built the WikiPremed MCAT Course, into a successful business. It became the most popular online course for the old MCAT, and this model is consistent with our intrinsic motivation in that though we think of ourselves as teachers who can help you increase your MCAT score, we are really motivated to help you build your scientific imagination, through interdisciplinary understanding, into a way of seeing you will always have as a doctor or doctor-scientist.
Our new website has much better usability, and our core learning assets are now free. There will be subscription social learning community, kind of like an online school for the MCAT, attached soon. You will be able further benefit from resources like study groups, course forums and live events. The subscription price to be a member in our online school will be $19.95/month. We think that will be fine. That will be Premed Village after the New Year, a kind of affordable, online MCAT school. As of right now, there's nothing on the site that costs any money, so I don't know why I'm sending this message yet. Our business model is not very good! This message is to let you know about our current stage, which is kind of like an MCAT free store, teach you a little test strategy, and let people know there are slots available in teaching program, because I am looking for a few one-on-one students to teach strategy. Even one or two sessions is alright. You are helping me get my game up before live events and videos.
Content review must be extraordinary to be helpful
The Interdisciplinary Content Review is effective because it not only teaches the topical goals but also the interdisciplinary learning goals of the exam. Others claim they are "Foundation of Living Systems" too, so I can only say the Interdisciplinary Content Review is more ambitious. We are as sophisticated as AAMC, very experienced, and have worked very hard for years.
For best results, watch the Interdisciplinary Content Review in order. Use this PDF of blank course slides for making notes and solving problems along with me in the course
The videos in the Interdisciplinary Content Review are not standalone. Watch the videos in order, in the sequence of the course, or the spiraling nature of the program won't work as well as it should. Important interdisciplinary themes are introduced early in the course and then returned to with greater sophistication as it progresses. Use the attached "Course Slides for Note-Taking" to make notes and keep those in a binder for engagement during watching and 'epicycles' later. I write all over the slides in teaching, so write along with me. Draw pictures. Write neater than me! You will have a wonderful study tool after you are done. The physics vocabulary at the beginning unfolds into the chemistry lessons. This is the way it works through organic and biochem, building a unified conceptual vocabulary.
The interdisciplinary MCAT remediates the disconnected undergraduate curriculum
The Interdisciplinary Content Review teaches the AAMC topics as a systems-levels course in general science, so physical sciences are integrated with the biological sciences. In reality, there is always a physics account and a chemistry account of a biological process because now changes in biology happen without chemistry and physics facts also changing.
In systems-theory or “foundations of living systems” philosophy, the relationship between the main paradigms of physics, chemistry, biochemistry, molecular cell biology, neurology, psychology, sociology and evolution are higher levels of supervenience. No neurology facts change without physics and chemistry facts also changing, but chemistry doesn’t reduce to physics. You can’t determine cell biology only knowing physics, or biochemistry, but if you look at the enzyme mechanism of something central in metabolism like mitochondrial malate dehydrogenase, which transforms malate and NAD+ into oxaloacetate and NADH in the citric acid cycle, you see organic chemistry in how the electrons in the aromatic ring of nicotinamide get lifted up like a see-saw in their new place in NADH, so you can see how they will fall like water through a wheel in the electron transport chain, lifting up protons. In the enzymatic mechanism, you can see how the physics of the charge relay network between essential aspartate and histidine residues in the active site raise the pKa of such a situated histidine so that it pulls a proton from malate to catalyze the elimination of the hydroxyl on malate and donation of it’s carbon’s electron pair (in general chemistry, an oxidation reduction) to NAD+. Changes in a biochemical system don’t occur without organic chemistry, general chemistry, and physics changes happening too.
The reason AAMC made the new MCAT explicitly interdisciplinary, I believe, is a form of strong encouragement for students preparing for the exam to make the closely related paradigms across general science shine light on each other. This becomes a way of seeing, because ideas that shine light on each other also can shine light together on the world. Something like that happened to me after teaching the old MCAT a dozen times, and it inspired me to teach premedical science as a lifetime project. I try to help this kind of integration happen for my students, and I know it will work if they are patient with themselves and give themselves positive feedback. Unified conceptual understanding can become a kind of ready-to-hand scientific imagination through MCAT review. The goal of MCAT prep is a great score, but it's different for AAMC. They did a good job with their redesign, so mastery of their test is a valid test for whether your scientific imagination is flourishing. Richard Feynman famously said that a person with scientific imagination can see a flower is beautiful like everybody else, but they also see what's going on inside, and that's beautiful too.
Trial run
The videos on the website could help you sleep. Don't worry about anything. Take a tour first. Rapid reviews are about 1 hour total. Then watch the Integrated Content Review for 45 hours total. Go up to 1.5X speed and tour the nature of living systems from physics to biology in a spiraling way. See what you remember! In a week or two, you will start seeing the way things work. In living systems, there is a physics account, a chemistry account, and a biochemistry account, but where we start is using units of time and space to learn how to keep track of things moving around and build up from there.
What's more important than content review?
