Daniel Fu
I work best with students who see the MCAT as a kind of puzzle, and try to work with them to find the best and most efficient way to answer the questions in a limited amount of time. I tend to place a heavy focus on getting as many questions as right as possible over overall accuracy of a specific passage. I see the MCAT as a marathon, and if you have the endurance and confidence to push it through, I definitely believe you can do great on the real test!
As a former student, I understand the fatigues of studying, grinding questions, and reviewing. I myself wasn't a very organized student, and I often struggled with holding myself accountable to my MCAT studying. However, what I found to be helpful was treating the MCAT studying process as a gym workout.
The first step to a workout is to simply show up; and for the MCAT, that means just opening up UWorld and making practice sets. And like a good workout, you need to hit your questions reps with good form, meaning that you're grinding your UWorld questions simulating testing conditions and not looking at your notes. Overtime, you will see improvements to your MCAT test taking skills, but like any other sport, you need to put in the work of showing up first!
I typically notice that the biggest challenge students have is timing on the MCAT. From my experience, the best way to improve timing is definitely grinding out more passages, but also building up confidence in yourself to not second guess your answer.
And the best way to build that confidence is recognizing that you know the information, but now you have to apply it in a way that can answer the question with details from the passage. This confidence improves overtime as we immerse ourselves in more MCAT questions and review!So, accountability to your MCAT workout and to yourself is very important in the MCAT studying process! I realized that the most successful students were the ones that were able to hit or get close to their weekly question goals, so I encourage students to try their best to set goals and hit them!
In our 1:1 sessions, I prefer to coach students by walking them through the questions, including what I highlight in the passage and also what I think the question is trying to ask me. I believe that students already have a great foundation in the MCAT material, they just need to apply it to answering the actual questions now. So I prefer to work with students on this application aspect and give them tips on how to identify relevant information in the question, answer choices, and passage to reach the correct answer! I also understand that Uworld question explanations are sometimes kind of convoluted, so I will try my best to break down the explanations in a way that is easier to understand.
What I enjoy most about teaching is when students are able to understand a difficult concept or question in a manner that works for them, and they might even become more equipped than me to explain the question or concept!
Outside of MCAT coaching, I enjoy playing basketball and video games during my free time.