Wikipremed Reliable?

i checked it out a little, seems kinda legit if you think its helpful for your studyin

August 2013 - This note is just to let folks know that WikiPremed is still going strong. We have added many features this year including a new diagnostic testing center designed to help you pinpoint your strengths and weaknesses in physics, with biology coming within the next few weeks. Through the Fall we'll be rolling out some learning management tools as well as new editions of the physical science videos and completely new videos in biology. If you have any questions please contact me any time through either SDN or through WikiPremed. Thanks again everyone!


Hi Everyone,

This is John Wetzel. I'm the creator of WikiPremed. I noticed some visitors inbound from this post, so I thought I'd drop in and give my point of view on the progress of the site.

How you prepare for the MCAT is a big choice. Whether Kaplan, Princeton Review, a website like mine, the creators of your method for MCAT are like guides you hire on a long journey. A family heading out on the Oregon trail in the 19th century had a big choice in choosing their guide to get them across the continent. Would the guide be able to get them across the Plains? Across the Sierras? Do they really know the way? There is a lot of fear in the decision.

A big problem in MCAT review is that, for the most part, everything is private and proprietary. There is no peer review. A big reason why I decided to spend over a decade on this project is that the general lack of accountability in the field has led to poor quality in my opinion. I don't feel that current offerings come close to helping students realize their true potential. My feeling is that preparing for the MCAT gives a student the opportunity in comprehensive review to get further in understanding, to go deeper, not just to recapitulate the 101 curriculum, but to unify your scientific understanding within a structured knowledge base, where your chemistry comes out of your physics, and your biological sciences stand solidly on your physical sciences, so I have my opinion of the quality of the standard fare, the courses, the books, and all that, and for the most part (with a few exceptions), I feel like it's not all that ambitious or effective.

As far as credentials go I made a 38 on the MCAT in 1994. I am a Stanford graduate. As an MCAT instructor, I taught small groups of students about a course I created in a small company in Atlanta called MCAT Academy from 1994 to 1998, about fifty teaching cycles. It's hard to describe the intensity of this experience and how much I gained from it. Since 1998, I have gotten up in the wee hours every morning and worked to build WikiPremed. For phases of the project I have said, this will take me two years, that will take me three years. I think the project is going well.

For example, the physics flashcards on the site took me 3 years to create, and I think that this work represents the best preparation for the physics on the exam. The organic mechanisms and explanations are also very good, I think, and also the crossword puzzles, the physical science problem sets, and the question server (for building conceptual vocabulary).

Also, an entire free video course is coming soon. Hopefully within the the next couple of weeks these will start rolling out. For the viewer of the video course, it will be as if you are participating in a small group course. About half of the raw recordings are done. Now I need to do editing and rendering. Hopefully the whole course will be online by mid summer.

Next year, I hope to be able to say, yes, you can completely rely on WikiPremed as the best preparation for the MCAT. At WikiPremed, nothing is for sale at the site now, but to be straightforward, the business model will depend on students purchasing a couple of printed items while participating in the course, but almost everything for sale will be in a free form on the site in digital form, so we'll see how that goes! For the Physics System, for example, having the actual cards seems to allow for a different kind of attention than the online view, so I'm hopeful at least of the site becoming a decent business. Purchases will not serve as barriers though. It is a central mission of mine that anyone anywhere in the world will be able to go to WikiPremed and receive a solid education in the concepts of undergraduate physical and biological sciences without paying any money. I'm going to try to keep advertising very minimal.

In summary, while WikiPremed is not complete, for now, I think you can help yourself by using the site as a supplementary study vehicle and as a guide for your overall strategy. If you take the time with the syllabus (which isn't finished) and study the topics in the main cycle sequence of WikiPremed, you will find yourself making the connections in your scientific knowledge base corresponding to the superior understanding that goes with a great MCAT score.

Good luck everybody! Write to me some time.

I'll give it a look, John.

Hey...I just wanted to vouche for the wikipremed site...it's the most comprehensive site out there that doesn't cost an arm and a leg plus a rib...
The physics is especially great and the printed version is most definitely worth the cost!!!!

Strong second post.

I think it is the best comprehensive prep out there.

Orly? What do you like about it?

.

I don't mean to bash the site, but I'll draw a corollary: would you use Wikipedia to do the majority of your research/studying for an exam required for you to graduate? What about for a test that will play a large role in determining where you can go to medical school?

