Best Textbooks (not prepbooks) for MCAT 2015 study

[YossarianLives]

Hi all,

To give a little background, I'm a non-tradition (future) applicant that has worked in the chemistry field for some time. I am starting to think about how I would prep for the MCAT, and although I have taken most of the requisite courses, it seems like ancient history now.

With that in mind, and since I am not going to be actually sitting for the MCAT for some time, I thought that actually working through textbooks on the material may be better for me than working through MCAT prep books, since at this time, I probably need a more "ground-up" approach, and I feel like I may not be adequately prepared for even the prep books.

With that in mind, I've done some searching on textbooks, but most sources I've seen dealt with the old MCAT. So with the new MCAT in mind, can anyone list textbooks they have either had in class or have used on the side that is a good starting point? I am particularly interested in the biology (and biochemistry), physics, and social science books you have to recommend. But please feel free to list chemistry resources as well, so that people that search for this can use it as a resource! Thank you so much in advance!

I have started to re-read Campbell Biology - is that a good starting point for the Bio section?

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[ElectricNoogie]

Any basic college textbook should be fine for the sciences. AFAIK, there are no college textbooks meant for the MCAT. Be aware that no matter what college level text book you buy, it will contain lots of information that will never be tested on the MCAT.

The problem is there is just no way a college textbook will sell well if it only covers the limited science material tested on the MCAT while on the other hand, an MCAT book will not sell if it contains all the info a college class covers that will never show up on the exam. If you want a good level of content that you can easily limit to MCAT relevant science topics, the Khan Academy video series is pretty good. It still contains much info that will not necessarily show up on the exam, but if you are interested in more background than an MCAT book will give you, it will certainly do that. Also, it's free.

Otherwise, grab any college level book in bio, orgo, physics, biochem, psych and soc and then go through the table of contents with the AAMC MCAT outline open. This way you can limit your reading to materials that will be covered or useful for the exam.

Hope this helps, good luck!

 

[SpongeBobDude]

Take at least diagnostic FL - it's free. You will get an idea of exactly where your weaknesses are. I scored 489 - extremely low. My prerequisites were taken 5 years ago. So I'm in a similar situation. I wasn't able to tell the difference between Eukaryot or Prokariot. Yet I found prep books manageable and very helpful. Save your time and avoid crunching textbooks - cut it down to just what mcat needs. Otherwise you may study tons of textbooks and still score low on mcat. It's mostly exam that tests your reasoning and logic and to lesser extent knowledge. That is why most people improve their scores by doing FLs - because they learn how to reason for mcat specifically. Just give monkey a banana and don't try to conquer it all spending years to pass mcat. I don't think there are many top scorers, but there are tons of people who passed mcat, got their wanted score range and went on to med. schools. Don't make it harder than it is. Just my 2c.

 

[YossarianLives]

Really appreciate the responses! Thanks so much I'm going to go ahead and look for a set of prepbooks as a starting place (I'm thinking the EK series to start), and get a measure of how big my gaps are, and fill in with more rigorous text-based study when necessary!