An MCAT passage may outwardly resemble a scientific article, but a scientific journal won't make itself difficult to understand on purpose. Within an MCAT passage, things are difficult on purpose all the time. The person writing an MCAT passage is like your opponent in game theory. They are making puzzles from topical and interdisciplinary learning goals you encounter in the flow of reading. You can learn to recognize these puzzles and even learn to predict most of the questions coming ahead of time. To prepare you for MCAT mastery, we have developed an interdisciplinary content review video course encompassing the topical and interdisciplinary goals of the test. For applying your knowledge in exam conditions, we teach a method called MCAT Passage Reader Response in Premed Village.
In a spiraling curriculum, important themes are introduced early, and returned to with greater sophistication as the course progresses. Following AAMC's "Foundations of Living Systems" philosophy, years of teaching and development have produced a content review here relevant to the deeper learning goals of the MCAT. Physics unfolds into chemistry in this MCAT course, building a physical sciences foundation purpose-made for understanding biochemistry as the course progresses. Each AAMC topic is covered "in itself" in the course sequence but also "for the rest" in the light of important interdisciplinary themes.
AAMC's Foundations of Living Systems approach to MCAT design has the purpose of helping you remediate undergraduate science before medical school. In the textbook paradigm the general sciences are taught as modular, disconnected courses by the separate departments. You can take them in any order. However, the world of medical school reflects the molecular biology revolution. The paradigm has shifted. Whenever a biological process occurs, physics and chemistry facts are always changing too. In addition to topical goals, the MCAT is designed to reflect interdisciplinary learning goals. MCAT passage mastery reflects a unified, scientific imagination.
Premed Village is actually John Wetzel's third MCAT course. After graduating from Stanford in the early 1990's, he made a live coure in Atlanta called MCAT Academy and then created an online course, WikiPremed, which became popular for the old exam. After 2015, John taught students full and part-time for nearly a decade in the making of Premed Village.
After spending his whole life developing an interdisciplinary MCAT course, John also sometimes performs as a kind scientific and technical editor in pharma for protocols, statistical analysis plans, and clinical study reports. John has a BA in English from Stanford University. This work has helped him understand AAMC's intentions in MCAT passages more deeply. John's last position in pharma was to serve as contract (Penfield Search Partners) QC Writing Manager for the Bill and Melinda Gates Medical Research Institute (Gates-MRI). John performed this role for 12 months up to summer 2024, helping a great team of medical writers and clinical development specialists build their new medical writing department.
John is now back to this project for interdisciplinary science education for future doctors which began long ago at MCAT Academy. Development has been continuous for decades, always with live teaching as it incubator, out in the wild west of MCAT prep, because there is no professional track at a college or university where a person teaches undergraduate physical and biological general science in a unified course. In addition to his work with the old MCAT, since 2015 John has taught complete science review for the new MCAT nearly 100 cycles to make Premed Village ready for a wider audience.
Premed Village is an online MCAT school for making MCAT prep as effective as possible by making it fun opening within weeks