Verbal Tests

[Guest pinkbonkers]

Hi,

I was just wondering what you guys think of the verbal material that's out there...eg. Princeton Review, ExamKrackers, Kaplan etc. Which one is the best representation of whats on the MCAT? (in terms of difficulty, length etc.)

Thanks!

[Guest antissa]

I'm curious about that too. I've heard some ppl say the Kaplan verbal practice tests are harder than the real thing, but I've also heard some other ppl say the opposite. Personally, I hope it's the former because these things are killing me :\

[Guest Kirsteen]

Hi there,

 

I think it really depends on which specific tests everyone's talking about re: level of difficulty. When I took the Kaplan course some of their VR tests were very easy and not very indicative of the level of general MCAT VR difficulty, yet others were much more challenging. On the other hand, all of the tests that we did at PR had a fairly consistent level of difficulty that seemed fairly similar to that of the actual MCAT. The most telling practice tests, acccording to most everyone who I've heard write them, however, seem to be the latter editions of the AAMC tests.

 

Cheers,

Kirsteen

[Guest 2 plus 2 is 4]

I second Kirsteen on the PR and AAMC stuff. I have no experience with Kaplan, though. I used the Examkrackers material and was very pleased with it; I found it to be representative of the MCAT both in length and difficulty of passages and questions.

[Guest jamiel911]

I found Kaplan passages to be a little shorter that the real MCAT. So far I have done 4 EK exams and found them to be very similar to the real MCAT, but the AAMC exams are still the best.

[Guest avisee]

I remember seeing more extensive discussion about this topic in older threads, so if you do a quick search, you can probably find some pretty in-depth information on the relative differences between Kaplan and Princeton. I just wrote the Kaplan free online sample exam, and noticed it seemed to have a lot more questions testing specific details than I would expect from a normal AAMC. But given that this was a free partial exam, I'm not sure if that still applies to the full-length exams they sell in their books, since there might be greater justification to keep the style more relevant and up-to-date if students are paying for them than for a free assessment exam.

 

ExamKrackers is pretty interesting because they seem to familiarize you with some of the tricks to watch out for, since their passages are designed to be trickier/more challenging than the real MCAT, but as someone in an older post mentioned, you might bring this overly critical perspective into the MCAT and get stuck second guessing all of your answers, even the ones you're sure are right (eg, you might think maybe that question was TOO easy...). That is to say, stylistically, EK is a pretty accurate representation (perhaps more so than Kaplan, at least, and possibly TPR), but a little more challenging or with hidden tricks.

 

I'm using EK to do the bulk of my early studying, and then spending August mostly with practice exams from Kaplan, TPR and AAMC. Hopefully, I will build up the critical judgment by starting with the EK exams, but then learn when to trust my first instinct by using exams from AAMC that are more representative of the challenge level.