...me neither.

ColeOnTheRoll said:

I don't mean to bash the site, but I'll draw a corollary: would you use Wikipedia to do the majority of your research/studying for an exam required for you to graduate? What about for a test that will play a large role in determining where you can go to medical school?

...me neither.

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that's not really a fair analogy; there's no wikipedia page that focuses on a specific exam at a specific school. This website focuses on one test, and isn't subject to open editing like wikipedia.

Moderators. Thank you. I appreciate being able to answer the occasional questions about the progress of WikiPremed that come up at the Student Doctor Network. I will not initiate a discussion. I think this is a wonderful forum and I hope this kind of comment by me is okay.

ColeOnTheRoll, your point about Wikipedia is well taken. It is the second comment I have seen which makes me (almost) regret the name of the WikiPremed MCAT Course. The name was chosen to reflect a debt to Wikipedia. It also reflects the fact that the WikiPremed MCAT Course exists in the open access, creative commons space. It owes a lot to Wikimedia Commons, for artwork, for example, and I've contributed thousands of figures to the commons myself, but WikiPremed is not a true 'wiki' in the sense that anybody can edit it. There may be some wiki-type exercises in the future, but the course is way too enormously, intricately planned out to be a wiki in the sense that I think you mean.

Also, thank you Fitzgerald for your kind comments. The present state of the course does reflect a solid year and a half of work since I made the comment above, so it is much further along. At this point, the videos for physics, general chemistry, organic chemistry, and about half of biology are on the site. I am behind schedule with the rest of biology, but I hope to get most of those edited and on site before the middle of summer. I don't want to promise, though. I am pretty upset at how long this is taking. Things are going well now, though, and I'm definitely happy about how cellular respiration turned out this past week and how genetics is coming along. I think the cellular respiration presentation is going to make a lot of people very happy that they took up learning science with me.

Basically, at this point, even though there are a few videos left to do, and the verbal reasoning program needs some work, if you follow the program, you will have a good course from start to finish. The learning goals and assignments are complete from start to finish. There are many types of resources on the site in addition to the videos. If you are intelligent and disciplined enough to fulfill the learning goals of the course in their order you will be ready for the exam.

My feeling right now is that the students who did use WikiPremed as their primary MCAT course for the May test received a really excellent MCAT course. I hope everyone has done well! It will be even better for July. Many years of work are invested in this project. As a distance learning experience I think the current state is better organized than any of the fifty or so live course cycles I have taught over the years, and in the past my students have always done well overall.

It's up to you, though. Not everyone I have ever tried to help over the years is a doctor now. There have been some who honestly did not have the talent and some who did have the talent but for whom the knowledge did not coalesce, and this is painful to me to think about. You have to take responsibility for your own knowledge base as a kind of performance that you refine through study and practice. Keep perspective. Try to get yourself established with a good two weeks of study balanced with work, enjoyment, nutrition and exercise. Preparing for the MCAT is a marathon, not a sprint. MCAT discipline seems impossible for many at first, but whatever you can do for two weeks can become a habit especially if you make it fun.

John, I am doubtful that WikiPremed will replace any big test companies for structured MCAT preparation, however, I do think it would be a HUGE help if it were used as a complementary study aid. For instance, there are many times I had to search through wikipedia and google because there was some concept I was unclear about and perhaps WikiPremed will allow users to easily search through its database to find these problem topics and easily find some MCAT relevant answers to these questions.

That said, this site is amazing and I hope you keep up the good work! Also, I haven't gone through the entire site so please take what I said with a grain of salt.

This looks like a pretty good resource. I have bookmarked it!

the flashcards are by far the best i've ever seen. I wish I had bought them before I took my mcat.

Thanks for the kind comments plsfoldthx about the flashcards at WikiPremed. I encourage you to investigate the course as a whole more thoroughly. It is an enormous work and it is completely open access.

But please forgive me for taking exception to your statement, "John, I am doubtful that WikiPremed will replace any big test companies for structured MCAT preparation, however, I do think it would be a HUGE help if it were used as a complementary study aid." I have no argument against anyone using WikiPremed as a supplement to one of the big live courses. There aren't any registration fees, no restricted areas, no 'premium memberships' or anything like that at WikiPremed, so you can use the course pretty much however you would like. It's not an either or proposition. You don't have to choose.

