If misery loves company, then plenty can be found at Northwestern’s University Library. At any given moment during the next week, students are hunched over test prep books, foregoing fun, classes and their social lives to study for the MCAT.

“I don’t think I’ll ever be prepared,” said Clara Lin, a Weinberg alumna who finished classes last quarter and now spends ten hours a day at the University Library’s Core Collection.

“It’s a huge, huge sacrifice,” said Scott Glazier, a Weinberg junior. “My friends joke, ‘You’re no longer fun anymore.'”

Others try to remember life before test-prep to get through the ordeal.

“I’ve had a lot of fun the last two-and-a-half years, so if I have to suck it up for a while it’s a sacrifice I have to make,” said Sara Campbell, a Weinberg junior.

The MCAT is a standardized test that covers verbal reasoning, physical sciences, writing and biological sciences and is a major factor in medical school admissions.

The majority of the 225 students registered to take the test at NU on April 16 are juniors and seniors. It is also offered in August, and it takes two months to get scores back. The medical school admissions process takes almost a year, so seniors planning to take the test will most likely have a year off.

Medical school admission has gotten more competitive in recent years, leading people to devote more energy to the process.

“As it’s gotten more challenging to get into medical school people are becoming more educated about admissions,” said Albert Chen, the senior programs manager of pre-health programs for Kaplan Test Prep. Chen, McCormick ’91, took the MCAT while a biomedical engineering major at NU.

Students taking the MCAT at NU agreed that most everyone they know is taking a review course, with most choosing Kaplan. Kaplan does not release its number of clients.

Students taking the Kaplan course have spent the past four Saturdays taking a practice test. This Saturday, they will take a full-length test administered in the format of the MCAT.

“Kaplan makes you study, otherwise there’s no way I would have started as early as I did, ” said Weinberg senior David Johnson, who started the course in January and now whips out study materials during lulls in class lectures.

Chen said it is impossible to do well on the MCAT without working hard, but that students shouldn’t overdo the process.

“It’s an important piece to get into medical school, but not so important to the point that it consumes your entire life,” Chen said.

For many students, the MCAT on April 16 might be their only chance. It’s possible to take them again, but most students said they don’t because their scores won’t change much between the two tests. And they said they would not go through the intensive studying again.

“If I don’t do well I wasn’t meant to be a doctor,” Glazier said. “I can’t go through this anxiety again.”

Some test takers get through the studying by planing for life after the MCAT.

Campbell has made a list of things for her “post-MCAT life” that includes getting a haircut and going to the movies.

Glazier plans to go Saki-bombing the night the test is over.

“I’m going to get so bombed I forgot I took the test,” Glazier said.

Reach Diana Scholl at [email protected].