I'm going to say that the course is not necessary. I did not take a prep course for the MCAT (and I only took it once), and I did great. I did however set up a very rigorous study schedule, and I didn't have a full time job. So those will be factors for you.
But bottom line, the prep course will help you only if you are not super motivated to put in huge hours yourself, or, if its been a loooong time since you've gone over the basic materials yourself. Other than that, the courses are not that useful in my opinion.
Futhermore, I think that most of the full length exams that kaplan offers, are crap. Really, the are not good as 'full length' practices. They way that concepts and materials are tested on a kaplan full length is not conducive to doing well on the real MCAT. They ask convoluted and overly complex questions which cause you to think in a different way, and interpret the questions differently. I would especially advise that you stay away from the kaplan verbal section. I truly believe this section is detrimental. Use the examkraker's verbal section and strategy instead.
What I did to study:
I had 4 months, and I was able to put in at least 3-4 hrs or more every single day and studied about 35-40hrs a week for 4 months.
I bough the kaplan premiere program, the princeton review 'cracking the CBT'
I had access to all AAMC practice tests, 4 princeton CBTs (These tests are REALLY, REALLY bad. Just...horrible. I did two of them then didn't do anymore) I had all 11 kaplan full lenghts (got them from a friend) and I had one "gold standard" CBT (really good exam!)
I also had the kaplan topical and subject tests (got them from a friend).
I also bought the kaplan Qbank, which is decent...however it's also too hard, and makes you think in a convoluted manner to arrive at the correct answer <- not conducive to doing well on the MCAT, which is much more straightforward usually.
I also had the examkraker's audio series to use when I was in a car or on a bus or something.
I did 1.5 months of very hard concept review. I learned everything that I could from all sections from both books (kaplan and princeton) in those 1.5 months. Each book approach each section in a different manner, and there is actually a fair bit of information that is not overlapped in both books. I highly suggest getting both of these books.
Now, I didn't have EVERYTHING done by the end of 1.5 months, but mostly.
Then I started doing practice exams and alot of them. I did about 20 practices (full length and timed) over the course of the remaning 2.5 months. This is where you will really learn to kill the MCAT...by learning how to attack the problems themselves.
Now a note:
The princeton exams are made horribly. They are buggy, and the online interfact is nothing like the CBT itself. Very bad...I'd pretty much say that these exams are worthless except for the first CBT.
Kaplan exams: The first few exams (about up to 5-6) are good exams. Past that, they are mostly a waste of time. Again, kaplan and princeton make their exams ridiculously hard, however they don't realize that by making them hard in the manner that they have they are changing how the student thinks about the test. Therefore, the later exams are great for reviewing concepts, but are not good for learning test taking strategies. If I were you, I'd use the following exams:
AAMC 3- 10, kaplan 1-5, princeton CBT 1, and a gold standard CBT exam. If you need more exams, I'd suggest buying the gold standard exams. (I didn't). The gold standard exam I took was the most exemplar of the real MCAT. The passages do tend to be a bit shorter, but the questions are 'tricky' in the way that I would expect MCAT questions by the AAMC to try and trick you, and not in the mind boggling way of kaplan or princeton.
In the days that were 'breaks' from exams I would spend 2-3 hrs the next day to go through the exam and make sure that I understood everything that I did wrong, AND everything that I did right. I would make sure that my thought process was correct on each problem, and where it was suspect, I would try and figure out why, then go back and review the material that I missed, and all peripheral material. Further, I did a HUGE amount of post-game analysis. I started to recognize the different question types that could be asked, and devising quick and dirty ways to do those question types accurately. <-- This is the most important part: how to attack the test itself...
I ended up doing about 20 practice exams over the course of the remaining 2.5 months. Check out my MDapps to see my score. (not my verbal was 2 pts lower than my normal score, my PS was one point higher, and my bio was about the same.
So, I really don't believe that the MCAT test prep programs are necessary. Could they be helpful? Sure, but definitely not necessary. This is just one man's opinion...take it with a grain of salt.
