MCAT
study guide
Every chapter of the course summarized, with each section linked to its lesson.
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This free MCAT study guide summarizes all 5 chapters of Achievable's MCAT course: what each covers, the points to remember, and its 129 sections in order. Read each chapter after you study it, or work through the whole guide before exam day.
Each section links to its full lesson in Achievable, with the review quizzes and full-length practice exams.
Chapter 1: Introduction
3 sections
Free chapter
- Eligibility and format: The MCAT is required for applicants to health professions schools, and registration requires verifying intent to apply to a health professions program.
- Section structure: The exam has 4 equally weighted multiple-choice sections, lasts 7.5 hours, and CARS uses 53 passage-based questions while Psych/Soc, Chem/Phys, and Bio/Biochem use 15 discrete plus 44 passage-based questions.
- Content and prep: CARS uses passage content only, Psych/Soc is 65% psychology, 30% sociology, and 5% biology, and practice tests should guide study, identify weaknesses, and track mistakes.
In this chapter
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Chapter 2: CARS
13 sections
- Section structure: The CARS section has 9 passages, each with 5-7 questions, and all questions are linked to passages with no stand-alone questions.
- Performance focus: CARS emphasizes critical reading and reasoning, and the best answer is the one most supported by the passage, even if it is not perfect.
- Section overview: CARS has 53 questions, 9 passages, 90 minutes, and it tests reading comprehension and reasoning, not content knowledge.
- Passage content: Passages are roughly evenly split between humanities and social sciences, and the golden rule is to answer only from passage text.
- Skill categories: Foundations of comprehension, reasoning within the text, and reasoning beyond the text account for 30%, 30%, and 40%, and all answers must stay grounded in the passage.
- Question types: Main idea, explicit detail, inference, author's tone/attitude, new information, and reasoning/structure are defined by the task they require, so identifying the type first helps strategy.
- Reading strategies: Preview questions, take brief notes or outline while reading, track author's tone and purpose, and use breaks for accuracy or multiple sets in one sitting for stamina.
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Chapter 3: Psych/soc
52 sections
- Sensation and thresholds: Sensory receptors detect physical energy, and transduction converts signals into electrical impulses sent to the brain.
- Perception and SDT: Perception organizes sensory signals into meaning, while signal detection theory separates hit, miss, false alarm, and correct rejection under uncertainty.
- Sensory adaptation and receptors: Sensory adaptation reduces response to constant stimuli, conserving attention, and receptor types include photoreceptors, mechanoreceptors, chemoreceptors, and nociceptors.
- Sleep and sensory pathways: Basal ganglia pathways modulate movement, the reticular activating system regulates arousal, and sleep alternates between NREM and REM every ~90 minutes.
- Touch, vision, and hearing: Somatosensation includes proprioception and pain, vision travels retina to V1 through the optic pathway, and hearing uses the cochlea and Organ of Corti to encode frequency.
- Gustation and smell: Taste uses five main tastes with distinct receptor mechanisms, while olfaction bypasses the thalamus and has a strong odor-emotion/memory link.
- Attention, memory, and cognition: Attention filters stimuli, cognition depends on encoding and storage, and memory spans sensory, short-term, and long-term systems with retrieval cues and forgetting effects.
- Emotion, stress, and social behavior: Emotion and stress shape behavior through appraisal, physiology, and coping, while attitudes, socialization, norms, power, and inequality influence interactions and identity.
In this chapter
- Sensing the environment
- Making sense of the environment
- Attention
- Cognition, cognitive development and issues
- Intelligence/intellectual ability
- Consciousness and sleep
- Conscious-altering drugs and drug addiction
- Memory and processing, sensory and short-term memory
- Working and long-term memory, forgetting
- Memory dysfunction, neural networks and plasticity
- Language
- Responding to the world
- Individual influences on behavior
- Social processes and human behavior
- Attitude and behavior change
- Self-identity
- Psych/soc factors affecting interaction and perception
- Elements of social interaction
- Understanding social structure
- Demographic characteristics and processes
- Social inequality
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Chapter 4: Bio/biochem
31 sections
- Amino acid stereochemistry: Amino acid -carbon is chiral except glycine, and uses CIP priority rules separately from D/L notation.
- Amino acid properties: At neutral pH, amino acids exist as zwitterions with and groups, and cysteine can form disulfide bonds.
- Protein structure: Primary, secondary, tertiary, and quaternary structure determine function, and denaturation disrupts structure and function by heat, pH, or chemicals.
- Enzymes and control: Enzymes lower activation energy without altering or , and their activity depends on pH, temperature, cofactors, inhibitors, and allosteric regulation.
- Genetic information: DNA is transcribed to mRNA and translated by ribosomes, while replication is semi-conservative and repaired by proofreading, base-excision repair, mismatch repair, and nucleotide-excision repair.
- Gene regulation and inheritance: Prokaryotes regulate transcription with operons and attenuation, eukaryotes use transcription factors, chromatin modifications, and RNA processing, and inheritance follows Hardy-Weinberg, meiosis, and Mendelian ratios.
- Bioenergetics and metabolism: determines spontaneity, ATP hydrolysis powers phosphoryl group transfers, and glycolysis, Krebs cycle, ETC, and fermentation manage energy production.
- Cells and systems: Membranes, organelles, prokaryotes, viruses, the nervous and endocrine systems, and major organ systems coordinate transport, signaling, homeostasis, immunity, and reproduction.
In this chapter
- Structure and function of proteins and their constituent amino acids
- Transmission of genetic information from the gene to the protein
- Heredity and genetic diversity
- Principles of bioenergetics and fuel molecule metabolism
- Assemblies of molecules, cells, groups of cells
- Structure and physiology of prokaryotes and viruses
- Processes of cell division, differentiation, and specialization
- Structure and functions of nervous and endocrine systems
- Structure and functions of main organ systems
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Chapter 5: Chem/phys
30 sections
- Equilibrium and work: Equilibrium occurs when the vector sum of all forces equals zero, so there is no net acceleration and .
- Momentum and force: Momentum is mass × velocity, impulse equals change in momentum, and elastic collisions conserve momentum and kinetic energy while inelastic collisions conserve only momentum.
- Motion and energy: Work is , power is , and conservative forces are path-independent and associated with potential energy.
- Fluids and gases: Fluids flow and take container shape, pressure follows , ideal gas behavior follows , and Dalton's law gives .
- Electricity and magnetism: Current is , resistance follows Ohm's law, capacitance stores charge, and magnetic fields deflect moving charges with .
- Light and waves: Wave speed obeys , reflection and refraction follow Snell's law, and electromagnetic radiation spans radio to gamma rays with photon energy .
- Atoms and matter: Atomic number defines element identity, isotopes differ in neutrons, electronic structure follows shells and orbitals, and periodic trends shape ionization energy, electronegativity, and size.
- Solutions and biomolecules: Water self-ionizes with at C, covalent structure and intermolecular forces determine reactivity, and enzymes lower activation energy without changing or .
In this chapter
- Translational motion, forces, work, energy, and equilibrium
- Fluids in circulation of blood, gas movement, and gas exchange
- Electrochemistry and electrical circuits and their elements
- How light and sound interact with matter
- Atoms, nuclear decay, electronic structure, and atomic chemical behavior
- Unique nature of water and its solutions
- Nature of molecules and intermolecular interaction
- Separation and purification methods
- Structure, function, and reactivity of bio-relevant molecules
- Principles of chemical thermodynamics and kinetics, enzymes
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MCAT exam at a glance
- Questions
- 230 multiple-choice questions
- Time
- 6 hours 15 minutes
- Exam fee
- $345
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