strivingfortheasymptote

[strivingfortheasymptote]

How to prepare for the Philippine NMAT without a review center

The question of whether it's possible to take the NMAT without a review center is asked surprisingly frequently, and generally the answer is yes! It is possible!

If you're a student concerned about expenses while preparing for med school (considering med itself is already really expensive!), then you don't need to spend thousands to prepare well for the exam. The internet is full of free and extensive resources to study for the test.

Here are some free resources I myself used while preparing for the exam last year.

for audio-visual learning style

If learn best with the full audio-visual experience, then b are some free video and tutorial resources to look into while reviewing for the NMAT.

Crash Course on Youtube. Crash Course offers series of courses on natural and social sciences. If you have no idea where to start and need a broad but bite-sized introduction or literal crash course on the NMAT subjects, then this is a solid place to start. NMAT-relevant series are Crash Course Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Psychology, and Sociology. (They also have a series for Organic Chemistry, but also there is so little advanced org chem in the exam that it might not be worth the time to finish the series. The first few videos of the org chem series might be enough.)

Khan Academy. Khan Academy offers tutorials and mini-lectures for elementary to introductory college level topics, so if you need a refresher for your foundations (eg. especially in math) then this is sa great place to start. Compared to Crash Course though minsan mas magulo ang Khan Academy, because it was made more casually and with less of a concrete plan than Crash Course, but if you know what specific topic you're looking for help on, you could probably find something helpful on Khan Academy for it. They also have an MCAT (NMAT ng US) review section that sometimes aligns with our own NMAT (especially in the social science sections) so it might be helpful to check those out!

NMAT Vloggers on Youtube. This one is probably the most NMAT-specific! There are a handful of Youtubers who have made videos going through the official CEM practice sets step-by-step. This is a great resource because it's offering for free what a student might have otherwise had to pay for at a review center!

for reading learning style

If you're not into videos and feel reading helps you process material the best, here are some free online texts that align with the NMAT:

Lumen Learning. Like Crash Course, Lumen Learning hosts courses on different subject areas, but in text form. This is helpful for a deeper dive after a quick crash course (eg. you just finished Crash Course Biology and want to go deeper into a subject, so you chek out Lumen Learning Biology for Non-majors I.) Others have also said the material aligns closely with the NMAT, and i saw this myseelf with the Psychology and Sociology courses.

OpenStax textbooks. OpenStax textbooks are online, open-source textbooks on any subject area. These are just like any average textbook, but since they're open source they're a bt more concise and straight to the point, as well as generally easier to search through. You could still use your own college textbooks if you have them, but these textbooks are freely and legally available if you don't.

for practice learning style

If you need to finally practice and test yourself on concepts you've already studied, then here are some resources for exercises and workbooks to go through.

Khan Academy. Besides just being a site for tutorials and mini-lectures, Khan Academy also has sections with practice exercises for students. This is most helpful for the Quantitative section, because Khan Academy's math sections are extensive and well-developed, but they also have exercises for other subjects like Physics (conceptual and computational) and Chemistry and Biology (more conceptual.)

Worth mentioning again is Khan Academy's MCAT review section which has coverage similar to our own exam. The Psychology and Sociology parts of the MCAT review section are helpful practice for the Social Science section of the NMAT. For the natural science sections (Biology, Chemistry, Physics), the NMAT level of difficulty matches Khan Academy's AP Biology, AP Chemistry, and AP Physics sections more than its MCAT review section, but it may still be helpful to check out these areas of its MCAT review section if you have enough extra time.

US AP review books, MCAT review books. The US's AP (or 'advanced placement') system allows students to take college-level classes as early as high school for advanced college credit. American high school students who choose to take AP classes need to take a standardized test at the end of the semester to pass an AP class. Some examples of available AP subjects are AP Biology, AP Physics, AP Psychology, etc.

On the other hand, the US MCAT is a standardized test required for admission to American medical schools, the American equivalent of our own NMAT.

There are several review books available online that are full of exercises and testmanship tips for both the AP and MCAT exams. Between these two, the AP exam review books and material match the NMAT level and type of questions more closely, since they're more general, introductory, and broad in scope. The MCAT review books can be helpful, but are more advanced than the level needed for the NMAT (these still may be helpful to work through, but only if you have a lot of extra time)

community-based learning

This one was surprisingly he most helpful! There are so many communities to support those taking the NMAT, and they're great to be part of so people could help clarify the reason behind an answer in a sample exam, or to sanity check if you really understood the concept behind a question.

Communities are helpful to get answers (to things you've tried to answer yourself but aren't sure of) and to answer other people's questions (this helps you both, because you practice and check each other's understanding too!) This is especially helpful with conceptual questions and Part 1 sections like the Inductive Reasoning and Perceptual Acuity sections, because answers to these aren't as easy to search for yourself.

Off-line communities, college orgs. If you were a premed student, or have a premed org in your college, then you may be able to find a study or support group with people you know in real-life. Finding a group that could support at damayan ka during the process - not only academically, but on a personal level - will be invaluable, not just in taking the NMAT, but throughout the long process of pursuing medical training as a whole.

Online communities. If you don't have access to a real-life support group of people also pursuing med school (eg. if you were a nontraditional premed, or just dont have as many friends with the same goals) then that's fine too! There are still a lot of online communities you could look to for clarifications and answers to questions. Some online spaces to support NMAT takers are Facebook groups and chats, Discord study servers (some are specifically for NMAT takers!), and even studytwt (Twitter). Of these I found Facebook groups and chats most helpful because they were the largest, and if I had a question on the rationale behind an answer, so many fellow test takers were quickly able to explain it.

These are only a few free resources I myself used while taking the exam, though there are definitely so much more available! Feel free to explore for yourself what material works best for your study style. Don't feel limited by anyone saying 'you need to use this' or 'you need to enroll in a review center.' At the end of the day, you know yourself best, and will be able to decide for yourself what works for you the most, however you choose to go about it.

Good luck and do your best NMAT takers!

[strivingfortheasymptote]

Hello world

Hello world! This is R, an incoming 1st year medicine proper student in the Philippines. I made this blog to document my journey starting now and share learnings and resources.

The title of this blog refers to a quote from neurosurgeon and writer Paul Kalanithi’s book When Breath Becomes Air.

While discerning on whether I was ready to commit to applying for med school, I tried to read as much literature on and by medical practitioners as I could, but his book struck me the most. It was such an eloquent take on the humility of training so hard to save lives, only to be faced with your own mortality.

There were so many gems in the book but this quote struck me the most. In the book, this insight comes after one of his long time med school friends cannot come to terms with a difficult complication with one of his patient, and ends himself. Kalanithi could only imagine what his friend could have been going through, and in that moment, this is what he had to say.

“Our patients’ lives and identities may be in our hands, yet death always wins. Even if you are perfect, the world isn’t. The secret is to know that the deck is stacked, that you will lose, that your hands or judgment will slip, and yet still struggle to win for your patients. You can’t ever reach perfection, but you can believe in an asymptote toward which you are ceaselessly striving" — Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air

As early as now, I concede I may not be able to save everyone (another author, Dr Ronnie E. Baticulon comes to mind.) I make no claim on perfection but I can commit to at least an attempt: to try, to strive, and to side with the good, whenever I can, and concede to limits and learnings, whenever I cannot.

That’s all for now. Thanks for stopping by!