I learned something decades working with students more important than my science teaching ideas. I want students to know something important, which is that my students and I carried each other. We gave each other positive feedback. What I suspect after all my years is that any MCAT program can work if you give yourself consistent positive feedback. That's the message. Never punish yourself with self-doubt or self-recrimination in MCAT review when you miss problems. Let everyone else do this. You don't do this.
The justification for this in psychology is that MCAT mastery involves a set of behaviors, conscious cognitive behaviors, but also memory, recall, and integration, and those should be reinforced, which increases their likelihood, and not punished, which decreases frequency. To achieve MCAT mastery, you must always reward yourself emotionally with every new thing you learn, every spreading activation and new integrative complexity because you are your own Skinner Box. This will make closely related ideas start shining light across disciplines. Reinforce learning with only positive feedback and good feelings and you will make yourself into a genius. I believe this approach can also work with art, music, and learning a foreign language. This is the most important thing I've discovered about teaching MCAT, and it's nothing to do with my MCAT course. It's why it's really not so important.
An MCAT Passage Is Not Scientific Writing
In addition to the writing that goes into MCAT passages, I also know quite a bit about scientific writing, in the sense of quite a lot, specifically the writing of clinical study reports and statistical analysis plans in pharma, as well as what goes into manuscripts for scientific journals. Up until just this past summer, for example, I was serving twelve months as contract QC Writing Manager for the Bill and Melinda Gates Medical Research Institute (Gates-MRI). The first QC Writing Manager at Gates-MRI, I helped the Institute build their new medical writing department. This work is a second calling for me and not to distant a second calling. QC Writing Manager functions as a kind of in-house technical and scientific editor for the protocols, statistical analysis plans, study reports produced in clinical trials, as well as the manuscripts the individual scientists in its programs publish.
Having worked for the most exciting world health initiative in drug development, I can say that understanding the process of normal scientific writing is helpful to understanding MCAT passages. The similarities and differences give us a helpful framework. Normal scientific writing represents a form of cooperation between the writer and reader, but an MCAT passage is a non-cooperative reader-response game between the writer and reader. This core insight is very helpful to visualizing reading MCAT passages as a performance that you can master. MCAT Passage Reader Response (MPRR) begins with careful study of how MCAT passages work.
A Toolkit for the Test
MPRR is a collection of reading strategies that help make the content and intentions of MCAT passages more clear in the light of test-writer intentions.The reader-response school of literary theory focuses on the reader and their experience of a literary work. The reader response approach to MCAT passages keeps the focus on the test-taker and their subjective experience of the verbal language, figures, and tables in an MCAT passage. In reader response theory, a text doesn't exist except in the mind of the reader. Providing meaning to a text is a mental performance. In the MCAT, you as the test-taker are completing the meaning of every passage element.
MCAT Passage Reader Response (MPRR) is a body of techniques we have developed for the performance of Chem/Phys, Bio/Biochem, and Psych/Soc passages. In these sections, the MCAT passages are written by AAMC, not selected like CARS, and you must use a knowledge-base to interpret passage elements.
Empowering your knowledge-base for an active, intentional kind of reading performance in MCAT passages is the central focus of MPRR. Another aspect of the MPRR curriculum helps you see through the puzzles created by the passage writer. The MCAT passage writer isn't like a normal scientific writer. The writer of an MCAT passage will always work to interfere with your understanding of what they are pretending to describe in good conscience.
In normal scientific writing the author is trying to communicate
The biggest difference between normal scientific writing and MCAT passages is that the author in scientific writing really is doing their best to communicate. In a serious research setting, such as a pharma company, I can personally testify that the subject matter experts and the medical writers always try their best to make the writing clear for the reader. In other words, in normal scientific writing, the author cooperates with the reader. However, in an MCAT passage, the opposite is the case. In an MCAT passage, the author is non-cooperative.
The design process for an MCAT passage produces something that presents itself as scientific writing. MCAT passages will superficially resemble journal articles, but MCAT passages are designed to impede you. In MPRR practice mode, my students and I have deconstructed many AAMC Section Bank and Practice Test passages. AAMC MCAT designers use strategies that intentionally make it difficult to form a clear picture of the scientific ideas in the passage. Within the reader response framework, we use game theory in our strategic curriculum to form a picture of the MCAT passage writer. Reading an MCAT passage is a non-cooperative game between you and the passage writer.
Knowing the other and knowing oneself: In one hundred battles no danger
Not knowing the other and knowing oneself: One victory for one loss
Not knowing the other and not knowing oneself: In every battle certain defeat
— Sun Tzu
An MCAT passage is a non-cooperative game
According to one of the originators of game theory, John Ogden Nash, a player in a non-cooperative game should ask themselves: "Knowing the strategy of the other player, can I benefit by changing my own strategy?" In MCAT game theory terms, Nash equilibrium comes from understanding AAMC's strategies and responding effectively with good content knowledge and test taking strategies of your own. MPRR is a path to helping you find an optimal repertoire of strategies for reading MCAT passages in the flow of the exam.
MCAT writers have developed many strategies for being non-cooperative. Here is a simple example. In almost any MCAT passage, you will find multiple instances of the writer actually being cryptic on purpose. MPRR makes a habit of uncovering these while you are reading. If the passage says, "the residue at position 259", in MPRR you learn to recognize how a normal manuscript author would just write "glutamate", so there is a puzzle there, and this one is based on a topical learning goal. You have already answered the question. You know it is coming.