In fact I think that starting with WikiPremed several months before a live course is a very good strategy to aim to get the most out of the live course by hitting the ground running. However, I think it is very likely that students who start with this plan will eventually come to view their live course as a supplement to WikiPremed by the time they begin the live course. I say this even though the typical live course from the big national companies will have many excellent features. First of all, there is the camaraderie of being in a live course and the discipline of it. It may be different at Kaplan or TPR, but in teaching my small group course over the years many times, I have seen how being part of a team can make preparing for the MCAT a great experience for students. Secondly, the course materials at Kaplan and TPR are excellent. They really are. The ExamKrackers and Berkeley Review materials are excellent as well.

Okay. I have to say that something gets my goat, as they say, in your comment, and that is the word 'structure' as a difference with favor to the national courses, because in that regard the national courses are actually fairly puny. (I want to express wholeheartedly that I do not consider this critique to include the Berkeley Review). While as an entrepreneurial endeavor, WikiPremed is a truly ridiculous company, please don't confuse business values with educational values. WikiPremed makes no sense in the 'test prep business', but it does make sense if you understand what makes me happy, which is teaching future doctors, and if you take the time to investigate what over fifteen years of teaching and development work have achieved you will understand better.

A problem with the national courses is that learning programs cannot by design be very sophisticated because they are franchised. The course curriculum must be teachable by a graduate student or medical student who is not a professional educator. A program with a stronger core pedogical philosophy, the Berkeley Review, for example, is stuck in California because they will not dumb their program down to make it franchisable.

The WikiPremed MCAT Course follows an interdisciplinary spiraling curriculum. Structurally, it represents a goal oriented, step by step path through the physical and biological sciences which goes a great deal further than recapitulating summaries of the basic information. To an even greater degree than at the Berkeley Review, it would be impossible to franchise my course along the model of the national courses because of the expertise required to teach this way. I am a person with the ability to pretty much sit down without notes and teach the entire undergraduate general sciences from memory as a complex interwoven narrative that builds in an integrated way. That's my specialty. It's my profession, out here in the wild west of test prep. With WikiPremed I am trying to do something of real substance. It has taken me fifteen years to get the work this far. Although I don't expect people to spend fifteen years trying to understand the work before offering an opinion, it probably requires some time and effort.

I think many students begin the educational process in becoming a doctor as a passionate journey but fall by the wayside in MCAT preparation and lose sight of their love of knowledge. This can become even worse in medical school where pressure and time dictate. This review of science at the end of the undergraduate career is ostensibly for the MCAT but it actually needs to take place anyway to get you ready for medical school. My focus has been to make this process more worthwhile educationally.

All the best.

/ Thanks again, Moderators, for the opportunity to discuss WikiPremed sometimes when it comes up around here.

John,

I have used the website and I find your video lectures and flashcards extremely helpful. I am very thankful for hardworking people like yourself in this world.

Thanks.

I took an MCAT test on May 21st and I'm still waiting for my scores (I'll get my results in 2 weeks). Nonetheless, I don't think I did too well, so I am already preparing for a second test scheduled for July 16th. The first time around I used Kaplan's Live Online course and it wasn't too effective. Now I am using Wikipremed and it has helped me a bunch. I've learned a lot of new stuff and I've refreshed a lot of concepts. I only have a month until my next exam so I am working on approx. a lesson a day. I hope this works out for me at the end. Right now I'm looking to earn a 30 or higher and I hope Wikipremed can help me achieve such a score. I'm on a tight schedule but I have faith in Wikipremed. It's been excellent and extremely helpful so far. I'm just using Wikipremed and practice tests for my second exam, so I guess my scores will reveal the effectiveness of my study strategy! Thanks to John Wetzel for his continuous efforts! It is great to have someone give of his time to help others acheive their dreams! I have faith in your site and I truly appreciate all the hard work you have put in to it. If my scores reach at least a 30 I promise to forever promote your site, since I will be totally indebted to it! It all depends on my discipline with the use of the site and how well I can focus/practice in the next month. Thanks again for the site!

I remember running into this website not too long ago and bookmarked it as soon as I saw all the notecards. It's definitely helpful. I probably wouldn't recommend using it as the only source, but in the sense of using extra sources this is one of the top one's I've been using.

