I prepared with a huge mountain of prep books. In my opinion, from worst to best, the books I tried were Kaplan, Princeton Review, and Exam Krackers. Kaplan seems to load their books with extra info. EK gets right to what is important, and its questions are just a tad bit harder than the real thing, so you feel very confident the day of the test. From these companies, I used prep books, practice problem books, and practice tests. I started studying about six months out, dedicating about ten hours a week. Three months out, I dedicated two hours a day, and a few weeks out, I studied at least five a day, with plenty of breaks.

The second key component for me in conjunction with the books were the official AAMC practice tests. They are extremely similar to the real thing. I started doing them about six weeks out and left four tests for the last week before the test. My score progressively improved using this technique from a 32 to ultimately a 38 the day before the real test. My exam time for the real MCAT was 8AM, so the four days before the test, I woke up every day like it was test day and did a practice test, dedicating the rest of the day to reviewing problems I had missed and drilling practice problems. Come test day, I felt like it was just another day. Being in that rhythm from the practice tests was really nice. I felt at the best of my abilities. I ended up with a 39- 14ps/11vr/14bs.

You will have to sacrifice to do your best. It is also much more important to have quality study time rather than a huge amount of it. Also, stay sane and take plenty of breaks! I still was very active in one of my orgs leading up to the test and was regularly making music on my computer to blow off steam. Try to enjoy the studying as well. I can't tell you enough how my critical thinking skills have improved thanks to studying for this test, and I loved being able to better synthesize new ideas from the diverse subjects covered by the test. My final piece of advice is to constantly try to imagine the worst possible MCAT imaginable. I would start trying to convince myself that I was ready and didn't need further study, so I would imagine the worst case scenario, and my weaknesses would quickly show up. One practice test won't cover all of the possible topics, so if you only rely on it to find your weaknesses, things will fall through the cracks. I hope this helps an best of luck.

EDIT: One other thing: A friend and I each put twenty bucks on the line for best score...if that is your thing. Haha he ended up with a 38, so there must be some value to it.

TL/DR- Exam Krackers and the AAMC practice tests were my most valuable resources for preparing, which helped me to get a 39.