Likewise, if the passage writer labels a substance "Compound A", this isn't because the identity of Compound A is a mystery to them. Almost always they are concealing something. Maybe it is a little puzzle. Maybe Compound A will be something you recognize if you understand they might expect you to, Maybe it's lactate or half of Compound A is a peptide or it's got an isoprenoid tail and now you see because you were looking it is ubiquinone. Every MPRR strategy is about making the ideas in an MCAT passage become other ideas.
A core MPRR Strategy
Here is a core MPRR strategy succinctly put. Whenever an MCAT passage references an AAMC topic, go to the topic in your imagination, right then, like flying down into a neighborhood of a city and bring something else back from the topic and make it manifest as a simple idea. If the passage has a little table with some wavelengths of laser light, you might come back with "lower wavelength means higher frequency" or "that one is in the ultraviolet range" or "Planck's constant times the frequency". Much of the writing in an MCAT passage is built of puzzles from topical learning goals, so practice doing this every time and you will find you are often prescient in anticipating a question. Which one of these concepts from the example of Properties of Light above would not be so important. What's important is to bring the idea in the passage into an integrative complexity. You are making a world in your imagination. However, you will often find when you get to the questions that you came back with exactly the right idea and have foreseen a question coming, but that's not the main benefit.
This is a core MPRR strategy because it makes passage understanding more clear and reading easier every time, in science passages or psychology. Do not worry it will slow you down. It's a kind of investment of cognitive energy that saves you cognitive energy. What happens, I believe, is similar to how the facial recognition stack works in the fusiform gyrus of your occipital lobe. When you see a face of a person you know, identity cues and landmarks are processed as new visual information but the face flows into sense certainty, anyway, from memory. This way leads to the expenditure of less cognitive energy than processing your friend's face all over again. I believe that like to previous studies of your friend's face, you have studied the properties of light before too. When ideas become other ideas and form a complexit, cognitive processing and spreading activations that you did before in MCAT review become available in your imagination, making the passage clear. The biggest challenge in any MCAT passage is building the world of the passage in your imagination and making it subject to scientific reasoning. This core strategy in MPRR become a habit with MCAT passages, and then it becomes a habit when you look at things in the world or the results provided by scientific instrumentation.
How many Bio/Biochem passages work
Here is a core MPRR strategy for the common type of Bio/Biochem passage that follows the three part structure 1) background 2) experimental design 3) results. At the beginning of such a Bio/Biochem passage, you will find another non-cooperative strategy employed by MCAT writers. Very often, these passages will have a very dense background section at the start designed to make you feel like you are in big trouble. However, through MPRR's attention to MCAT passages as intentional puzzles to impede understanding, you can see how it is purposefully designed to shipwreck you. The lack of cohesion and long run-on sentences are purposeful. You must respond in the emergent flow of reading when you notice the field of reference shifting in a conscious way. That sentence started with genotypes, a wild type, knockout, mutants, but the sentence isn't over. Now it's onto the buffer used, and it ends with fluorescent characteristics of the label, excitation and emission wavelengths in nanometers. They are trying to make your head spin. When you see that happening, understand there is going to be a refractory period to accommodate, and you will not complete the job in the emergent flow of the language on your first pass through some of the sections like this.
It just seems like an impedance, but there is a learning goal, actually, in AAMC making a puzzle like this. The MCAT is teaching you to take your time with complex material and assemble scientific ideas in your imagination. You must account for how things are working before you get to the experimental section, so the reader-response here is to stop and study that background section of the passage for a bit. That's all. Rehearse things. Practice the abbreviations for everything. Build the field of reference. You will get the time back later. The experimental section of the passage going well absolutely depends on you understanding the living system and imagining experimental interventions in your imagination, but students feel goaded to get moving through the passage and things get worse. If you take a little time to look at that beginning section, seeing it from start to finish simultaneously, accounting for it, then the experimental section will unfold like a carpet, and you will have the correct reader response for what's coming next, like asking the question "What are the manipulated variables and measured variables?" Always remember to ask yourself that question when you start reading the experiment! If you do, often then the results section will unfold like a carpet.
I've written so much, maybe you don't need to visit because you can ace the MCAT right now! I hope this has been a good read.
The open resources are up and functioning, but the social learning environments for Premed Village and Medical Student Village are not open yet! An affordable social learning environment is coming soon, January 2025, with live events, study groups, and office hours. $19.95/mo
Free Video Content Review and Materials
Integrated Content Review
This MCAT course builds on itself following a spiraling curriculum, so the videos should be watched in order.
Preparing for Chemistry with Physics
The Structure of Matter
Internal Energy and Heat Flow
Chemical Thermodynamics and Bioenergetics
Solutions and Acids & Bases
Fluid Mechanics and Wave Motion
Organic Mechanisms in Biochemistry
Protein Structure
Enzymes
Zymogens and Connective Tissue Proteins
Carbohydrates and Lipids
Biochemical Pathways Part 1
DC Current & Magnetism
Redox & Electrochemistry
Oxidative Phosphorylation
Biochemical Pathways Part 2
Light & Optics
Nuclear Physics
Molecular Cell Biology
One-on-One Tutorials
This teaching project develops from one-on-one and small group teaching. There are currently one-on-one slots for both premeds and medical students to work with John. Tutorials are available on MCAT Test Strategy for premedical students. For 1st and 2nd year med students, John is tutoring M1 study skills and Knowledge Structure for Step 1. Very simple and flexible, pay-as-you-go, 75/hr with a sliding scale.
