BR Bio worth reading?

[harkkam]

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I am reading EK and I have the BR bio sitting on my desk and everytime I look at it, I see how big it is and I say "wow that probably has what I need to succeed" and I look at the EK bio and say there is no way that this book as everything.

Can someone give me some confidence that I only need to read the EK bio book and do the BR bio passages to do well?

 

[Latuza]

If you're a bio major and has a 3.5 or higher and a strong background in biology, then BR Bio review is too excessive and ExamKrackers are enough.

When I took the MCAT, most of the bio passages are experiments, critical thinking passages, so then knowing tons of info doesn't quite help. But then I am a bio major, so I only studied for bio a bit and got a 12 (I don't want to brag). I think it worth your time more to do more passages instead of memorizing bio facts. EK is enough.

 

[IH8ColdWeath3r]

If you're a bio major and has a 3.5 or higher and a strong background in biology, then BR Bio review is too excessive and ExamKrackers are enough.

When I took the MCAT, most of the bio passages are experiments, critical thinking passages, so then knowing tons of info doesn't quite help. But then I am a bio major, so I only studied for bio a bit and got a 12 (I don't want to brag). I think it worth your time more to do more passages instead of memorizing bio facts. EK is enough.

Thank god. I had the same question and I am glad someone answered it. I have both the EK and TPR bio books and the EK looks more than enough, and I can see that it is very heavy on physio. However, after taking practice tests, as you said, most of the passages are based on experiments so rote memorization of all the bio really isn't helpful. I too am a bio major and I think familiarity with biology really helps on the BS section.

 

[UofT9919]

From the sounds of it if you have the book already just do the passages

 

[Latuza]

Yes I mean the review bio part of the BR may be too dense, but you can sure use it to clarify concepts you found obscure.

But definitely do the BR passages, those are helpful.

 

[Rayhaan]

I've been going through both BR and EK bio simultaneously and I can say that it really depends on the person.

I sort of look at it this way: You can't really "memorize" all that much for the Mcat, even for bio you sort of just need to know the relations (obviously though there are things you can memorize). EK is great for this, it gives you the bare bones of what you MUST know, and BR is there to fine tune it. I definitely would read BR though, even if you are just reading it and not memorizing.

 

[UMICHPremed]

I am also using both the BR Bio and EK Bio. I have experimented with only reading EK Bio versus only reading BR Bio. The fact is I have done a lot better on the BR passages after reading the BR Bio. Now that is expected because those questions go with the book; however, I found that when I only read EK Bio, I tend to miss a little more inference questions because I do not have as a deep of understanding as I would have if I had read the BR Bio. The thing is while a lot of the MCAT Bio is experiments, I found that when I have a really good grasp of the material from reading BR Bio, I can answer the questions a lot faster because I have a much better understanding of the basic principles. Some times on topics that BR went into a lot of detail in, the passages kind of become optional; its possible to answer a lot of the questions without referring to the passages much.

 

[Rayhaan]

One thing I am sort of "worried" about is the fact that a lot of the passages (not just in BR bio, but in all the BR books) pretty much stem directly off the examples given in the chapters themselves; so even when I do really well on the passages it makes me wonder how I will perform when a completely random and unknown experiment is presented to me on the real Mcat.

 

[UMICHPremed]

Yeah, I'm actually worried about the same thing, but I think the BR books are so inclusive that every topic is covered. I guess you want to go into the MCAT with a familiarity of every possible passage that could be on the exam... I'm really worried that I will look at the test and it will all be unfamiliar passages.