What is the Biochemical and Biological Section Bank of MCAT recently released by the AAMC all about?
The section bank itself consists of three sections, one hundred questions each.
Today we will focus on the Biological/Biochemical MCAT portion of the bank.
To sum it up, in my opinion, this section is almost purely biochemical (maybe 10% biology questions). While on the actual test you will most likely encounter more biology on this section, the fact that it has so many biochemical questions is great!
Why? Biochemistry is a new subject, and now we have more questions to practice with it!
What kind of topics seem to be heavily tested in this section?
1. Enzymes, types of enzymes,enzyme kinetics (vmax, km, kd), and inhibitors
2. Amino acids. So many amino acid questions! You clearly must know everything about them and once you do, those are easy points!
3. Pathways. The questions test your knowledge of substrates, enzymes and products of substate. You have to also be familiar with the structures of all of these molecules to ace this section.
4. Understand how to read and evaluate tables and graphs presented in biochemical research. This one might seem to be the hardest but with enough practice and focus, it becomes very doable.
So what is a good place for biochemistry practice? Yes, I highly recommend for each and every student to buy the MCAT section bank released by the AAMC and go over each question in depth before the test.
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