Build an MCAT concept map: the ten foundational concepts on one board

How the board is laid out

Everything on the board is an editable card, list or section, and nothing on it is a photo.

• Two cards at the top say how to read the board and how to fill it.
• Three coloured sections hold the ten foundational concept cards (FC1 to FC10). Each card carries its AAMC category labels in a line each, for example "5E thermodynamics and kinetics". The blank space under each card is where your notes go.
• A grey section for critical analysis and reasoning with one card saying there are no topics to map. Keep your practice passages in your own list.
• A purple enzyme branch hangs under FC5 on a captioned arrow (5E): enzymes, then active site and specificity, induced fit, local conditions, inhibition and helpers, each on a labelled arrow, and feedback inhibition under inhibition.
• A red gaps list, with four checkbox cards. A grey section for pen notes, with an example brain dump in ink.

Arrows stay attached when you move a card or a section. Pen strokes drawn inside a section move with it.

Fill it from memory first

Most MCAT map advice says not to copy your textbook onto the map. One r/Mcat post (2025-04-06, 21 points, 4 comments, read in full on November 10, 2026) lays out five steps: choose a central topic, brain dump what you know from memory, spot your gaps, learn the gaps, then expand and connect. The poster says the point is to structure your knowledge gaps, not to make a pretty diagram, and that it works alongside Anki. This is one student's view. The comments add no disagreement and no evidence.

1. 1Pick one foundational concept and write what you can recall under its card, in your own words. Use the pen section if writing by hand is faster for you.
2. 2Open the gaps list and add one card for each thing you could not recall or were unsure of. Tick it off when you have learned it.
3. 3Fill each gap from your own sources: your course notes, your prep books, the AAMC outline itself. The board holds no content to fill it for you.
4. 4Draw an arrow between cards that depend on each other and caption it with the relationship. The example branch does this for enzymes.
5. 5Repeat per concept. The example gaps list already points to one cross-link to add: the side chains of amino acids under 1A link to the active-site card.

The worked branch: enzymes under 5E

The branch is there to show the size and shape of a filled-in branch, not to teach enzymes. Its cards paraphrase OpenStax Biology 2e, section 6.5 (read in full on November 10, 2026): enzymes are almost all proteins and lower the activation energy; the substrate binds the active site; induced fit refines the lock-and-key picture; temperature and pH outside the optimal range weaken binding, and high heat denatures the enzyme; competitive inhibition blocks the active site while noncompetitive inhibition binds elsewhere, and allosteric inhibition changes the enzyme's shape; cofactors are inorganic ions such as magnesium and zinc, and coenzymes are organic and often come from vitamins; and the end product of a pathway can inhibit an earlier enzyme, as isoleucine does to threonine deaminase.

That page does not cover kinetics (Michaelis-Menten, cooperativity) or covalent modification as a way to regulate an enzyme, so those two sit on the gaps list. Check what your own course expects against AAMC's outline, not against this board.

When something else is the better choice

These lines come from each source's own page, read on November 10, 2026.

• You want to know what is tested. AAMC's "What's on the MCAT Exam?" outline PDF is the source of the ten foundational concepts and their categories. The copy we read is dated 2020 (footer "© 2020 Association of American Medical Colleges"), so check AAMC's own page for the version your test date uses. The board uses the category names as short labels and doesn't reproduce the outline.
• You want spaced repetition. Anki's own site describes it as a flashcard program that spends more time on challenging material, where you rate your recall and Anki schedules the next review. Instaboard has no flashcard, quiz or scheduling mode.
• You want study material for the content. Prep companies such as Jack Westin have their own MCAT content pages (its MCAT Content page was mostly a sign-up page when we read it, so we don't describe what is behind it). We publish none.
• You want a mind-map app with its own layout tools. A dedicated mind-map or note app may lay out and collapse branches for you. Here you place the cards yourself.

What this board doesn't do

• It holds no MCAT content, apart from the one enzyme branch. It is not a content review.
• It doesn't track what you have learned, beyond the checkboxes on the gaps list.
• No spaced repetition, quizzes or scores.
• The free plan: 5 boards and 150 items per account (cards, lists, images, text boxes count; pen strokes, sections and arrows don't), 3 images and 1 file per board. The ready board leaves about 125 items free, so filling in ten concepts fits on one free account, but a second course's worth of boards may not. Pro ($5 a month billed yearly, $59.99, or $7.99 monthly) has no image limit.
• Writing needs a free sign-in. Anyone with the link can view; set Share to "Anyone with the link can edit" if you want a study partner to write on it.
• Written for adult learners. Instaboard's terms say users are not minors.

Questions