about kaplan pcat review book..

[reacher]

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hey, i just bought the kaplan pcat review book but it has soooo little practice questions in it.. but i heard lots of people saying that the kaplan book was actually helpful ... what should i do??

and i took biology courses like two years ago so i forgot most of the material...
should i study all over again from the beginning trying to memorize every single concept???????

 

[fenil2005]

my thoughts...kaplan lacks microbiology..also use barrons pcat book as i found thier questions to be very similar to what was on the actual test especially math and bio...don't sit and memorize everything but know the concept well...

 

[reacher]

my thoughts...kaplan lacks microbiology..also use barrons pcat book as i found thier questions to be very similar to what was on the actual test especially math and bio...don't sit and memorize everything but know the concept well...

thank you but the thing is that i found it important to know the functions of the each specific cell in the organisms. well.. i don't even know if that's going to be on the actual pcat test or not..... i've got a long way to go....

 

[UBCmicrobi]

The Kaplan book is sorely lacking in the organic chem section, don't get screwed by this like I did!!

 

[steveysmith54]

use that book only if have like a yr to study. PCAT is abt knowing concepts extremely well and being able to solve problems like under one minute. PCAT book gives detailed probs that can take 15 mins to solve each.

 

[Disposal]

The Kaplan book is sorely lacking in the organic chem section, don't get screwed by this like I did!!

Yup the Kaplan book literally only had about 15 pages worth of organic, which was mostly centered around functional groups. Luckily I was fresh out of my Organic Chemistry 1 class so it helped to have it drilled into my head so recently.

 

[reacher]

use that book only if have like a yr to study. PCAT is abt knowing concepts extremely well and being able to solve problems like under one minute. PCAT book gives detailed probs that can take 15 mins to solve each.

did you take pcat already??
then what's your way of studying for it ??

 

[jacst3r]

When I took the PCAT in Jan 06 there were barely any question on microbio and o-chem... if there were, they were really fundamental stuff.. as long as you have taken those courses b4.

I studied solely on the Kaplan book and did pretty well...

 

[reacher]

When I took the PCAT in Jan 06 there were barely any question on microbio and o-chem... if there were, they were really fundamental stuff.. as long as you have taken those courses b4.

I studied solely on the Kaplan book and did pretty well...

i first tried to study only what was in the kaplan book but then, when i was just going through the old bio text book i have, i found so many details that were not mentioned in the kaplan book, is it because those details are not necessary to know for the pcat??

do i have to rely on the text book completely or just kaplan book???

 

[jacst3r]

the kaplan gives you a good ideas about the topics covered in the PCAT... there is juz too much info in a bio book. unless you dont understand a concept in the kaplan book, you can refer to your text as a supplemental... which i rarely did. i think the actual PCAT was easier than the Kaplan exercises. the concepts are more superficial on the PCAT. i'd say definately focus on the prep-books.

 

[snvplayer]

PCAT book is pretty good for chemistry and human physiology and maybe cell bio...As mentioned, it lacks microbio stuff.

I relied heavily on kaplan for chem and physiology. For practice problems, I used Barron, which I also found to be reasonably similar to actual PCAT type questions.

Not sure about math, I just bought SAT II Math, and their misc. section is good prep...

The thing is, you need to learn how to use the book...Use it to find out what you need to work on more

 

[islander01]

i think they started to add a lot more calculus related question in the math section. i dont think the math section is really anything you can prepare for. if i remember correctly, they just ask basic math, some trig, and calculus (velocity, acceleration, differentiation , and integration).

i admit kaplan lacks microbio and ochem stuff. ochem stuff isnt too difficult. if you know how to do mechanism well, you should be able to figure out the product from the reactant and the catalyst. they probably will ask you about the sp hybridization and the sn1 and sn2 stuff.

 

[fenil2005]

some pcat forms has lots of orgo question and other have lots of gen chem on it...i had lots of gen chem.. so study everything....same thing with math(some people will have lot of calculus and other will have less)

 

[reacher]

thank you guys for your help!!