so somebody posted a comment asking me to make a video on the topics that we must study on the mcad now I'm of the opinion that you must study every single topic but there is also a concept called the high yield topics in other words the topics that are more likely to appear on your exam if you're watching this video you probably already know that every single MCAT exam is different if you take the MCAT exam on a different day from someone else you're taking a completely different exam High topics are the important Concepts that occur often on the MCAT meaning that it might be more efficient to study these topics first to study them often and to understand them inside and out when I first started making this video I came up with way too many topics so I've forced myself to limit it to five topics per section what that means is that these lists are completely non-exhaustive but what it also means is that there's no guarantee that any one of these topics is going to show up on your exam throughout this process I'm going to be using this resource here it's called the map of the MCAT I made it you can click on the link in the description below to download it or check it out without further Ado number one amino acids you got to know everything about amino acids all right their names their structures polarity charge how they move in elect freesis what happens to protein structure when you substitute one amino acid for another you got to know everything I personally had five amino acid questions on my Bio biokm Section there are a couple resources online that can help you really nail down your amino acids and those are the amino acid quizzes that you can find in the description below number two the central dogma of biology the central dogma is that DNA is transcribed to RNA which is translated into proteins you're going to want to know every single detail of both of these steps translation and transcription from the enzymes that are involved in DNA replication and DNA transcription to your start codons and stop codons you don't have to memorize the whole codon list but you do need to know your start and stop codons you also want to know where each of these processes happens in the cell number three enzyme kinetics you want to be really familiar with how enzymes work the thermodynamics of enzymes how they work as catalysts and you want to know how enzymes are inhibited you want to be really familiar with the michis mentin charts those are this number four metabolic pathways you got to know your glucose Pathways inside and out forward and backwards you want to know how many atps are produced at each step of the process how many electron car carriers are produced that's nadh fadh2 and you want to know what your rate limiting steps are you need to know every detail of the main glucose Pathways and also the broad Strokes of the side Pathways those are the nucleotide the protein and the lipid Pathways for number five I couldn't decide on a single topic so I've decided to just list all the other topics that I figure are high yield in bi biocham that is aerobic metabolism and the oxyhemoglobin curve the nervous system and action potentials hormones your endocrine system and cell mitosis and meiosis so that's the Bio biochm Section those are the topics that I consider high yield now moving on to the chem Fizz section chem Fizz is different from biob biochem there's less discrete knowledge and more calculations you have to understand how to use the information that they present you because of that the number one high yield topic to study is your equations and your units memorizing this list of equations and kempis will take you so so far even when you don't completely understand a question if you know how to plug the numbers into an equation more often than not it'll give you the right answer that being said there are still topics that I would consider more important to study than others for physics that includes electronic structure periodic trends Atomic Decay and fluids for chemistry that means acids bases thermodynamics electrochemical cells and chemical equilibrium for organic chemistry that means functional groups and also nucleophilic substitution that's sn1 versus sn2 number five who could forget lab techniques this is your extraction and distillation your chromatography and your electroforesis because the exam is weighted 20% on experimental design it is so so important that you know and you understand your lab techniques last up we have our psychos section of the MCAT my first high yield topic is theories of emotion this is how we process emotion and involves theories like the James Lang Theory and the shakar singer Theory which are different ways of understanding how we process emotion cognitively and physically number two stages of development these include P's development Freud Erikson and also Goldberg's moral development you want to be able to compare and contrast these and also understand how they stack up against each other for example where would a 5-year-old be most likely to be in each of these models number three social processes and group Behavior this is how your behavior differs when you're with other people or when you're in a group comes up pretty often on practice tests and the MCAT number four attribution theory this is how we perceive a behavior whether we think that a behavior is due to someone's disposition whether it's because they are just that way or if it's because of the situation the environment number five associative learning this is classic psychology this is classical conditioning like Pavlov's dog you know the story the dog salivates when he hears the sound of the Bell because he unconsciously Associates it with food and also operant conditioning which is how people's behaviors change in response to Rewards or punishments and I'm going to punish you if you don't like And subscribe to my channel anyways those are the topics that I consider high yield on the MCAT I'm I'm going to stress again that this is the bare minimum if you want to do well on the MCAT you should know every little detail about your high yield topics but you should also know pretty much everything about everything else and I know that's not particularly encouraging but that's just the reality of the exam you kind of got to know everything about everything but the high yield topics are a good way to start good luck and thanks for watching