All you Kaplan students: Kaplan inclass "Review books" vs. text book

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I'm finding that Kaplan's inclass course review books (the white books for physical/biological sciences) aren't detailed enough for me to really understand the material. I tend to always go back to the text book to review the material. What is your experience? Are you finding that as well? I seem to more or less use the Kaplan review notes to guide me on what to focus on rather than the main review material. Am I wasting my time with too much detail when I review the materials from the text book?

Thanks

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The first day of my Kaplan class my instructor said "all of the content you need to know for the MCAT is in the Review Notes. Throw away your old notebooks and text books and just use these."

My personal experience would indicate my instructor was correct: the Kaplan books contain almost everything you need to know. Because the MCAT covers four years of material, it tests you very thoroughly on concepts without going overboard on tiny little facts/details. I studied by reviewing a chapter or two of the Kaplan review notes at a time and then looking in my Lesson Book to see what we had done in class and if there were any important points/hints/tricks I had made note of. If I was ever confused by a concept or just wanted more detail I usually had a computer near by to jump onto wikipedia and read a quick article on it (please spare me the "wikipedia isn't accurate" lectures). A text book would probably serve the same purpose as this, but I'd caution against getting bogged down in the minute details of a text book and stick to figuring out the big picture (how things work together, overall mechanisms, etc). That's why I liked wiki-- usually the introduction to a concept or one other paragraph was all I needed to fill in the blanks of my knowledge.

Personally, I thought it was a pretty effective way to study and felt very prepared by test date. Good luck!
 
You are wasting your time going back to your old textbooks. You just need to know the basics. Remember, the MCAT is a reasoning test, not a science test.
 
OP -

I am definitely finding that I use Kaplan more as a guide to what to review in my old textbooks. I think that the other posters have a point when they say that all you need is in the book - I just need to go back to the textbook to understand it at a level I feel comfortable with.

Plus - it's definitely a confidence booster to look at the Kaplan book and think "This is all I need to know" and realize that you know more than what's in there.
 
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