I use it for physics only and its good to me! Its like extra review in addition to TPR, EK, and kaplan. I like It and I have been using this quite some time now

ColeOnTheRoll said:

I don't mean to bash the site, but I'll draw a corollary: would you use Wikipedia to do the majority of your research/studying for an exam required for you to graduate? What about for a test that will play a large role in determining where you can go to medical school?

...me neither.

Click to expand...

I would use Wikipedia to study for the MCAT.

Wait, I do.

Hi guys, I couldn't play wikipremed videos on my android or iPad. I'm not very good at computer in general. so if Anyone knows the answer, please let me know. I really appreciate it. Thanks in advance.

I started using wikipremed lately to supplement what I am learning and it has been pretty helpful. A word of suggestion for John (if you have time) is to compose powerpoint slides such as those provided in the physics section for other subjects as well. I find it REALLY helpful.

shffl said:

I started using wikipremed lately to supplement what I am learning and it has been pretty helpful. A word of suggestion for John (if you have time) is to compose powerpoint slides such as those provided in the physics section for other subjects as well. I find it REALLY helpful.

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I'm about to make all of the slideshows publicly available as a directory archive of folders as well as Photoshop layers and GIMP, Seashore, PowerPoint if someone is inclined.

Although most of the shows adhere to a 800 X 450 format most of my archive of slides and images (about 6000 figures) is in 800 X 600 format which is better for Powerpoint and was more common in video when I started putting the image archive together from my own and CC sources. There are about 500 new figures from the slideshows that haven't been archived, and there are all of the metabolism, genetics and physiology slideshows I've been working on the past two years that haven't been released yet.

Thank you for the request. I'll set up a downloads page with the Photoshop files this week and put a link here. If you don't have Photoshop, you can use GIMP to open them as layers, which can then be batch exported as a folder of JPEGs and imported into PowerPoint. The only delay is that I need to rename the photoshop layers because I didn't have a convention when I made them.

Photoshop is superior to Powerpoint for teaching if you don't mind having functional margins with pallets because you can extend the slides vertically in a convenient way, so that for a few of the slides you might have dimensions of 800 X 2400 and just scroll down as you talk. With a $50 graphics tablet and a $400 projector, a teacher with Photoshop or GIMP and a good creative commons image archive is better positioned for any subject than all these idiotic whiteboard and software systems.

Yes I will definitely make this a high priority, and this is coming from a person with a lot of oars in the water. We had a leak behind the kitchen sink and it bloomed into black mold behind an entire wall two thirds of the way to the ceiling. Everybody is sick. I had to remove all of the dry-wall and cabinets and throw it all away, so right now our counter top is seven feet of corion across two dishwashers, my son needs big help in trigonometry, and my book shipping is dead in the water because I am working seventy hours per week, my printer is dead again and for a few who are waiting your back orders are like a raven following me around. I have really appreciated the patience and kindness this past month so I am very happy to have something easy to do that could benefit everybody. I think it might be fun to try to explain the slides to a study partner or two. If you get through explaining my slides to each other with a friend or two and get anything like what my point of view is you'd have to be pretty much inherently incapable if you don't rock the MCAT.

Actually I think I'll make another post today which will be a kind of reading group for the next twelve weeks for a few out of print works, mainly Bioenergetics by Lehninger, about 200 pages published throughout the 60's, and Outlines of Biochemistry, by Stumpf and Conn, about 250 pages, published in the same period. Going week by week and chapter by chapter through these books with certain learning goals in sequence I will try to run a discussion where the vocabulary evolves through most of the MCAT curriculum, certainly most of physics, pretty much of general chemistry and your organic mechanisms, and the biology up to genetics, meaning that we may leave the option of not going in depth into physiology as well as some of the physics including real problem solving magnetism, geometric and wave optics, and nuclear physics. I think outside of those topics, some of the physics and the physiology, we can pretty much cover it all. My rule is going to be to not link to or refer to Wikipremed in the discussion, but to only use out-of-print, fair use, and freely available resources on the web (but nothing MCAT). Questions about WikiPremed should be off limits I think because it will be most enjoyable if we make the course like a book club for the two books I mentioned. I like them because they are out-of-print and available for $2 in pretty decent quantity at Ebay and Amazon as well as better than anything you have ever read about metabolism except for Stryer. If enough students are interested I can pursue the texts from the copyright holders if the web runs out of the copies left. If there is too much high-lighter you can swab it away with a lightly moistened wipe of dilute sodium hypochlorite or trichloroisocyanuric acid and follow with a moistened wipe of sodium thiosulfate solution to neutralize the oxidizer before it affects the paper or printer's ink.

