The Hanson Approach to Studying the MCAT: 2025-26 Edition

The process of becoming a physician is strenuous, and exams are a part of the career trajectory that many students may find overwhelming. The MCAT, or medical college admissions test, is the longest, most difficult exam that premed students must take and perform well on to showcase their readiness to succeed in medical school.

Studying for the MCAT, a 7.5h standardized exam administered by the AAMC, is challenging and carries a lot of weight in the admissions process. In fact, the MCAT is perhaps the greatest filter for differentiating those students willing to continue their path toward medicine and those students that terminate their journeys early.

Many factors go into exam preparation and performance. However, the cost and the student’s ability to afford study materials should not be a deciding factor in a student’s performance.

With the high cost and time-commitment for prep courses and study packages, studying for the MCAT may appear too overwhelming for many students, especially for students from low socioeconomic backgrounds and those historically underrepresented in medicine.

In this guide, I’ve pulled together some of the most valuable FREE study resources to prepare for the MCAT exam. Here, I’ve compiled a list of free online practice tests, section banks, and resources that are available to anyone.

What is in this guide

1. Introduction
2. Materials & Budget
3. Establishing a Foundation
4. Building Up Your Approach
5. Choosing Practice Exams to Take
6. Taking the Practice Exams
7. Concluding Remarks & Good Luck!

Materials & Budget

Here are the items I curated from available resources for test preparation. The asterisk (*) indicates a test material I have used. Most items are free but I have selected some cheap, easy-to-buy materials as well.

Collectively, I have listed 28 MCAT-style exams, 3 Half-length exams and 21 Full-length exams. With the AAMC Fee Assistance Program (FAP), there are 21 free exams and 7 exams which can be purchased at a small price online.

Establishing a Foundation

Before I began studying for the exam, the first thing I needed was an understanding of my strengths and weaknesses—I needed a starting point.

There are a few free resources available as a diagnostic tool.

• Blueprint (BP) Half-length Diagnostic Exam: often considered the starting point or the baseline exam by many premeds, the BP diagnostic is helpful for identifying weaknesses and building an effective study plan for your test date.
• Jack Westin (JW) Content Diagnostic Tests: a helpful tool to establish a basis for gaps in content knowledge. The three available tests comprise discrete questions for B/B, C/P, and P/S.
• Jack Westin CARS Tests: the CARS full-length section exams are helpful at almost any point in the study plan. The first section exam can be used as a CARS-specific diagnostic. However, be aware that “JW CARS logic” may not align with AAMC logic. More on this below.

It is difficult to definitively establish a starting score with the BP Half-length exam, as missing a few questions here or there can drop a section score by a point or two. Hence, I recommend the BP Half-length as a tool for identifying strengths and weaknesses in sections, topics, or concepts, not for determining an initial score. So don’t be discouraged by a 487 or a 498, it happens, and there’s plenty of room for improvement.

The JW Content Diagnostic Tests are also a helpful tool to identify the extent of your content knowledge from previous experiences or coursework. The three available B/B, C/P, and P/S tests provide a comprehensive discrete question set with detailed answer solutions. Hence, I recommend the JW section diagnostic tests to identify concepts or topics that are challenging. You can dive deeper into topics as you find necessary.

Then, the JW CARS full-section exams are helpful for testing your abilities in that subsection. Though, if you’re like me and stink at CARS, there is a “Create Test” feature where you can test yourself in discrete, passage-based, or AAMC-styled questions for any subsection. This is a great tool for testing with CARS passages 2-, 3-, or 5 at a time and so on, until you build the stamina to critically analyze 9-passages in a CARS subsections in 90 minutes.

Building Up Your Approach

Once you’ve identified the strengths and weaknesses of your content knowledge, you should develop a timeline or a plan to effectively guide your studying. A structured approach will help ensure that you cover all materials and feel determined to take on the MCAT.

Typically, after completing the Blueprint Half-length exam, you will be given a personalized study plan that considers your performance on the practice test, your selected test date, and your scheduled days off. In my opinion, also a popular opinion shared by others, this is the best free personalized study calendar (that’s why the BP Half-length is unofficially considered the starting point of MCAT studying).

Additionally, there are other study guides and content lists that encompass all the topics addressed on the AAMC MCAT exam.

The Kahn Academy 300pg document is often revered as the all-encompassing roadmap to studying the P/S subsection. The Anki card decks like Pankow and Miles Down cover most, if not all, of the content on the 300pg document.

Likewise, fellow premed students have made study guides and roadmaps to follow along in your exam performance progress.

After completing some review, it is recommended to put that information to the test. This is where question banks will come in handy. The best, most representative Q Banks are obviously the AAMC question packs. Though, if you are planning for a long-term study plan, you want to begin with a third-party Q Bank and save the AAMC content for studying closer to the test date.

Jack Westin, in my opinion, is the best third-party, free Q Bank available. Jack Westin offers three daily question sets, which are an assortment of different sections and topics and usually comprise a discrete question set, a passage question set, and a CARS set. Additionally, the Q Bank has a build-your-own test feature. I began with completing most of the Fundamental Discrete before moving on to Fundamental Passages and then finally using the AAMC-style discrete and passages, which are the most representative.

