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TPR and my rant...


pbear

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I've been studying from the TPR books (and doing the course online) for four weeks now. I am getting really frustrated with the passages/questions TPR assigns. I'm not a science major so I'm learning organic chemistry, chemistry and physics from scratch...

 

I've been working through the questions and I'm getting all the freestanding questions close to perfect but when it comes to the TPR books' passages, I'm getting close to 0! I find that it requires a lot of external knowledge about the subjects that they don't teach and I don't have. What do I do? :( Did anybody find that the TPR passages differ from the actual MCAT? Are the MCAT ones more difficult?

 

I realize one can not know EVERYTHING for the MCAT and there will be questions where accurate estimations will need to be made, but I find that most of the passages assigned by TPR require external knowledge not provided in the passage OR the course.

 

BLAH!

 

I feel so discouraged :( My MCAT is on August 19th and its already kinda the middle of June.

 

There. That's my rant.

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I've been studying from the TPR books (and doing the course online) for four weeks now. I am getting really frustrated with the passages/questions TPR assigns. I'm not a science major so I'm learning organic chemistry, chemistry and physics from scratch...

 

I've been working through the questions and I'm getting all the freestanding questions close to perfect but when it comes to the TPR books' passages, I'm getting close to 0! I find that it requires a lot of external knowledge about the subjects that they don't teach and I don't have. What do I do? :( Did anybody find that the TPR passages differ from the actual MCAT? Are the MCAT ones more difficult?

 

I realize one can not know EVERYTHING for the MCAT and there will be questions where accurate estimations will need to be made, but I find that most of the passages assigned by TPR require external knowledge not provided in the passage OR the course.

 

BLAH!

 

I feel so discouraged :( My MCAT is on August 19th and its already kinda the middle of June.

 

There. That's my rant.

 

TPR in-book passages are harder - just take it as a learning experience and cool facts and traps to avoid. They do need more external knoweldge, but if you can solve them then you have pretty good mastery of the material so far. Just save it at the end, do more freestanding first.

 

Remember - the material is the same...you're going to have to learn it one way or another, one prep book or another...it all takes time.

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I only have one TPR book, it came with two practice exams. I found it enormously harder than the MCAT: the questions are far more literal, and take much more memorisation. My highest score on the TPR practice exams was 30; I scored 38 a few days later on the actual exam.

 

More importantly, I don't feel TPR really tests the full bredth of the questions you will see on the MCAT. It tests a very specific subset of questions that the TPR writers probably feel are 'harder'; therefore, you may be surprised by some of the MCAT questions that use totally different test methods.

 

I really recommend you try some other practice besides just TPR. After revisiting the TPR resources I have at home, since doing the mcat, I am getting less and less impressed with how they handle it. Not that your current work is useless or anything, but it will give you a onesided perspective on the exam.

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I only have one TPR book, it came with two practice exams. I found it enormously harder than the MCAT: the questions are far more literal, and take much more memorisation. My highest score on the TPR practice exams was 30; I scored 38 a few days later on the actual exam.

 

More importantly, I don't feel TPR really tests the full bredth of the questions you will see on the MCAT. It tests a very specific subset of questions that the TPR writers probably feel are 'harder'; therefore, you may be surprised by some of the MCAT questions that use totally different test methods.

 

I really recommend you try some other practice besides just TPR. After revisiting the TPR resources I have at home, since doing the mcat, I am getting less and less impressed with how they handle it. Not that your current work is useless or anything, but it will give you a onesided perspective on the exam.

 

 

Did you get that 38 score after you had finished studying for the MCAT (aka after you had finished reading that TPR book)? I just think its a total waste of time doing AAMC practice exams when I'm only done about 1/3 of the TPR course and I have a weak science background.

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Did you get that 38 score after you had finished studying for the MCAT (aka after you had finished reading that TPR book)? I just think its a total waste of time doing AAMC practice exams when I'm only done about 1/3 of the TPR course and I have a weak science background.

 

I did the free AAMC exam before I started, to see where to study. Then I did EK audio osmosis and TPR mcat workout (comes with 2 free exams), and a lot of free stuff from wikipremed. Then I did the TPR practice exams that came with the workout, and my score (30, worse than where i'd been before I started studying) really discouraged me, so I did an AAMC practice exam and scored much higher (I think 35-36). I highlighted my weak areas and reviewed them, did the other TPR exam and scored something like 29, laughed at TPR, went to the MCAT, and got 38. I don't think TPR accurately represents what the MCAT is like.

 

With the science sections, TPR is more based on memorisation. It's harder to get necessary knowledge out of the passage, so the passages are more useless. On the actual MCAT it's a very valuable skill to be able to get info from the passage to answer the passage questions, and I don't think TPR helps you learn that. It does a great job of testing memorisation, though, which is certainly useful.

 

On VR, TPR focuses heavily on small word twists and very literal interpretations of the text taken out of context. These are useful and tricky questions, but focusing only on these kinds of questions leaves you vulnerable to the other types of VR questions, such as author opinion questions and the like. Further, I think their literal interpretation type questions are often poorly worded and open to interpretation. I found the VR difference most drastic with TPR; I scored something like 7-8 on their VR, and 13 on the real one.

 

I've only used the one TPR book, so take my synopsis with a grain of salt.

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I did the free AAMC exam before I started, to see where to study. Then I did EK audio osmosis and TPR mcat workout (comes with 2 free exams), and a lot of free stuff from wikipremed. Then I did the TPR practice exams that came with the workout, and my score (30, worse than where i'd been before I started studying) really discouraged me, so I did an AAMC practice exam and scored much higher (I think 35-36). I highlighted my weak areas and reviewed them, did the other TPR exam and scored something like 29, laughed at TPR, went to the MCAT, and got 38. I don't think TPR accurately represents what the MCAT is like.

 

With the science sections, TPR is more based on memorisation. It's harder to get necessary knowledge out of the passage, so the passages are more useless. On the actual MCAT it's a very valuable skill to be able to get info from the passage to answer the passage questions, and I don't think TPR helps you learn that. It does a great job of testing memorisation, though, which is certainly useful.

 

On VR, TPR focuses heavily on small word twists and very literal interpretations of the text taken out of context. These are useful and tricky questions, but focusing only on these kinds of questions leaves you vulnerable to the other types of VR questions, such as author opinion questions and the like. Further, I think their literal interpretation type questions are often poorly worded and open to interpretation. I found the VR difference most drastic with TPR; I scored something like 7-8 on their VR, and 13 on the real one.

 

I've only used the one TPR book, so take my synopsis with a grain of salt.

 

 

I agree with you, I think TPR tests more on memorization, which is why I"m finding that I don't even properly read the passages in detail anymore. I just treat TPR passages like freestanding questions. I'll be sure not to do that when I do my first AAMC test.

 

Thank you for your thorough response!

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