AAMC Organic Mechanisms
With examples showing how they work in biochemistry
Aldehydes & Ketones
- Acetal Formation
- Glucose Ring Formation
- Glycoside Bond Formation
- Imine Formation
- Formation of Transaminase-PLP Schiff Base
- Transaminase
- Formation of Schiff Base - Transaldolase with S7P
- Enamine Formation
- Cyanohydrin Formation
- Kilani-Fischer Synthesis
- Oxidation of Aldehydes & Ketones
- GAP Dehydrogenase
- Tollens' Test
- Reduction of Aldehydes & Ketones
- β-Hydroxybutyrate Dehydrogenase
- Keto-Enol Tautomerism
- Triose Phosphate Isomerase
- Ribulose-5-Phosphate Epimerase and Isomerase
- Pyruvate Carboxylase
- Imine-Enamine Tautomerism
- Transketolase
- Transaldolase
- Aldol Addition
- Aldolase
Alcohols
- Oxidation of Alcohols
- Malate Dehydrogenase
- SN1 Substitution of Alcohols
- SN2 Substitution of Alcohols
- Mesylates and Tosylates
- Glycogen Synthase
- Silyl Protecting Groups
- DMT Protecting Group
Carboxylic Acid Derivatives
- Acyl Substitution - Saponification
- Acyl Substitution - Aminolysis
- Acyl Substitution - Esterification of Anhydrides
- Chymotrypsin
- Acyl CoA Synthetase
- Triglyceride Synthesis
- Nitrile Hydrolysis
- Reduction of Carboxylic Acids
- HMG-CoA Reductase
- Decarboxylation of a β-Keto Acid
- Decarboxylation of an α-Keto Acid by α-Ketoglutarate Dehydrogenase
- Formation-and-Use-of-a-Carboxylate-Nucleophile
- Glutamine-Synthetase
- Lactones & Lactams
- Inhibition of Transpeptidase by Penicillin
Phenols
Heterocyclics
Organic Phosphorus Compounds
Pathways
FIX-YOUR-PHYSICS FLASHCARDS
Concept and question cards to build problem solving skills and physics intuition.
PracticePLAY CATCH BLUE
Play Catch Blue. It has over 4000 Questions. You build your MCAT science vocabulary chasing a dog around.
PlayTestimonials
Thanks for your email - I actually did use your course, and I took the MCAT in April and got a 514 composite (score breakdown attached). I used so many resources preparing for the MCAT, honestly, probably more than I should have, but your course was super helpful and was really the thing that brought together a lot of concepts for me. It really was one of a kind, in terms of how you related things across disciplines, and was helpful of course for the MCAT, but also for the work I do everyday as a scientist and for the students I tutor for high school chemistry. - R. H.
Just wanted to share the fruits of your labor (attached). It seems the center of AMCAS's preliminary percentile ranges were a little off for Chemical/Physical and Psychosocial, but having hit the magical 96th percentile overall, I really cannot complain. Should definitely have done better than an 129 on those two, but I think I will be well served by my scores. It's funny because I went back and forth on several CARS questions, changing some of my answers in the last minutes of the section, so I definitely would not have predicted my perfect score in CARS. - A. P.
Your course, and it is utterly brilliant, effectively teaches me. As someone with a strong intellect; I have to understand concepts fully before I can master them. In order to understand fully I have to grasp the concepts spatially, as a whole and then I unify them..that's when the magic starts to happen and my brain explodes with connections, questions and creativity. Previously, the teaching I received was inadequate..I may be bright but I couldn't come up with the kind of perspective and mature mastery that the years of intelligent and insightful reflection you have worked at provides. The spiralling nature of the curriculum, the emphasis on the key scientific concepts and their inter-disciplinary application not only concisely identifies the MCAT material, but brings the subjects/universe to life. It's immensely pleasurable to go on the journey with you. - J. H.
I got my score back yesterday and was very surprised to see that I got a 519! (131,128,129,131) I was in shock, since I really expected myself to get around a 513-515. I'm most surprised about CARS, since I completely guessed on a passage.
Anyways, thank you so much for tutoring me. It was a real honor to learn from someone who is so passionate and dedicated towards a single cause. I feel like every tutoring session, I was impressed by your knowledge of the material and your ability to help me understand something. I'm a bit active still on reddit and have referred some people over to you. I hope that I got you some students. I would be happy to leave you a 5 star review somewhere and feel free to let potential students reach out to me for questions about your tutoring. - E. D.