At one point, Jack Westin also had a free AAMC explanation extension where JW offered the answer explanations over the AAMC’s descriptions. If you’ve practiced with any of the AAMC content, you will understand how poor the answer explanations. This is where the free JW extension changed the game. However, the AAMC did not like that and banned the extension from use. See the full discussion here.

There is also UWorld. I have never purchased and used UWorld, so I can’t say much about its usefulness or representativeness in studying. But viewing its popularity and discussion frequency on online forums, it’s quite obvious UWorld is a popular paid Q Bank, so I thought I’d mention it here. From the online forums, I’ve extrapolated that UWorld is more difficult than MCAT exam questions, which makes it a great preparation tool. If you don’t have the money, then Jack Westin is the best.

Choosing Practice Exams to Take

Now, which exams do you take and in what order should the exams be considered?

The general rule of thumb for taking practice tests is that the least representative exams should be written early in your study schedule, while the most representative exams (the AAMC Exams) should be written at the end of your study plan or the closer you are to the test date.

The representativeness of an exam simply indicates how similar in quality and logic a practice exam is to the real MCAT test experience. Hence, most third-party commercial exams have variable representativeness while the AAMC MCAT materials are the most representative.

Also, I like to consider the least representative exams as endurance-building tests, as it’s likely you’ve never sat through a 7.5h test before. While not perfectly representative, these exams are great for simply experiencing the longevity of such a test. For me, the Gold-standard exams were my endurance building tests.

Here is the exam schedule that I chose:

BP Half-length (1), BP Full-length (2), AAMC Free Sample Test (3), Princeton Review (4), Gold-standard Exam 1-2 (5-6), AAMC Unscored (7) Gold-standard Exam 3-5 (8-10), JW Exam 1-3 (11-13), AAMC Exam 1 (14), JW Exam 4-5 (15-16), AAMC Exam 2-3 (17-18).

In total, I took 18 unique exams over the course of an academic year. 1 Half-length and 17 Full-lengths. 13 third-party exams and 5 AAMC exams.

Personally, I did not take AAMC Exam 4 just in case I did horrible on the real test and needed another practice test to include in a retake study schedule. Thankfully, that did not happen.

Taking the Practice Exams

The practice exams are your opportunity to simulate the real MCAT exam. Taking the full-length exams are the most critical part of the study journey, as the 7.5h test will require mental fortitude and intellectual stamina, a keen understanding of AAMC question stems, and trying and refining test-day strategies.

As mentioned above, it is best to save the most representative exams for later in the study plan or closer to the real test date. The third-party exams can be used to track score progress but have variability in representatives. Hence, it’s best to use the free commercial exams as endurance-building tests early in your exam schedule.

To get the most benefit, the practice exams should mirror test-day conditions as closely as possible, especially as you approach the real MCAT exam date. Identify a time and place where you can start and finish the full-length exam. Be sure to bring a snack and a drink or a full lunch for the 10- and 30-min break periods.

Particularly for the exams taken on the online interface, make use of the highlighting and text-strike features as well as try new themes that are more comfortable on your eyes. Additionally, you will be given a dry-erase pen and whiteboard/notepad to mark your work through each section. Some students do what’s referred to as a “equation dump” or a “brain dump,” where examinees use the 10-min tutorial or the breaks as extra time to write all equations down from memory. This can be helpful especially for the C/P section, which has an assortment of possible equations.

Additionally, my biggest piece of advice is to have a short-term memory of your mistakes, shortcomings, or small failures. There are many instances where you may complete a section and recall a question that tripped you up or you know that you answered incorrectly, which can impair confidence going forward. DO NOT allow prior section performance to tamper with your preparation for the following subsections. Furthermore, this also applies to passages, especially in CARS where your dwindling confidence can quickly snowball into a disaster (at least for me it did sometimes).

While taking the exam, nothing matters but the passage and question in front of you. Only invite the external knowledge necessary to address each question. The MCAT, truly and genuinely, from my experience, is not designed to trick you. Of course, it will make you think. But DO NOT overthink. Usually, your first instinct choice is the correct choice.

Also, do not panic or feel hopeless if your score plateau or dips. That will happen, especially as you move from different commercial practice exams. The best way to improve your performance after an exam is to rigorously review the questions you got wrong or got correct by guessing.

Concluding Remarks & Good Luck!

Hopefully, the MCAT resources and study materials shared here will help you along the way. Although I can’t guarantee you a 515+ or even a 505+, I will say that these materials have been strongly helpful for me. How the study resources work for you will depend on your learning style, your timeline, and your ability to stay consistent.

Remember that the MCAT, like all standardized exams, are not a test of brilliance but a test of preparation, persistence, and strategy. On many practice tests, your scores may rise or may drop, but progress is never perfectly linear. What matters is the discipline you build along the way and your ability to learn from small mistakes or missed questions.

Most importantly, never lose sight of why you are doing this. The MCAT is just one piece of a much more magnificent journey toward becoming a physician. It’s not a measure of your worth or your potential; it’s simply a hurdle that, with time and effort, you will get over.

So trust the process, celebrate the small wins, and be kind to yourself on rough days. Also, congratulate yourself for taking the longest and hardest graduate or professional school entrance exam, that is certainly a feat in and of itself.

Good luck—you’ve got this!