How to Catch Up on IMAT Physics When You've Never Taken It in School

Candidates who never studied physics tend to worry about biology first, since it's the biggest section. In practice, physics is usually the harder one to start from zero, and it's worth saying plainly why: biology and chemistry come with some everyday intuition attached, even for someone without formal coursework. Physics formulas mostly don't, and that difference changes how you should approach building it up.

The fix: go narrow, not broad. Master one of mechanics, thermodynamics, or electrostatics at a time, understand where each formula actually comes from, and fold it into the study slots you've already set aside for biology and chemistry rather than treating it as a separate project.

Why physics feels different to catch up on

You've absorbed some biology from general life, health class, nature documentaries, casual reading, and some chemistry too, from cooking, cleaning products, basic reactions you've half-seen explained somewhere. Physics formulas for force, energy, or circuits don't usually show up anywhere outside a classroom. Without prior coursework, you're not filling gaps in an existing structure, you're building the structure itself, and that's a genuinely different task from reviewing material you've half-seen before.

Start narrow, not broad

The physics half of the combined Physics & Maths section covers mechanics and kinematics, thermodynamics, and electrostatics with basic circuits, all at a foundational level, not university-level physics - and how those formulas actually get tested matters as much as knowing them. Resist the urge to work through a full textbook front to back. Pick one of those three areas, learn it until you can solve a range of past-paper questions on it without hesitating, and only then move to the next. Depth on a narrow set of topics beats shallow familiarity with all of them, especially early on.

Learn where the formula comes from, not just the formula

A candidate with years of physics behind them can often lean on memorized formulas alone, because pattern recognition from repetition covers for gaps in understanding. You don't have that repetition to fall back on yet, so memorizing F = ma without understanding what each term represents and why the units work out the way they do tends to fall apart the moment a question phrases things slightly differently than you expect. Spend the extra few minutes understanding the relationship, not just the symbols, and the formula becomes something you can reason your way back to instead of something you either remember or don't.

Fold it into time you've already set aside

You don't need a separate massive block of hours for physics specifically. Rotate it into the same rhythm you're already using for biology and chemistry, a fixed slot a few times a week, rather than treating it as a bonus subject that only gets attention once everything else feels solid. Since it's a foundational-level section built from a defined set of mechanisms, not years of specialized coursework, a focused few weeks of consistent, narrow practice closes most of the starting gap.

Zero background in physics is a starting point, not a ceiling. The candidates who close this gap fastest aren't the ones who study it the most hours. They're the ones who study a narrow slice of it properly before ever moving on to the next.