But anyway I'm happy to do this for kicks and to have something to help the dozens, I say dozens of students I am failing with really dismal customer service (should be back up tonight . If SDN can let the particular thread have a CC license I can use images from the commons and they can edit a book out of it if they want to make a lot of dough. They could print it. You could print it. We all could print it. It'd be no skin off my nose! If they could get Alfa Diallo to go along it'd be great to have access to the MCAT Pearls stuff for the discussion. The way to do it is for SDN to give him a cut of the printed method using basic manufacturing multiples. Who could compete with SDN in printing content developed on this website? It will help me get some ideas worked on. I need nothing else I tell you. I have appreciated that the community has accepted my postings and so this is a way I might be able to contribute that is consistent with the kind of approach that is only about the work I am trying to follow. Although the 'wiki' part is only coming apparent it should already be there in the philosophy behind WikiPremed. The more closed the network is to outside intrusion, the less able it is to engage with that which is outside itself, so MCAT courses based on holding back proprietary methods from scrutiny are going to be disadvantaged. If it can be more than just me pulling the wagon, meaning that folks take on a mutual responsibility for quality assurance, the book club I have proposed might even become one of your most valuable learning experiences.

Think I'll wait a few days before I start the new thread I described in the comment above, but I'll try to get the slideshows into a convenient downloadable form for everyone as soon as possible. We can work out a few of the ideas here first. The organizing principle will be the chapter by chapter progress through Lehninger and Stumpf and Conn. I will use the book chapters in a generative way to introduce basic concepts from physics, general chemistry, and organic chemistry and help people understand their learning goals at least. It might be fun too to co-create MCAT passages based on themes like 1) a new kind of dirigible for lifting incredibly heavy objects 2) abiogenesis 3) science fiction 4) the mitochondria 5) new ideas for destructive or non-destructive electrophoresis visualization such as a) sequential ashing with diffraction spectroscopy b) blotting for x-ray spectroscopy c) chiral co-migrants with rotating scanning polarimetry d) immersion into hot potassium periodate e) differential visualization of membrane and nonmembrane proteins. Can you think of any more? If we could make a creative commons or fair use practice MCAT or two made of entertaining passages to read, maybe with a unifying theme, here at SDN as part of the reading group I am envisioning, using only fair use sources, our biochemistry books, and our own imaginations, it will be fun for us and good for us too. Please let me know any thoughts or ideas in this thread so that my attention won't be wasted in this work and the ultimate product will be consistent with everyone's goals.

JohnWetzel said:

Think I'll wait a few days before I start the new thread I described in the comment above, but I'll try to get the slideshows into a convenient downloadable form for everyone as soon as possible. We can work out a few of the ideas here first. The organizing principle will be the chapter by chapter progress through Lehninger and Stumpf and Conn. I will use the book chapters in a generative way to introduce basic concepts from physics, general chemistry, and organic chemistry and help people understand their learning goals at least. It might be fun too to co-create MCAT passages based on themes like 1) a new kind of dirigible for lifting incredibly heavy objects 2) abiogenesis 3) science fiction 4) the mitochondria 5) new ideas for destructive or non-destructive electrophoresis visualization such as a) sequential ashing with diffraction spectroscopy b) blotting for x-ray spectroscopy c) chiral co-migrants with rotating scanning polarimetry d) immersion into hot potassium periodate e) differential visualization of membrane and nonmembrane proteins. Can you think of any more? If we could make a creative commons or fair use practice MCAT or two made of entertaining passages to read, maybe with a unifying theme, here at SDN as part of the reading group I am envisioning, using only fair use sources, our biochemistry books, and our own imaginations, it will be fun for us and good for us too. Please let me know any thoughts or ideas in this thread so that my attention won't be wasted in this work and the ultimate product will be consistent with everyone's goals.

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Hey John... just wanted to say thanks! You have a awesome site/resource that has helped me out tremendously!

I just wanted to say that I ordered the WikiPremed Bundle 5-6 weeks ago because I loved the website so much and wanted the materials physically...however I have not received it yet. I used the "Contact Us" box to inquire about this and never received a response. Today, I called the number listed on the website and got a recording that said, "The number you dialed is incorrect," and nothing else. I'm not sure how I am supposed to get a hold of anyone.

