BR for MCAT

[chem44]

Advertisement - Members don't see this ad

So before I order the books....
Is the general feeling (for those of us who have taken the pre req's a few years back who need a more indepth review) that BR is better then the other review material?

Is it not smart to give myself a year to begin to study for the mcat?
not that i will take that long, but i would rather go slow and break it into chunks

thoughts?

 

[cabinbuilder]

I have to admit I did a double take on your title. BR = bathroom. I thought your post was going to be about how many bathroom breaks you get during the test. Sorry, have to laugh. Thanks. 😍

 

[chem44]

hahaha

 

[IslandStyle808]

I would not suggest studying for one year because the information that you retain will not stay for long. You may take 3 months to just finish your books and the information that you learned in the first week will go. However, it is more easily retained if the book work is done in 1 month. After a certain amount of reviews, you will hit a limit and no extra amount of review will help. This is where taking practice exams will keep your score up.

I suggest to start studying at the most 6 months in advance. The SDN average is 3 months but it varies with the person.

Good luck!

 

[anguisette]

I liked BR the most out of Kaplan, EK, and Princeton review. I thought the content review was solid though perhaps more in depth than needs be, particularly for bio. The biggest strength is the practice passages at the end of each topic. I think practicing with that is what really helped me, in addition to the AAMC exams. Good luck !

 

[chem44]

thanks so much everyone!!
Im excited but scared at the same time.....my grades were solid at the end of college and grad school, but that ended in 2004. so its been a while. i forgot most of the stuff.

I think a month for each book prob sounds about good

 

[murfettie]

thanks so much everyone!!
Im excited but scared at the same time.....my grades were solid at the end of college and grad school, but that ended in 2004. so its been a while. i forgot most of the stuff.

I think a month for each book prob sounds about good

.
BR is really great, I took their class near UCLA with Todd. The class is pretty great as well.
Hmm.. if you REALLLLY want to start early, you can try to do something EK 1001 questions when you are not busy. If you do those things really well, the concepts get pretty solid, and studying for MCAT would just be much easier.

If the concepts are muddy, then reviewing a lot isn't that helpful, you eventaully need to clear up the concepts and learn to stuff. So, if you have a lot of time on your hand, just try to make sure you know the foundation well, and review for 2-3 months for MCAT and you are gold

 

[chem44]

.
BR is really great, I took their class near UCLA with Todd. The class is pretty great as well.
Hmm.. if you REALLLLY want to start early, you can try to do something EK 1001 questions when you are not busy. If you do those things really well, the concepts get pretty solid, and studying for MCAT would just be much easier.

If the concepts are muddy, then reviewing a lot isn't that helpful, you eventaully need to clear up the concepts and learn to stuff. So, if you have a lot of time on your hand, just try to make sure you know the foundation well, and review for 2-3 months for MCAT and you are gold

can you expand on that a bit..... so your saying content review will not be really helpful just focus on questions?

 

[wholeheartedly]

I think by reviewing murfettie meant doing MCAT style questions.

I interpreted that more as saying, that if you really want to start that early, doing questions when you have down time might be something you could do. If you find that you're shaky on concepts while you're doing questions to review, it won't be as helpful and you'll need to go back and nail the foundation first then spend your last couple months going back to doing your MCAT questions and practice exams. Might be wrong though.

 

[ChE04]

I liked BR for everything except biology. Princeton's biology book is way better. Never seen EK or any of the others though. As far as the sciences go, if you haven't seen any of the stuff in a while, I would definitely briefly review the concepts you think you are shakiest on before diving into taking a slew of practice tests. Then once you start doing practice questions and tests you can go back and review in more depth if you find you need to. But don't spend too long reviewing without taking a practice test either, because its important to get a feel for the test.

 

[MedWonk]

I like BR for most things. I'm not too fond of their verbal review book. The passages were good, but the questions not so much. EK is better for verbal, Princeton Review Hyperlearning Verbal Workbook is the best, IMO.

BR Bio can be brutal if you haven't taken upper-level bio courses. There's a massive excess of detail that may unnecessarily lead you astray from the main points that you need to know for the MCAT. EK Bio is much more concise, but it might leave you wanting more content review. EK and BR are opposite ends of the spectrum for bio. The bio passages in BR Bio can be very tough. BR is great for the other sciences, though. I've heard that PR Hyperlearning Science Workbook has better questions, but I've never used it.

 

[rguil15]

BR, because crying now is better than during the exam. 👍

 

[firedoc14]

I loved BR for PS. It was an amazing way to review previously learned material and very well written. Doing the questions at the end of each chapter helped immensely to solidify content. BR for BS and VR is a waste of time in my opinion. The BR VR books are far too easy, and will leave you unchallenged compared to the real deal. The BS is the opposite, going into WAY too much detail, and not focusing on basic concepts that are tested. It took me three months of working every day to complete every page, and answer every question in the entire BR series, and then I had to go find VR and BS books that covered what I needed to know. Thankfully I was able to sell the books when I got my scores back, but I think I wasted a lot of studying time to learn that lesson.

 

[Elewynne]

I'll second the BR for content review and questions. I'm using the SN2ed review guide and also have some supplimental PR books and a third physics book. Having had a long break between when I last took physics I found the BR books invaluable. They also had a lot of tips and shortcuts on how to do problems more quickly "MCAT style" (rather than how you're taught to do them in college classes) that I didn't see in the PR books (though I haven't read those as in-depth).