EK 9th Edition

[sharpieLIFE]

For those of you that bought the 9th edition set for EK - what were your thoughts on it ?

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[nomdeplume1234]

Well it certainly is overpriced.
There is a review on Amazon about it that puts it pretty well:

"The psych, and CARS books are nice. There are a lot of refresher terms and it gives me an idea about what form the questions on the test may be.

However, I'm finding the rest of the subject books to be pretty horrible in terms of how they're written, what information they provide and logical order. They really don't explain things conceptually within the chapters. Diagrams are all over the place. It's like the editors were loaded up on an energy drink and puked out tips/charts/questions and formulas without really explaining things. I don't feel like I'm 'grasping' the subject matter reading through them as I did with the Kaplan material. (I'm not the type to be reliant on pure memory, I enjoy understanding the processes.)

That said, these DO have a lot of practice problems that I've found way more useful than the chapter content itself.

If you're going to buy these for using solely as practice material, then I would recommend them!
If you're planning on learning/refreshing your concepts, I would probably avoid these or plan on getting supplemental material to use in conjunction."​

 

[dl8001]

The Chem books is terrible it's all over the place . The old ek is much better for Chem and Orgo . Physics is not bad . Other books are good too.

 

[655703]

I used only their 2 Bio books and the Psych/Soc book. In the bio books I feel like the concepts and big picture ideas are explained really well, but they are definitely lacking in biochemistry. The Psych/Soc book is good for people who have taken Psych/Soc courses and only need a refresher on the material; the content is very scarce in this book.

I think the best thing about these books is the practice passages. There aren't a lot, but they appear to be well-written.

 

[somedudehere]

Wait until they republish them. psych/soc is missing at least half the content on the aamc outline

 

[NSxortho]

I did Kaplan biochem and EK biochem. Kaplan was WAY more organized, detailed, and understandable. I like how EK stresses the general concepts that we need to know but it really feels disorganized and hard to follow. New information is presented one after another and there isn't a lot of examples, or clear explanations to provide an in-depth understanding of the material. With that said, Kaplan doesn't have the 30 minute passage based tests so EK definitely wins over there. EK is also not following AAMC's outline whatsover, and if it is , it's very very disorganized. Kaplan biochemistry chapter 1 follows the AAMC outline word for word, explaining each topic in their respective order. I found it so pleasant, and was able to follow each topic with khan academy while doing kaplan.

I'm doing both full sets so it doesn't really matter, but if you had to go with one, I'd say Kaplan would be a better choice.

 

[Jack Westin]

Focus on the AAMC outline. It doesn't matter where you get the content from as long as you are doing a lot of questions everyday. The questions will reinforce the content better than any kind of review.