MCAT study materials general consensus

[AlphaStudent]

Im planning on taking the princeton review ultimate course, 123 hours of instruction + 7 prep books. I was looking for books with dense material coverage and I heard from people that princeton review covers topics really in depth. Also I have friends who used princeton and scored pretty well, which is why I was planning on going with them. How do the princeton review MCAT books stack up against the competition such as TBR, Gold standard, ExamCrackers, Kaplan, etc.?

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[BerkReviewTeach]

It all depends on you and your learning style. Go back and read the first post by Zendabi in the other thread like this one that you posted. He does a good job of breaking down what each different material is meant to do.

And also keep in mind, that many people who respond in these threads have only used a small amount of the materials available and a good number of them have not actually taken the MCAT. You should filter responses based on how they did on the MCAT relative to how they did/do in school. If someone with a 3.93 GPA gets a 509 on the MCAT, did they do their best? They might be happy with their materials, but in all reality, better materials could have gotten them a 515 to 520. By better, I mean ones more suited to do well on passages on the actual MCAT.

One reason I really like Zendabi's posts are that he personally used many different materials and he figured out the secrets to do well for his style of learning... and he did really well his second sitting.

You should also check out this post on all things MCAT! Again, it is the advice of some AFTER they took the MCAT and outscored their GPA significantly.

 

[AnotherLawyer]

Im planning on taking the princeton review ultimate course, 123 hours of instruction + 7 prep books. I was looking for books with dense material coverage and I heard from people that princeton review covers topics really in depth. Also I have friends who used princeton and scored pretty well, which is why I was planning on going with them. How do the princeton review MCAT books stack up against the competition such as TBR, Gold standard, ExamCrackers, Kaplan, etc.?

Start by recognizing that the general consensus is that practice passages are more important than content review. That's why EK and TBR, which are very different when it comes to content, are so highly regarded - they both have great practice passages included in each chapter. With that said you should design your study plan around doing a ton of high quality practice passages (and then add even more time). Once you've scheduled the time for that, fill up the rest with content review. If time allows you to go through TBR in its entirety, great. If you don't have as much time, go to EK. Or pick something all together different. The point is that content review will not make or break you (unless you are severely deficient). Your dedication to doing and reviewing passages is what will make the difference.