Can you elaborate? What was better and why?
Are you talking about the TPR Verbal or TPRH? And are you talking about EK 101? There are many versions of CARS practice from both companies so please specify!
@azchuck
To be clear, I'm referring to the 2015 TPR CARS book (
https://www.google.com/search?q=tpr...m=shop&q=tpr+cars+mcat&spd=931381155270187697) and the EK strategy that can be found in the EK "Reasoning Skills" book that was designed for CARS (
https://www.examkrackers.com/store/Product_Details.aspx?p=178). I can't comment on hyperlearning vs EK101, but I've heard that hyperlearning may edge out EK101. Either way, I'm going to complete every passage in both books (as well as all AAMC prep material), because extra practice certainly can't hurt, regardless of slight differences in quality.
In reference to the strategies proposed by TPR and EK, the first thing that struck me after having read and tried both is that the EK strategy is so much more intuitive and simple, which ends up being incredibly important when it comes to time management. EK provides a few basic techniques and drills that ingrain the conceptual aspects of the the passages that you need to be familiar with. These are easy to learn, and perhaps even easier to implement because they make tackling passages feel so natural.
On the other hand, TPR's strategy is convoluted, impractical, and frankly exhausting. Even though an enormous number of students struggle with time pressure on this section, they recommend a bunch of time-consuming and unnecessary tactics such as:
1) Skimming a little bit of every passage right when you start the section to get a feel for their various difficulties, and then ranking them from easiest to most difficult and completing them in that order.
2) Skipping the most difficult passage altogether, and randomly guessing on all of the questions for that passage. Absolutely absurd.
3) Highlighting like crazy, including just about every word that indicates any sort of transition.
4) Writing the main idea for every paragraph onto your scratch paper (hint: it turns out that paragraphs aren't meant to be understood/analyzed as individual units, but rather must be viewed in direct relation to each other)
5) Memorizing a large list of all possible question types, and then taking the time to fit each question into one of those categories before trying to answer it.
6) Plenty of other time-consuming (read: time-wasting) "pointers" that make it so you probably do, in fact, have to end up skipping the last passage to finish in time.
Now fortunately for TPR, all of this is very marketable, because it's relatively original and teachable, whereas the more intuitive ideas that EK has to offer don't create the same kind of buzz. The EK book actually calls out other test prep companies (most likely directed at TPR) for their inefficient strategies, and gives pretty solid evidence to back up their critiques.
My scores have increased since making the switch of strategies, but more importantly, my speed has shot up an incredible amount. I have plenty of time to answer every question in every passage without the burden of complicated "passage-mapping", and that makes all the difference as long as you're capable of understanding why the correct answers are in fact correct.
Bottom line is that the marketability of TPR's complicated strategies seems to be overshadowing its poorly thought out content, and EK's incredibly efficient method is easier to learn, easier to implement, and easier to maintain during high-pressure and exhausting circumstances (which will be the circumstances you'll be testing under).
