Wow everybody, great thread. You guys bring up some excellent points, and it's great to see so many other skeptical/critical pre-med students! A few thoughts and calls to action:
1) We can't be overcritical. To call posts in this thread "inflammatory" is absolutely ridiculous. We need to keep a critical eye on companies like NS (another perfect example is the threads Testing Solutions participates in and creates), because they very intentionally will try to make friends with the user base, establish themselves as working on your behalf, and then subtly or not subtly promote their own products now that they have established ethos. In fact, NS even has marketed itself on SDN as for the "[paraphrased] self-study type students that typify SDN." I here am guilty of having an unquestioning faith in NS and their mission after seeing all the free help they have provided on SDN. If criticism is unfounded, then NS and other companies will be able to answer to criticisms and the quality of their products will speak for themselves.
2) It is very important that we are skeptical of any products promoted on here as with any forum. I've heard about companies on Reddit establishing Karma (credentials? I don't use reddit) and then subtly suggesting their product or creating a clever post that gives them more visibility. SDN is not immune to this type of misleading advertising, and we need to be vigilant. As someone in the post pointed out, this is exactly what NS seems to be doing. Kudos to everyone here for doing such excellent research on this company!
3) Many companies use fake reviews on Amazon, especially if you look at Testing Solutions CARS practice. That **** is painfully fake, but you also see it with EK, PR, and Kaplan products (I've honestly seen it the least with Kaplan, however). A little common sense and community discussion will make sure that we're not duped. It is also important to look at the most critical reviews on Amazon. If there are none, of if anything critical has many people who have ranked it as unhelpful, then flags should immediately be raised.
***4) Apart from being skeptical of and critiquing product reviews and posts on here, it is also important that we work as a community to figure out what products are good and what are not. Ultimately, test prep companies do not have the best interests of students in mind. Profits are always their underlying goal. This is not to say that test prep companies are 100% evil and provide nothing of value of students, it just means that, again, we need to be skeptical and stay questioning. The best way to find valuable MCAT resources are posts on SDN. See what real users are saying, not what some MCAT guru says he can do for you or some useless Amazon review says. We need to constantly say what is and is not working for us. For example, I for one fell victim to NS and quickly bought their 108 Passages in CARS when it went on sale. I haven't started working though it, but I will make sure to give it an honest review for you all to see once I have begun doing so and compared it to what other companies and the AAMC offers.
5) Study resources for the 2015 MCAT were scarce through the earlier part of this year, and it now seems that we are being hit with a tide of material, including both practice problems and mock exams, from older reputable companies as well as new companies trying to establish a foot in a new MCAT market. Let's all work together to find out the pros/cons and cost effectiveness of different resources so that we can all make the best informed decisions possible in preparing the new MCAT.
