all of TPR BIO passages or select TBR passages?

[chicago88]

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In the interest of time, I don't have time to do both fully. I'm working on Kaplan Bio right now doing the Biological Sciences Section Tests - and I don't really feel challenged enough. I'm not saying that I'm getting perfect scores, but I don't feel that the 'trickiness' of the questions is on the same level as the AAMC's. Maybe the material itself is more challenging, but not the format of the questions. So I'm looking for a more difficult but also effective alternative.

Any suggestions? I have done EK 101 for Bio, and used both Kaplan BIO and EK BIO as content review. I have done all the AAMC's and extensively reviewed them afterwards. I've done some TBR passages, some Kaplan Biological Sciences Tests, and some TPRH passages already but just can't figure out which is more effective. I definitely feel that TBR is more challenging, but not in a way where the questions are integrated in a more difficult manner in correlation to the passage. It is more difficult in the sense that they are too picky with selective details that they ask you to recall as opposed to teaching you really how attack a difficult passage in application to your content review.

I took the test in May, and voided. I didn't really have many 'shoot I don't remember this concept' moments, but I was more so taken aback by the difficult nature of the passages themselves. I did not feel well prepared enough to attack a difficult passage, and this is the kind of practice I'm looking for now.

Thank you!

 

[MCAT4life]

You probably already know most of the material, your best bet is to do more of the question types that you have problems with.. For me on bio its always the hypothesis testing/experiment and other verbal like stuff. The actual background knowledge on bio really isn't that much, I'd say other than all the discrete which are 100% background + around 15 questions that requires background info, everything else in the bio sections you are interpretation/evaluations. What I do is save the experiment/hypothesis sections and do them last on each test that way I wouldn't waste too much time on it. TPRH is really good, you should do all the passages, but I wouldn't worry too much about finishing TBR bio since there are a lot of passages. I would however recommend the TBR organics books. If you can ace all the organics passages, then you can afford to miss 5-10 on bio and still get a solid score.

 

[chicago88]

thanks.. yeah i already did almost all of tbr orgo and am going to finish and review it soon. i felt it was very useful because it really does teach you a way of 'thinking about orgo'.. which is what i really liked about it and find it useful in attacking orgo passages. i have virtually no organic mechanisms memorized and do well on the passages and i essentially didn't even take orgo because my class was such a blowoff that i never forced myself to learn it.

i guess it would be nice for there to be a book similar to this with bio.. but bio is more of a knowledge base than a skill thing.

i just feel tprh is too easy, am i wrong? like the passages on it do not feel as difficult as the ones on the real thing... maybe i should just do it and trust that it's enough