Most MDCAT candidates do not fail for lack of knowledge. They run out of time, lose marks to plausible wrong options, and spend the spring on board exams with no MCQ practice at all. A plan that starts now, and respects the FSc calendar, fixes most of that.
- Biology is 45 percent of the paper in the current PMDC pattern, so it gets the most time
- Board exams come first in spring; MCQ drilling fills the months either side
- Full timed mock papers start at least eight weeks before the test
- Check the PMDC notification for 2027 before trusting any plan, this one included
First, what the paper looks like
For the 2025 and 2026 tests, PMDC used a single national paper of 180 multiple choice questions with no negative marking. The split was Biology 81, Chemistry 45, Physics 36, English 9 and Logical Reasoning 9. The syllabus follows FSc Pre-Medical, with PMDC publishing the chapter-level learning outcomes each year.
| Subject | Questions | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Biology | 81 | 45% |
| Chemistry | 45 | 25% |
| Physics | 36 | 20% |
| English | 9 | 5% |
| Logical Reasoning | 9 | 5% |
Two consequences follow. Biology decides more of your score than Chemistry and Physics combined do on their own, and with no negative marking, every question should be answered, including the ones you guess. PMDC can change any of this, so read the 2027 notification when it appears and adjust.
October to December: build Biology while FSc Part II starts
These are the cheapest months of the year for MDCAT, because nothing else is urgent yet. Use them for Biology foundations, chapter by chapter, against the PMDC learning outcomes rather than the textbook alone. Aim for two or three chapters a week, each finished with a short set of MCQs.
- Three or four hours a week of Biology, taught then tested
- One Chemistry chapter a week, prioritising the calculation topics
- A notebook of every question you get wrong, with the reason
January to board exams: protect your FSc marks
Your FSc result feeds the admission merit alongside MDCAT, so the board exams are not a distraction from medical school; they are part of the route to it. In these months, keep MDCAT to a maintenance level, perhaps one timed Biology set and one Physics set a week, and put the rest of your effort into the board papers. Much of the revision serves both.
After the boards: full-syllabus MCQ drilling
This is where most of the MDCAT score is made. With board exams finished, switch to MCQs across the whole syllabus, timed, in mixed sets. The skill you are training is not recall but decision speed: reading a stem once, eliminating two options quickly, and choosing between the last two without dithering.
- Mixed timed sets every day, marked the same day
- For every wrong answer, record whether it was a knowledge gap, a misread stem, time pressure or a changed answer
- Re-teach only the chapters that keep appearing in that record
- Practise Physics numericals without a calculator, since you will not have one
The final eight weeks: full mocks
Sit complete 180-question papers under exam conditions, on an OMR-style answer sheet, at the time of day the real test is held. After each mock, spend longer on the review than on the paper itself. New content should stop about three weeks out; the last weeks are for weak chapters and rest.
English and Logical Reasoning are not free marks
Eighteen questions together, and the ones students most often skip preparing. Both reward practice far more than study: a week of grammar sets and reasoning puzzles usually lifts these sections quickly, which makes them the best return on time in the whole paper.
If you are repeating MDCAT
Start from your previous result and your mock history, not from chapter one. Repeaters usually lose marks in the same places twice, and the first job is to find those places honestly.
Want a plan built around your own scores?
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