Yeah this site is sweet and I love it, but seriously?

JohnWetzel said:

Think I'll wait a few days before I start the new thread I described in the comment above, but I'll try to get the slideshows into a convenient downloadable form for everyone as soon as possible. We can work out a few of the ideas here first. The organizing principle will be the chapter by chapter progress through Lehninger and Stumpf and Conn. I will use the book chapters in a generative way to introduce basic concepts from physics, general chemistry, and organic chemistry and help people understand their learning goals at least. It might be fun too to co-create MCAT passages based on themes like 1) a new kind of dirigible for lifting incredibly heavy objects 2) abiogenesis 3) science fiction 4) the mitochondria 5) new ideas for destructive or non-destructive electrophoresis visualization such as a) sequential ashing with diffraction spectroscopy b) blotting for x-ray spectroscopy c) chiral co-migrants with rotating scanning polarimetry d) immersion into hot potassium periodate e) differential visualization of membrane and nonmembrane proteins. Can you think of any more? If we could make a creative commons or fair use practice MCAT or two made of entertaining passages to read, maybe with a unifying theme, here at SDN as part of the reading group I am envisioning, using only fair use sources, our biochemistry books, and our own imaginations, it will be fun for us and good for us too. Please let me know any thoughts or ideas in this thread so that my attention won't be wasted in this work and the ultimate product will be consistent with everyone's goals.

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That's definitely a great idea

amberisma said:

I just wanted to say that I ordered the WikiPremed Bundle 5-6 weeks ago because I loved the website so much and wanted the materials physically...however I have not received it yet. I used the "Contact Us" box to inquire about this and never received a response. Today, I called the number listed on the website and got a recording that said, "The number you dialed is incorrect," and nothing else. I'm not sure how I am supposed to get a hold of anyone.

Yeah this site is sweet and I love it, but seriously?

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I ordered mine on Dec 8th and the status still says "pending." My exam is on Jan 28th. I tried to call the same contact number and the number on the domain registration but no one is answering. I can still reverse this charge because I ordered it through paypal but I don't want this "just got scammed" feeling. I hope you can do something about it John.

I have the printed materials and they are great for carrying around to study on the go. But everything you need is on the website - the physics flashcards, the vocabulary and concept questions, etc. Just start going through the syllabus online and the printed material will be a bonus when it arrives.

pinchick said:

I have the printed materials and they are great for carrying around to study on the go. But everything you need is on the website - the physics flashcards, the vocabulary and concept questions, etc. Just start going through the syllabus online and the printed material will be a bonus when it arrives.

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Hi, how do you feel about the mandala board game ?

What do you all think of wikipremed's approach to verbal? Is it effective? The short answer questions about a passage seem interesting. Do you think it's a good way to study, though? Is it efficient?

It's a cool idea but I don't use it that much. I should probably get in the habit of looking at the board at the end of every module as a review. The questions for the game are on the website and I go through those at least once per module.

hey john, great to hear from u! ive been using ur site for a month now almost and i have to thank you for all the hard work you have put into it which is very evident... ur enthusiasm is contagious. i joined this forum since i saw ur massive replies. im actually from australia preparing for the gamsat but since on the gamsat website it says that most universities in australia recognise the mcat then the materials should be the same if not easier...

thanks for everything i mean in university they charge through most of the stuff and they dont explain it properly... u study to pass the exam and not for the sake of understanding and enjoy learning which i have through wikipremed! thanks heaps!

o yh have u ever thought about posting these vids on youtube... itll reach a much larger audience and i think ur open system will work more efficiently with more traffic to ur website... hmm u could apply for extra time on youtube to post 1 hr vids

On December 22, 2010 I placed and order for the prep bundle and it has not been processed yet(1/7/11). I would like to get a move on studying. I sent a message through the contact us link the other day and have not recieved a response. The telephone number listed on the site is incorrect. I am starting to become skeptical of the validity of the site. Has anyone ordered the prep bundle and had problems before?

Are there any other free tools that I can use to prepare for the MCAT. My funds are very limited, which is one reason I am angry the order wasn't processed when I placed it(when I had the money).
I hope Mr. wetzel responds to me.