I really hope that students come to know the value of Integrated-MCAT... you really prepared me not just for the MCAT but for medical school. There are things that I'm encountering and I'm not panicking because we covered it in such detail. I included some genetics slides as evidence! I think it's easy to feel insecure about being in medical school, like Imposter Syndrome, especially when I hear classmates coming from big name schools and Ivy Leagues, and I have felt, 'what if I'm not as prepared as them?' I'm not saying this to be obsequious, but I really feel like I received a world class education through our tutoring-- like I can totally hang with some of the Yale kids in my class. Right now where I'm in the Pulmonary block and I have classmates struggling to grasp the Bohr effect and the Haldane effect and I get to chuckle at their misfortune... well not exactly lol, but it's really nice to feel ahead of the curve. - A. G.
I just wanted to share with you my appreciation for all the work you have done with WikiPremed. Your lessons on physics and general chemistry changed my perspective on many of the topics and were, in my opinion, at the level of teaching required for students to score a 14 or 15 on PS - something many other MCAT resources lack. I received a 14 in physical sciences, up from 11 without using WikiPremed, and achieved an overall score of 37. I will definitely recommend WikiPremed to anyone who mentions they are writing the MCAT in the future. Thank you again for all your hard work! - A. P.
Thank you John for making this amazing website. I used wikipremed as my primary study tool, and I just received a score of 14 PS 11 VR and 13 BS for a total of 38. Not only did this site help me achieve the score I wanted, but it has left me with a deeper appreciation and understanding of science. - P. M.
I found John through his website. I was very impressed with his videos and liked his curriculum. John is not only highly professional and experienced, he’s also a great guy. Couldn’t ask for more. Very, very happy with his services. - K. T.
Thank you so much for your time and effort in developing WikiPremed. In studying for the MCAT, WikiPremed has proven to be an invaluable resource. I credit my 35 to it. - C. K.
I would like to thank you for this great website. I have spent quite a bit of time and money on a prep course and materials, and WikiPremed has been far more helpful than anything I have come across. - S. O.
I just wanted to say thank you so much for having these free videos here! I decided late I wanted to go to medical school so I had to take the MCAT this summer because I'm graduating in May, but I had never taken physics before, in high school or college. All I did was watch your videos and do the practice problems and I was able to get a 10 on the physical sciences section, which I'm sure would not have been possible otherwise, because it was absolutely unintelligible to me in the books I had been using. I thought you had a really thorough way of explaining things and making the concepts stick. - T. C.
I just wanted to thank you for setting up such an awesome way to learn and prepare for the MCAT exam. I am a premed student who is not interested in paying $3000 for a preparatory course, and this is such an awesome alternative. Great job putting together such awesome resources. The videos, pictures, text, example problems, and answers help SO much. Thank you! - E. F.
I think your sight is fantastic. Thanks for investing the time and energy into it! - S. A.
Hi John, Finally got scores and percentiles
35 M 93.8-95.7% ranking
Thanks again so much. - D. C.
I truly can't say enough good things about WikiPremed. I took the MCAT for the first time last year and again this summer. Last year I participated in a weekly on-site prep course for four months. This summer I stumbled upon WikiPremed through a Google search for MCAT study materials. I improved my MCAT score by three points using the resources on WikiPremed. Reasons you should consider WikiPremed: - the structure [ The value of the "spiraling curriculum" that John Wetzel mentions in his course introduction is perhaps best realized after working a bit with the actual material. In my opinion, other methods don't compare to this setup. It's the way I believe most all things should be taught - dynamically and relevantly. The structure also allows you to work at your own pace and according to your own schedule. Call me nerdy, but I found the flashcards and crosswords to be pretty fun, while the videos offer the sense of a private tutor. Oh yeah - and he's not ruthlessly charging you by the minute for it. ] - the economics [ ...which brings me to my next point. For starters, it's free. No gimmicks where after 50 views of the site you get some unfriendly warning to "Pay up or log off!" Nope. Check out all the stuff he's got on there as much as you want, whenever you want. If you want the tangible products, you can buy "the bundle" for about fifty bucks. And suffice it to say that's many, many, many, many fractions less than I paid for my previous MCAT prep class. (Never mind the lower score I got doing so.) ] - the philosophy [ So, it's official. After using WikiPremed throughout my MCAT prep and ultimately reaching my goal with my score, I can say with confidence: Wetzel is not some profit-hungry monster. In reality, he's far from it. Honestly, I kept waiting for the catch. Instead, I came to accept that there are still genuinely good people in this world and realized he's in it for the right reasons - to offer access to MCAT prep materials to anyone, anywhere with the motivation to pursue becoming a physician. ] My suggestion: use WikiPremed as a central resource, KhanAcademy for clarification and a set of prep books (I used ExamKrackers) to supplement all of it. I'd also attempt to take as many practice tests as you can fit in your prep schedule whilst maintaining sanity. May seem like a lot, but once I got in the swing of things I was sincerely grateful for WikiPremed as a consistent guide and invaluable study tool. - J.T.
Just wanted to say thanks for taking on this huge project!!! I really appreciate all the information and hardwork you put into this. Wish me luck on the MCAT! - K. C.
I just want to thank you for all the work you put into this site. It has really helped me to understand Physics in a way that the big review companies have not been able to. God bless you and this company and thanks again. - A. S.
