TPRH is The Princeton Review Hyperlearning series. I know they've changed their books recently, but I'm not sure if they still have the same content. My Physical Sciences Review is from 2010 and my Biological Sciences Review is from 2009. I picked them up in Half Price Books. They are huge books that have two subjects a piece in them. They don't have practice questions other than a few examples, so you have to take practice elsewhere. The best resource is the TPRH Hyperlearning MCAT Science Workbook because it goes in the exact same order. My version of that is from 2012 and I don't really notice many discrepancies switching from year to year. I think if you can find them (which can be tough) they are excellent review. The videos I'm talking about are Chad's videos, which are the
www.coursesaver.com website. Chad is the guy who teaches them. They aren't free like Khan Academy, but I think they're worth every penny for those of us who have such a long gap between prereqs and MCAT. I especially love that a lot of his examples are taken from TPRH so it makes the transition easy and it's like having a prep course at home. He has quizzes (pretty tough) that you can take multiple times, but again, other practice materials are definitely necessary as they aren't passage based.
I've heard of Khan academy but not Chad's videos. Also haven't heard of Coursesaver. Do you basically pay a subscription and get access to their videos?
Exactly.
I've heard that EK books are great - do you find that they are better than Kaplan/BR/TPRH. Also haven't heard of BR hehe. Sorry for all the rudimentary questions.
EK is good for people who have a great background and just need a quick review because it guts all the details and context and states the bare facts. Unfortunately, I often have no earthly idea what they are talking about without studying from something else first. Please don't worry about rudimentary questions - I am absolutely willing to help anyone in the same boat I am.
BR is the Berkeley Review. They are a small prep company out of California that has some dynamite questions, but they are TOUGH and they overload you on more to memorize than you really need in a lot of subjects, so for me it was overwhelming. I also have EK 1001 series for everything but Biology, which is my best area (I have a degree in Microbiology and made a 9 on AAMC 3 with absolutely no memory at all of O Chem, so I just don't need it, and it gets poor reviews compared to the others). I also bought all of the AAMC exams and a friend gave me all the old Kaplan Review practice tests.
P.S. I guess you're charting your own course/setting your own schedule then, if you're using resources from different companies?[/QUOTE]
I am charting my own course, but I'm using the ideas I've gained by trying to follow a couple of other study schedules that simply didn't work for me. I will do content review at a chapter a day, alternating subjects, then watch the coursesaver videos and require myself to make a 100 on the quiz (working and reworking the quiz questions) and then finally working through the first 1/3 of the workbook questions. The second 1/3 I will do on the weekends as a recap. I'll save the last third for the practice problems gauntlet I've got waiting for me on the other side of content review, where I will spend roughly 8 hours a day (I'm a teacher, about to be out of school for the summer) working problems and reviewing what I got wrong.
I hope something in what I said is useful! Have a great time studying (it really is kind of fun, isn't it?) and good luck on the MCAT!