Examcrackers

[Guest frenchfrog]

Hi,

Has anyone used the Examcrackers books to study

for the MCAT? If yes, are they any good? Do you

recommend that I buy them to prepare with?

Thanks for any input.

[Guest Madz25]

I bought the Examcrackers "101 Verbal Reasoning Passages" and I found it to be quite good. It definitely helped me improve my verbal score. I'd recommend buying it. I haven't used any of their other material so I can't comment. Hope this helps!

 

Madz

[Guest climberchick]

I thought examkrackers books were comprehensive, and the practice questions were great. The audio osmosis cd's on the other hand are a waste of money... the commentary is actually kinda annoying... especially if your female. As well the music is aweful. It was hard to listen to all the CD's, let alone listening to them more than once. It's a good idea, but it needs to be toned down a lot.

So my adive, go with the examkrackers complete study guide and the Examkrackers 1001/101 questions series... and Practice Practice Practice!

Good-Luck,

~climber

[Guest Malikar]

climberchick,

 

the commentary is actually kinda annoying... especially if your female.

 

What do you mean by this?

 

Mal

[Guest climberchick]

Well basically... Jordan and John... the narrators... put a lot of effort into trying to be funny, which is annoying in and of it's self... (in my oppinion the CD's would have been better if they had just played it straight)... however what made it worse... and I don't mean to over emphasize this (becuase it wasn't terrible)... is that much of the humour was directed towards the male audience... and was sometimes a little sexist.

 

The main point however, is that I did not find the CD's at all helpfull... and would recommend sticking to the written material, which I thought was excellent.

 

Hope that answers your question.

~Climber

[Guest Malikar]

haha, way to go Jordan and John. Way to alienate half their potential audience .

[Guest MAAMD]

Hey

 

I just want to add that the Examcrakers Audio Osmosis is definitely annoying and yeah, alot of jokes are sexist (like the wife who can't drive and whatnot..) but it can be helpful. If you can tolerate the annoying music, and the trying-too-hard-to-be-funny tone, you'll find it useful. It helped me with some new problem solving skills, and explaining some concepts in a new way that really made them stick. The best thing for me is I learned to do problems in my head because I was forced to listen and not jot down everything on paper like I always do.

 

So it's not all bad.

[Guest jamiel911]

the 101 verbal is great. it is very similar to a real mcat. although i found that some of the answers were quite strange, it was probably because verbal is my worst section.

you can purchase it on amazon.ca for approx. 25 dollars.

 

good luck

[Guest premed777]

i thought the books were really good too, especially once you've exhausted Kaplan.

If anyone wants to buy the chemistry, verbal and or/physics books, IM me (can you do that on this board?)

[Guest 4EverRose]

I have also used the verbal 101 and I found it useful for preparation. I like the fact that it's passage length / difficulty are pretty similar to those in the real MCAT, not like for some passages from Kaplan/Princeton that either they are too long or too difficult.

 

There were 11 verbal practice sessions in the book, and my verbal score improved by about 2 points after finishing all 11 (yes it was a consistent upward trend). Of course it is possible that somehow they made the passages progressively easier, but anyways my real MCAT score was pretty much the score I got at the end of the practice.