Berkeley Review going way to much into detail???

[MCAT guy]

Do other prep companies do stuff like this?

I'm taking a full length and this is in the answer solutions:

Insulin is an eighty-six amino acid protein hormone that has three regions responsible for the activity of the compound. The A unit is composed of amino acids 66 through 86, the B unit is composed of amino acids 1 through 30, and the C unit is composed of amino acids 33 through 63. Amino acids 31 (Arg), 32 (Arg), 64 (Lys), and 65 (Arg) serve connectivity and folding purposes only.

why in the world would you need to know any of this for the MCAT?

My degree is in Micro, I've never run into explanations on Insulin's structure nor do I see any relevance to this info for the MCAT...

BR is so weird sometimes.

I also liked this question (lol):

What makes DNA more stable than RNA?

I. DNA lacks a hydroxyl group at the 2' carbon atom, making the polymer less susceptible to hydrolysis.
II. DNA is a double-stranded molecule, while RNA is found primarily as a single-stranded species.
III. DNA uses thymine instead of uracil as a nitrogenous base.

I only, II and III, I and II, or I, II and III

Obviously II, likely I also but III? Who would know III off the top of their head? You would need to have nitrogenous base structures memorized?

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[ilovemcat]

Do other prep companies do stuff like this?

I'm taking a full length and this is in the answer solutions:

why in the world would you need to know any of this for the MCAT?

My degree is in Micro, I've never run into explanations on Insulin's structure nor do I see any relevance to this info for the MCAT...

BR is so weird sometimes.

I also liked this question (lol):

What makes DNA more stable than RNA?
I only, II and III, I and II, or I, II and III

Obviously II, likely I also but III? Who would know III off the top of their head? You would need to have nitrogenous base structures memorized?

Lol, yeah, BR is notorious for including too much detail, especially in Biology. Personally, I would opt with TPRH or EK as they both teach the essentials of what you need to know ...not the extra trivia BR throws at you.

For the Biology question you included:

I. DNA lacks a hydroxyl group at the 2' carbon atom, making the polymer less susceptible to hydrolysis.
II. DNA is a double-stranded molecule, while RNA is found primarily as a single-stranded species.
III. DNA uses thymine instead of uracil as a nitrogenous base.

I and II are common pieces of knowledge that any pre-med student should know. As for III, I would reason that DNA is more stable than RNA. RNA is more prone to replication errors than DNA and therefore I would assume that helps maintain the stability of DNA.

 

[MCAT guy]

Yeah, the III. option helped stability.

Yet the point was that a student could reason either way and the justification for the correct response would either be knowing trivia or guess work. The reasoning would not involve applying basic science info or using passage info to derive an answer (what the MCAT is about).

I guess all prep companies have their strengths and weaknesses.

BR is conceptually strong but this leads to their weakness of being as focused as ADD kid after a 6 pack of Red Bull. If somehow a prep company could match the conceptual strength of BR with the focused economical approach of EK, that would be the best.

But you can't have it all I guess. Maybe TPR is the best mix, who knows. I used to think so little of Kaplan but not anymore.