Prep book suggestions

[Guest Philly]

I was curious if anyone knows of some good prep books that they have used. I'm looking for some good review books and there are a bunch out there, any help would be great, thanks!

[Guest JSS02]

I've heard good things about the Princeton Review, Kaplan, Gold Standard, and ExamKrackers review books. The ExamKrackers books probably aren't for sale in Canada, but you can order them through amazon.com.

[Guest V]

Philly,

 

I have the Kaplan books for sale if you are interested. I have the lesson books, some tests and flashcards, and much more.

 

I am asking about $200.00 for the package (I bought them all for about $750.00). They have no writing in them, and are pretty much new.

 

You can e-mail me at vkapila@uwo.ca.

[Guest cgb]

Hey, I just posted some info regarding this topic in the "Verbal Reasoning Problem" thread if you're interested. Here's a quick summary:

 

I used quite a few different books and got to know them quite well over my long period of preparation for the MCAT. I found some good books and I also found some TERRIBLE ones. I used the Princeton Review "Science Review" book as a study guide to make sure I covered all the necessary topics. I supplemented this book with my own Physics, Chem, Orgo, and Bio books and lecture notes. The book was pretty comprehensive but definitely lacked some of the detail necessary to really understand some of the important topics. Overall though it was a great guide book. I also used the Princeton Review practice materials and tests. I found them to be very challenging - more challenging than the real MCAT. Having said this, I'm a firm believer that if you over-prepare for the MCAT you will do especially well - this is the Princeton Review's philosophy also, and for me it worked. I also tried using the Gold Standard materials, but found them to be much easier than the actual MCAT - especially the verbal reasoning (VR). The VR sections were very straight forward and easy to read - they did not include the variety or the "killer" passages you often find hidden throughout the actual VR section. I would not recommend the Gold Standard unless you run out of practice material. My third resource was this terrible terrible TERRIBLE MCAT prep book by some person who claims to be an expert on how to succeed on the MCAT. It is smaller than the gold standard book - probably 6" x 8" and about 3 - 3.5 " thick. It includes a floppy disk and is written on poor quality paper in type that smudges a lot when you have to erase it. It is not even close to being representative of the actual MCAT. It uses units of measurement that you would NEVER find on the MCAT and the VR section uses types of questions you would never find either - ex. questions with less than 4 answers, true and false, etc. My advice to anyone thinking about this book is to stay away. It is a rip off. Its criminal when you think that someone is actually making a lot of money off of that useless pile of paper. Lastly I used the AAMC practice VR book, Physical and Biological Sciences practice book, and MCAT samples IV and V. I used these materials towards the end of the summer. I used the sample exams (IV and V) a couple of weeks before the exam and found them to predict my mark on the actual exam EXACTLY in all sections. I would recommend the material highly. The only thing is that the AAMC practice VR book is a fair bit easier than the actual VR samples you'll find on the exam. The VR section on samples IV and V are very representative of the actual thing.

 

Hope this helps

[Guest cheech10]

I liked the Kaplan comprehensive review book. The Flowers and Silver book was the one I had originally bought, but after going through it all I didn't feel that I had learned much so I bought the Kaplan book. It was much more in-depth in embryology and physiology (2 subjects I thought I was weak on). Looking back though, the Flowers and Silver book probably wasn't that bad, since those subjects hardly came up on my test and when they did, the answers were in the passages.