Next Best MD said:

On December 22, 2010 I placed and order for the prep bundle and it has not been processed yet(1/7/11). I would like to get a move on studying. I sent a message through the contact us link the other day and have not recieved a response. The telephone number listed on the site is incorrect. I am starting to become skeptical of the validity of the site. Has anyone ordered the prep bundle and had problems before?

Are there any other free tools that I can use to prepare for the MCAT. My funds are very limited, which is one reason I am angry the order wasn't processed when I placed it(when I had the money).
I hope Mr. wetzel responds to me.

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Most of the materials are available on the site. Why not get started on them now while you wait? This thread may be about the wikipremed project; however, it is not necessarily regularly checked by John. (That being said, he does check it on occasion.) I believe he posted earlier that they are behind and working to catch up on things. Keep in mind, as well, that you ordered in the middle of the Christmas/Holiday season. Doing that pretty much guarantees you will receive things late. Sometimes, even though it sucks, you really do just have to be patient and get your head out of the sand long enough to realize the world doesn't revolve around you. Most small businesses (e.g., wikipremed, TBR, etc.) were closed or skeleton-staffed over the Holidays. They are now catching up. Sorry, sucks, I know, but just be patient and do what you can to study now!

Next Best MD said:

On December 22, 2010 I placed and order for the prep bundle and it has not been processed yet(1/7/11). I would like to get a move on studying. I sent a message through the contact us link the other day and have not recieved a response. The telephone number listed on the site is incorrect. I am starting to become skeptical of the validity of the site. Has anyone ordered the prep bundle and had problems before?

Are there any other free tools that I can use to prepare for the MCAT. My funds are very limited, which is one reason I am angry the order wasn't processed when I placed it(when I had the money).
I hope Mr. wetzel responds to me.

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Next Best MD, I purchased my bundle in November 2010 and haven't heard much from the website after they sent an email stating my order was being processed. Sad to say the # listed on the website is not a working number and have yet to receive my bundle as it is now January2011. I really want to have faith in them sending the package but have not had any reply email since the order being processed. Thankfully I have other study materials but was really looking forward to see if Wiki premed material gave me better assistance. Hope you hear back from them or get your package soon.

plsfoldthx said:

the flashcards are by far the best i've ever seen. I wish I had bought them before I took my mcat.

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For those who enjoy studying by using flashcards, I agree that theirs would be very helpful.

So basically the site gives you definitions of terms or am I missing something? New to this

apumic said:

Most of the materials are available on the site. Why not get started on them now while you wait? This thread may be about the wikipremed project; however, it is not necessarily regularly checked by John. (That being said, he does check it on occasion.) I believe he posted earlier that they are behind and working to catch up on things. Keep in mind, as well, that you ordered in the middle of the Christmas/Holiday season. Doing that pretty much guarantees you will receive things late. Sometimes, even though it sucks, you really do just have to be patient and get your head out of the sand long enough to realize the world doesn't revolve around you. Most small businesses (e.g., wikipremed, TBR, etc.) were closed or skeleton-staffed over the Holidays. They are now catching up. Sorry, sucks, I know, but just be patient and do what you can to study now!

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I am aware that the world doesn't revolve around me. There is a such thing as having business savvy. The information on the site is wrong. There isn't even a response to people contacting them. When I gave my credit card information when ordering I expected to be charged soon after, not whenever the company finds time to. Hopefully I'll have the money in that account when they decide to charge my card. There is a level of professionalism I expect when dealing with my account information.

Package Received, Thank you John. See my Review at http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showpost.php?p=11402491&postcount=74

Next Best MD said:

I am aware that the world doesn't revolve around me. There is a such thing as having business savvy. The information on the site is wrong. There isn't even a response to people contacting them. When I gave my credit card information when ordering I expected to be charged soon after, not whenever the company finds time to. Hopefully I'll have the money in that account when they decide to charge my card. There is a level of professionalism I expect when dealing with my account information.