As a physician, there is a balance between the shear volume of learned information one is exposed to and the practical application that one ultimately retains. Hard work and diligent study are expected, but the ability to navigate through mountains of knowledge in order to firmly grasp the essentials requires a mentor. The principles that I learned through MCAT academy not only helped me to achieve a 90th percentile score, but have served as a foundation for a broad and practical understanding of scientific principles which I have continued to use since. John's passion for teaching is evident and he's also a genuinely nice person. His course makes studying palatable and enjoyable rather than drudgery. - A. H., MD
Not sure if you would ever read this. But I just really wanted to thank you so much for all your work and god energy that you have placed in wikipremed. I have watched about 85 % all the videos and the way you explain physics is waw !!!! Thank you. Me and my friend already ordered the package, with the flashcards and everything. - K. C.
Hey John, first of all, THANK YOU so much for creating this one in a million website. I have been searching for sites for MCAT and this beats everything out there, hands down. I really like the video part about the physical sciences parts, rather than just bombarding all kinds of facts, the intuition you provide is amazing. - D. R.
I just wanted to thank you for doing this entire series. I suggested this site to everyone in the premed club at my university, and we now all use it as the main means to study for the MCAT. So thank you so much for putting all of this online and for free as well. Many of my classmates were unable to afford Kaplan courses and so on, so this is a life saver to them, and several of the ones who have alreaady taken the Kaplan course agree that this site provides a better and more robust study schedule. - A. W.
I haven't heard back on what my test results are yet, but my last practice test was a 34, so I'm hoping for the best. I just wanted to let you know that I appreciate what you've done in creating this course. Having benefited from not only the materials, but also your syllabus/schedule and the order in which you chose to present them, there is no way I would have guessed something like your program existed. WikiPremed is a true dark horse. Congratulations on an original and well executed idea! - L. L.
As a premed I had the same thought, that there should be a study program that builds knowledge block by block and connects the physics with the chemistry and biology. It looks like I found it. I can tell you put a ton of work into it, so this is just me saying Thanks. - P. S.
I love you. Very much. Thank you for putting this site together. I received a 32 on the MCAT. And this made me very happy. After taking a kaplan course and being stuck at around a 28. I wondered what more I could do. It was wikipremed.com. I find myself recommending this site to many people. Thank you for being wonderful, clear sighted, and altruistic. You really are amazing. - V. K.
WikiPremed is an MCAT preparation site with flashcards, questions and video explanations by John Wetzel, an incredibly experienced MCAT course instructor. The site has comprehensive lessons in all aspects of the MCAT and is a superb asset for those preparing to take the test. - Truman State University AMSA
Thank you for creating Wikipremed. I primarily used Wikipremed and the online AAMC tests to study. My pretest was a 27, rather horrifying. I wound up with a 32, decent enough to keep me in the running for medical school. I think your program is valuable for studying for the MCAT but should also be required for every student graduating from college, regardless of their major. Wikipremed does a fantastic job of drawing connections between the sciences, promoting a lifelong basic scientific understanding of the world. - D. P.
Thank you for creating Wikipremed. I primarily used Wikipremed and the online AAMC tests to study. My pretest was a 27, rather horrifying. I wound up with a 32, decent enough to keep me in the running for medical school. I think your program is valuable for studying for the MCAT but should also be required for every student graduating from college, regardless of their major. Wikipremed does a fantastic job of drawing connections between the sciences, promoting a lifelong basic scientific understanding of the world. - D. P.
TOPIC RESOURCES
Physics
- THERMODYNAMICS
- Temperature & Heat Flow
- The Ideal Gas
- 1st Law of Thermodynamics
- 2nd Law of Thermodynamics
- ELECTRICITY & MAGNSTISM
- Electricity
- DC Current
- Magnetism
- LIGHT & OPTICS
- Properties of Light
- Geometric Optics
- Wave Optics
- NUCLEAR PHYSICS
- Nuclear Physics
General Chemistry
- STRUCTURE OF MATTER
- Atomic Theory
- Chemical Bonding
- Intermolecular Force
- CHEMICAL CHANGE
- Stoichiometry
- Thermochemistry/li>
- Chemical Thermodynamics
- Chemical Kinetics
- CHEMICAL SCENARIOS
- Solutions
- Acids & Bases/li>
- Coordination Chemistry
- Redox Rx & Electrochemistry
Organic Chemistry
- ORGANIC STRUCTURE
- Organic Structure & Stereochemistry
- ORGANIC REACTIONS
- Substitution vs. Elimination/li>
- Aldehydes & Ketones
- Alcohols
- Carboxylic Acid Derivatives
- ANALYSIS
- Molecular Spectroscopy
Biochemistry
- PROTEIN STRUCTURE
- Amino Acids & Protein Structure
- Protein Laboratory
- Hemoglobin
- Connective Tissue Proteins
- ENZYMES
- Enzyme Activity/li>
- Enzyme Kinetics
- Zymogens
- CARBOHYDRATES, LIPIDS, NUCLEIC ACIDS
- Carbohydrates/li>
- Lipids
- Nucleic Acids
- BIOCHEMICAL PATHWAYS
- Glycolysis & Pyruvate Dehydrogenase/li>
- β Oxidation
- Citric Acid Cycle
- Oxidative Phosphorylation/li>
- Glycogen Metabolism
- Gluconeogenesis
- Pentose Phosphate Pathway/li>
- Urea Cycle
Biology
Whole Science Rapid Reviews
Quick cycles for reinforcement and structure, especially important before the content review videos. The course is interdisciplinary, teaching each AAMC topic "in itself" but also "for the rest". These will help you picture "the rest" from the start.
