2-Month MCAT Study Plan

For most of us, the MCAT isn’t something you can just wing. It takes diligent effort and preparation in order to do well on it. So a study schedule and a concrete plan is a must.

Without a schedule and a plan, you could easily fall behind in your prep and not leave yourself enough time for either content review or practice tests.

While the typical MCAT prep time is 3 months (or 200-300 hours), preparing 2 months before the test isn’t quite common. This is especially true if the material is still fresh in your brain because you are currently taking (or recently took) BCPM courses. But with only 2 months, it is imperative that you not waste time. Make everyday count by following this 2-month MCAT study plan.

With this study plan, you are spending approximately 5-7 hours a day or 40-50 hours a week.

And before you embark on this prep journey, go ahead and take the diagnostic test so you know where you currently stand and what you need to improve on.

If you have more time, then you might want to check out the 3-month or 4-month study plan I crafted.

What Is This Study Schedule?

This is a schedule outlining how you might study for the MCAT over the course of 2 months, or 8 weeks. This might be a common time frame for people testing during the summer.

This schedule references the Kaplan books specifically, and also includes the use of the AAMC online materials. AAMC has five full-length practice exams, which means that one of these will need to come from another source, such as the free Blueprint full length.

How To Adapt This Schedule for You

This can be used exactly as written, or you might need to adapt it slightly to fit your needs and preferences. You can also feel free to shuffle days around or change the order of the subjects covered as it suits you. However, I would recommend going through all the books at once rather than finishing one subject before moving onto the next.

If I do not mention a way that you want this schedule altered, feel free to alter this schedule however you need to to make it work! Whether this is restructuring a few things, or simply using this as a reference for your own schedule, this is meant to be a useful tool for you, so use it however is best for you.

Different Books

You might be using books other than Kaplan, which will require adapting this schedule some. Most other books also go through by subject, so you should be able to follow the subject schedule. 

This schedule has 12 chapters for each of the six subject books (CARS is not organized by chapter), with 72 chapter total. Figure out how many chapters your books have, and try to line up the chapters accordingly.

This might mean covering 1.5 chapters in your book for each Kaplan chapter listed, or something similar. This could also mean changing how many subjects are covered in a day if it makes more sense for your books.

Different Time Frame

I know that some people might not have exactly 8 weeks. Maybe you are studying over 7 or 9 weeks. This example schedule can still be a good reference.

You can expand or compress this schedule as needed to suit you. If you are trying to get done faster, then try doing a little more than what is listed each day. You could also take out some content review or practice days if you feel that you do not need them or could fit them into other places.

If you have a little extra time, you could take things a little slower than what is listed in this schedule, or add in extra days in the areas that you feel you need it.

Similarly, if your day-to-day time frame differs from this, you can push work from some days into other parts of the week to make room for work, courses, or other time commitments that you might have.

More/Less Practice Exams

If you wanted to take more or less practice exams than the 6 in this schedule, that can be altered as well. 

You could remove a practice exam day and use that to catch up on the rest of the day from the week, or as a rest day. However, I strongly recommend to include at least the 5 AAMC practice full-lengths in your prep.

Adding days is a bit harder, but you could do a bit extra each day during the week to clear out a free day for a practice exam. You also likely could include some content review or practice on the same day as your full length review if needed.

The 2-Month MCAT Study Schedule