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Seeing multiple complaints and the fact that you still have not gotten the package a couple of weeks after New Years', I would agree with you at this point. However, when you posted, you were complaining immediately after New Years' when you had ordered just before Christmas. It does not surprise me that something ordered a few days before the biggest holiday (and arguably busiest time and highest shipping volumes) of the year would get delayed (both in being shipped out and delivered); however, because others have also not received what they ordered, this is, indeed, strange. John's website, however, has been around for quite some time and he does post here (albeit fairly irregularly), which makes me trust him overall. It is strange, however, that several people are complaining about not receiving what they paid for. I cannot, however, vouch in either direction as wikipremed's materials were not something I purchased for my own MCAT review, although I did occasionally use his online material to supplement my primary approach. (I used TBR (all sci but bio + practice tests), EK (bio & VR), TPR Hyperlearning (VR & sci passages + supplemental), and Kaplan (extra sci passages) materials along w/ the AAMC exams and then supplemented readings with wikipremed and khan academy lecture videos as needed and utilized the wikipremed VR exercises that I felt would be helpful.)

I also have called the number on listed on Wikipremed (just 5 minutes ago) and heard the recording to the effect that the number was a non working number.
I also emailed Mr Wetzel through the email listed on his website (also sent him a PM from SDN) and to date I have received no response. I basically asked him if his ordering system was working still... Anyway, this does not imbue me with the greatest of trust/confidence in ordering his materials.

I understand that he might be doing this out of a love for education and just a general desire to help students but at some point he has to respond to the criticisms regarding the legitimacy of his website/business.

Again, the reference material on his website is good and helpful but really the lack of responses is unprofessional to say the least.

iPremed said:

http://www.wikipremed.com/

Have any of you guys used this?

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problem is the content is mostly from wikipedia which is somewhat unreliable and not in the right format. but beyond the accuracy issues, wikipedia is written in a style so distant from what you need for the MCAT that its entries are a waste of precious study time. If the website were creating its own open-source content formatted/organized in a way that was helpful for MCAT study, then it might be more useful. there are a lot of "definitions" which are not so helpful. what we really need are passage-based practice based on topics in order of study, and BR seems the only place to be doing this. I've been using EK, kaplan and they just don't have enough passages. passages, passages, passages not definitions and flash cards. oh, and i find it interesting that it's an 'open source' course where you have to buy proprietary materials (EK, wikipremed) to use the course. LOL. I used to work in open source education and this is not it.

dougkaye said:

problem is the content is mostly from wikipedia which is somewhat unreliable and not in the right format. but beyond the accuracy issues, wikipedia is written in a style so distant from what you need for the MCAT that its entries are a waste of precious study time. If the website were creating its own open-source content formatted/organized in a way that was helpful for MCAT study, then it might be more useful. there are a lot of "definitions" which are not so helpful. what we really need are passage-based practice based on topics in order of study, and BR seems the only place to be doing this. I've been using EK, kaplan and they just don't have enough passages. passages, passages, passages not definitions and flash cards. oh, and i find it interesting that it's an 'open source' course where you have to buy proprietary materials (EK, wikipremed) to use the course. LOL. I used to work in open source education and this is not it.

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I'm sorry but I think you might be getting confused between websites. What you wrote does not describe what I have seen from wikipremed. Nor does wikipremed claim to be a true wiki per se. You might want to go and actually check them out, I don't think you have done that. In addition the OP wants to know whether the website is useful and IMO it is, he is not asking about how representative the questions are. For that you need to buy AAMC,TPRH and/or BR. I think the wikipremed creator has put a remarkable product out there and...free; all lecture videos, flashcards and questions are free, just need to take 5 minutes and find them. I mean you don't even have to register to gain access to all that.

Package Received,
Please check http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showpost.php?p=11402491&postcount=74 for my review on the contents. A+

pizzakid said:

Hey everyone,
I'd like to bump this up and try to see if we can get an answer from Mr. Wetzel regarding the purchases that remain undelivered. If you paid with PayPal remember that you must file a dispute within 60 days. I'm holding off on a Chargeback with my bank because I have faith that this will get taken care of and I'll receive the bundle I ordered back in November.

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Have you received your package yet? I too ordered mine late November and its almost February still no package.

I just wanted to update my post and thank John for fulfilling my order. The package and contents have exceeded my expectations. Thank you John.

I still haven't received my bundle and I ordered it on November 3rd. The charge didn't show up on my credit card statement until January AND the status on my account at WikiPremed still says it's being processed (and has been since November 17th). There was even a different number listed next to the name on my credit card statement so I tried to call that too. Nope that number doesn't exist either.

I've lost faith in getting this package by now so I filed a claim about 3 weeks ago with my credit card company to pull back the charges. If you can't have the professionalism to respond to inquiries from your customers then you don't deserve my money.