Chem / Phys Practice Items
KHAN PSYCH / SOC VIDEOS
Biological basis of behavior: The nervous system
Sensory perception
Sight (vision)
Sound (Audition)
video
Equilibrioception
Somatosensation
Kinesthetic sense
Taste (gustation) and smell (olfaction)
Learning
Memory
Language
Thinking and Problem Solving
Sleep and consciousness
Drug dependence
Attention
Motivation
Emotion
Stress
Development
Behavior and genetics
Cognitive Development
Self-identity
Theories of personality
Psychological disorders
Social behavior
Social psychology
Attitudes
Theories of attitude and behavior change
Social Perception
Biological explanations of social behavior in animals
Social structures
Demographics
Culture
Discrimination
Social inequality
I think about my experience with your program often. Tutoring with you has honestly been one of the best decisions I made my entire college career. Anytime MCAT preparation comes up with classmates, I am quick to mention how helpful your approach to teaching has been for me. It has changed the way I approach my classes and my thinking in general for the better. Your advice to study in “broad cycles” lead me to read the material before and after lecture to reinforce and expand on core concepts. While studying the complexities of immunology, inflammation, and hypersensitivity in pathology class, I remember your advice to develop a “mental map” of key topics. It's so reassuring when I can instantly pin a new concept presented in class to a particular branch of my map. I finally feel secure in my knowledge base and like I'm earning a proper education. - S. L.
I found John through his website. I was very impressed with his videos and liked his curriculum. John is not only highly professional and experienced, he’s also a great guy. Couldn’t ask for more. Very, very happy with his services. - K. T.
I’ve just finished my first year of medical school. I found that my time working with John set a good basis for studying medicine. I particularly like his way of explaining why things are the way they are, and I wish some of my professors had the same ethos.
John tailored his teaching to what I needed, and I liked his way of questioning me to ensure I understood what I was being taught.
The only other thing I’d mention is that I didn’t always find it easy. There was a lot of self-study that I did, and there were some sessions where I came away questioning whether I had it in me to get through the material. John was great though - he believed in me when I didn’t even believe in myself. I’ll always be grateful for his help. - M. E.
Your course, and it is utterly brilliant, effectively teaches me. As someone with a strong intellect; I have to understand concepts fully before I can master them. In order to understand fully I have to grasp the concepts spatially, as a whole and then I unify them..that's when the magic starts to happen and my brain explodes with connections, questions and creativity. Previously, the teaching I received was inadequate..I may be bright but I couldn't come up with the kind of perspective and mature mastery that the years of intelligent and insightful reflection you have worked at provides. The spiralling nature of the curriculum, the emphasis on the key scientific concepts and their inter-disciplinary application not only concisely identifies the MCAT material, but brings the subjects/universe to life. It's immensely pleasurable to go on the journey with you. - J. H.
I got my score back yesterday and was very surprised to see that I got a 519! (131,128,129,131) I was in shock, since I really expected myself to get around a 513-515. I'm most surprised about CARS, since I completely guessed on a passage.
Anyways, thank you so much for tutoring me. It was a real honor to learn from someone who is so passionate and dedicated towards a single cause. I feel like every tutoring session, I was impressed by your knowledge of the material and your ability to help me understand something. I'm a bit active still on reddit and have referred some people over to you. I hope that I got you some students. I would be happy to leave you a 5 star review somewhere and feel free to let potential students reach out to me for questions about your tutoring. - E. D.
I really hope that students come to know the value of Integrated-MCAT... you really prepared me not just for the MCAT but for medical school. There are things that I'm encountering and I'm not panicking because we covered it in such detail. I included some genetics slides as evidence! I think it's easy to feel insecure about being in medical school, like Imposter Syndrome, especially when I hear classmates coming from big name schools and Ivy Leagues, and I have felt, 'what if I'm not as prepared as them?' I'm not saying this to be obsequious, but I really feel like I received a world class education through our tutoring-- like I can totally hang with some of the Yale kids in my class. Right now where I'm in the Pulmonary block and I have classmates struggling to grasp the Bohr effect and the Haldane effect and I get to chuckle at their misfortune... well not exactly lol, but it's really nice to feel ahead of the curve. - A. G.
Hi John, I hope this email finds you doing well. I wanted to share some really happy news with you. I passed comlex level 1. This exam was just as challenging as mcat and I didn’t think passing was possible for me. I always think back to when you tutored me to mcat and I couldn’t be more grateful for guidance and support during that very difficult time! I hope you are doing well, and that your family is all well too :) - S. A.
I just wanted to say thank you to the creators of the wikipremed website. It is by far the most useful MCAT prep tool I used to prepare for the exam. I scored a 40 with just two months of studying from this website and a few books and I am going to be attending my top choice medical school this coming summer. Thank you once again. - M. A.
I just wanted to thank you so much for having such a fantastic resource available. :) It's really kind of you considering it's a free service to everyone. - S. V.
>I appreciate the clarity and well thought out structure of your videos--particularly the way they tie together physics, chemistry, and biology--most public goods aren't this beneficial! - W. S.
Thank you very much for setting up this amazing website. I am seriously learning a lot more than what I learned at school. For once, I'm actually enjoying chemistry. Thank you so so much! - J. M.
I wanted to say thank you for providing such an incredible resource to us all for free. You are a wonderful teacher and I appreciate your holistic approach to the material. I love to learn, and this big picture understanding of the sciences is what I've been striving for. You do a GREAT JOB! Thank you for all the hard work you have put into making wiki premed. I'm spreading the word to all of the pre-med students I know! - C. J.
I recently found your website purely by chance. It was a pleasant surprise and still can't believe I paid just a few dollars shy of $2000 for an MCAT Prep course. Which I must add was painfully useless. Your program costs nothing and yet has such a wealth of material that are incredibly useful. For that I want to thank you guys from the bottom of my heart. God bless you and all your efforts. - J. D.
Hey John, I just wanted to thank you for all the hard work you have put into this project. I am a poor student who couldn't afford those $2000 courses and came across this site while searching the web for free resources. I know you say we're supposed to take longer to study for the actual test, but due to my circumstances, I only had 6 WEEKS to prepare! I watched all your videos, because it was so much better than sitting there for hours and reading through books thicker than bibles. My score jumped from a 23 (7PS/ 7BS/ 9 V) from the very first practice test to a 31 (11 PS/ 10 BS/ 10 V). I can say with a 100% confidence that my rise in the physical sciences score can be attributed to nothing else but your videos, as watching them is all I did to prepare for the section. I tell everyone I know that is studying for the MCAT to check out your website first. Not only are you a master of all the material that is covered by the MCAT, but your insight on how the test makers think helped me narrow down countless answers. Thank you again, you truly are a gifted teacher. - V. P.
I am enjoying the selfless resource of videos that you have provided for the MCAT and would recommend them to anyone as well as the printed materials. - T. L.
I really appreciate your help. You guys are providing a great service for all of us premeds who don't have the priviledge of spending vast amounts of money on MCAT material. - J. B.
I just wanted to take a moment to say thank you for your heroic endeavor to make the MCAT a surmountable obstacle for aspiring premeds around the world. I used your website as my primary means of study and am happy to report that after much stress and worry have conquered the test and been accepted to medical school this coming fall. I owe you a debt of gratitude for your help and will gladly recommend your site to anyone with dreams of becoming a physician. - J. H.
Hello there, I was just wanting to write you a quick note letting you know how grateful I am for your site. I struggle with physics, and your course is allowing me to grasp the concepts. I am scheduled to take the MCAT in May. Thanks again!! - S. H.
I wanted to take the time to thank you for this resource. I am just starting to study for the June or July MCAT. It has been many years since I have studied these science topics (7-10 to be percise). As an older/nontraditional student, I have been very worried about starting over without retaking the classes. I have worked in clinical research for 5+yrs and have had a lot of encouragement to reconsider applying to medical school. I had been so nervous before I discovered your fantastic resource! - N. M.
Thank you!!! I wrote my MCAT this summer and studying only using this website and the exam krackers books, and I obtained a 33R. A million thanks! I don't know what I would have done without wiki-premed, not being able to spend the time or money on a prep course. - K. G.
I would like to thank the WikiPremed MCAT for freely distributing quality material online for MCAT preparation. I have used your material extensively in my own preparation for my exam. The material is well though out, especially the physical sciences flashcards. I also appreciated how each question explored a variety of implications that pertain to each topic, something which is rare in other MCAT preparation resources. Furthermore, the new situations in which a concept is situated served to prepare me well for new situations presented in the MCAT. Lastly, the spiraling curriculum was of great benefit, as it served to give a "heads up" for upcoming topics. At the end, I received a score of 13 in the physical sciences. I am grateful for all your help and hope that such services continue to be offered in the future for other students. - A. A.
Thank you for creating Wikipremed. I primarily used Wikipremed and the online AAMC tests to study. My pretest was a 27, rather horrifying. I wound up with a 32, decent enough to keep me in the running for medical school. I think your program is valuable for studying for the MCAT but should also be required for every student graduating from college, regardless of their major. Wikipremed does a fantastic job of drawing connections between the sciences, promoting a lifelong basic scientific understanding of the world. - D. P.
Setting its sights on reducing obstacles for pre-med students (and saving them a few bucks in the process) is the surprisingly sophisticated, open-access WikiPremed MCAT Course site. Providing hundreds of items for free that prep courses such as Kaplan charge thousands of dollars for, WikiPremed is bound to be every pre-med student's friend, and not just because of its price. - Dr. Kevin Ahern - University of Oregon BioTechniques Web Watch
This is an open-course guide to understanding the scientific content of the MCAT and other health professions exams . . . The general content is neatly packaged here. - George Mason University Health Professions Advising
I don't know if John sees these, if not please pass the info along to him. I am so thrilled with the course. I have so much joy listening to the lectures, I could almost marry him. - S. L.