Cheapest Way to Study?

[Algophiliac]

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Does anyone have any cheap, but EFFECTIVE, ways to study for the MCAT? I looked into the sky-high MCAT costs for Kaplan classes, textbooks, and etc...and I just can't help but panic.

 

[BerkReviewTeach]

Does anyone have any cheap, but EFFECTIVE, ways to study for the MCAT? I looked into the sky-high MCAT costs for Kaplan classes, textbooks, and etc...and I just can't help but panic.

I would assume that it would entail Wikipremed, some selected YouTube posts, and a grab bag of used prep materials (purchased from SDN classifieds). It would also help to find a few other people doing the same thing, to share any tutoring costs and get some accountability and motivation by being in a group. You might hire a private tutor to meet your group a couple of times if there are some tricky topics you need more help with.

About the only necessity on which you absolutely have to spend money are some AAMC practice exams. Do not go cheap on those.

You could probably prepare for $200 to $300.

My suggestion would be to set a budget, prioritize what three items you have to have and how important it is that the item be new. After that, fill in your arsenal with the best value. Keep in mind that passages are the most important part of any materials you get. If you have a little more to spend, CBTs from a source other than AAMC could be quite helpful.

 

[ModernAlchemist]

I would check the 30+ mcat study habits sticky. I remember reading a few people's posts that did very well without spending hardly anything. I think one girl even went to Borders or Barnes and Nobles everyday and just bought one coffee at the cafe, but studied all day with the books they had there. I think wikipremed is good as a supplement. If you can spend ANY money, you should buy the ExamKrackers 101 Verbal Passages and buy as many practice tests and passages as you can afford to supplement your content review. Good luck!

 

[phltz]

The only books I bought were the Kaplan Premiere book they sell in bookstores (which was somewhat useful) and the Kaplan Advanced book also found in stores (not useful). I borrowed Exam Krackers books from friends here and there. They were more useful. I borrowed the Official MCAT Guide from my roommate, and found it definitely useful. The one thing that was absolutely worth spending money on were the official AMCAS full length practice tests. Do not scrimp on those.

If you're still in college, you can probably get your hands on some MCAT prep books for free in the library or from friends, or for cheap from other students who've already finished the exam. Once you figure out what material is covered on the exam, though, don't forget that you should already have notes and textbooks from all of the required classes. These are a great resource. Also, your school library is probably chocked full of good science texts. If you're looking to save money, just hang out in the library.

 

[LTG4166]

I just scored very well using nothing but exam krackers. I bought their entire study set offline for about 100 dollars used, then listened to their CD's to buffer it. The whole thing was under 200, and I am sitting in good shape. Good luck😀

 

[theacks1]

My main tool was examkrackers (just the books), with wikipremed to complement on Physics and of course a bunch of the AAMC Full Lengths. I ended up in the upper 30s, but YMMV.

 

[Beren]

Does anyone have any cheap, but EFFECTIVE, ways to study for the MCAT? I looked into the sky-high MCAT costs for Kaplan classes, textbooks, and etc...and I just can't help but panic.

Purchased the AAMC practice exams (~240) and took each like 5 times. Review of material came from old textbooks.

 

[orthomyxo]

AAMC exams + EK Complete MCAT package = <$450

 

[aerodoc]

I bought the one giant Kaplan "Premier Program" book (about 75 bucks new I think and comes with I think 4 or 5 practice tests) and all the AAMC exams and that was enough for a good score (and some of my pre-reqs are from long ago). I supplemented some areas with youtube videos but I think if you have a good overall review book and those AAMC practice exams.

Maybe you can get a used book or borrow one from somebody, but you're going to want all of those AAMC practice exams, I think they are worth the expense...

 

[dntke1518]

save as much money as you can for the aamc practice tests, they are worth it. Also the aamc has a package that you can buy their book and a practice test for $45, I would also suggest that. In addition pick up some reasonably priced books. Kaplan are good, that is what I used.

 

[aerodoc]

Almost forgot,

If you are really on a budget, forget about buying the review books, just go down to your local library! I had the Kaplan Premier Program book and I went to the library to see if there were additional questions from older versions and they turned out to be the exact same (apart from color illustrations).

Go to the library, rent all the review books and save your money for the AAMC practice tests!

 

[Charles_Carmichael]

Would you really be willing to risk performing poorly on an exam that will play a significant role in determining whether or not you'd be able to attend med school because you want to save a hundred bucks? Especially when considering that it's a drop in the bucket in the grand scheme of the debt you'll likely be in at the end of your medical education?

I personally wouldn't risk that. There's enough collective data on this website alone that some of these review books have been an incredible help for people (ie. TBR books for content review/passages, EK books for passages/quick review, etc). I would go with the tried and true method rather than risk a potentially poor performance. It might be cheaper than having to retake the MCAT, both financially and emotionally (ie. not having the pressure to perform significantly better the second time, not needing to worry about if having to retake will affect your chances at schools, etc).

 

[Janieve]

I think one girl even went to Borders or Barnes and Nobles everyday and just bought one coffee at the cafe, but studied all day with the books they had there.

That's...that's BRILLIANT.

And I thought just getting 75% off at those stores was good. If I didn't already have all my material, I would so do that.

 

[jellybean13]

Would you really be willing to risk performing poorly on an exam that will play a significant role in determining whether or not you'd be able to attend med school because you want to save a hundred bucks? Especially when considering that it's a drop in the bucket in the grand scheme of the debt you'll likely be in at the end of your medical education?

I'm not sure about the OP, but I know that I had ~$60 to spend on MCAT preparation after the $85 exam fee. I live in a big city so luckily I found lots of medical students willing to give me their old materials and some really kind people on SDN as well.

Short of taking out a personal loan, I didn't have many other options, so it's not fair to assume that people looking for cheap, effective ways to study are just trying to "save a hundred bucks"

 

[Pre-Med Village]

Would you really be willing to risk performing poorly on an exam that will play a significant role in determining whether or not you'd be able to attend med school because you want to save a hundred bucks? Especially when considering that it's a drop in the bucket in the grand scheme of the debt you'll likely be in at the end of your medical education?

I personally wouldn't risk that. There's enough collective data on this website alone that some of these review books have been an incredible help for people (ie. TBR books for content review/passages, EK books for passages/quick review, etc). I would go with the tried and true method rather than risk a potentially poor performance. It might be cheaper than having to retake the MCAT, both financially and emotionally (ie. not having the pressure to perform significantly better the second time, not needing to worry about if having to retake will affect your chances at schools, etc).

Hi this is John from WikiPremed. Sorry for being incommunicado for the past six months or so around here at Student Doctor, but I noticed Berkeley Review said something nice about me. Todd is that you? Although Todd is a friend so I may be biased, let me report as an expert that the Berkeley Review printed materials represent the best comprehensive MCAT set available for purchase. They are worth every penny. Although Examkrackers might be on par as a value proposition, as Kaushik says, why risk it when your future career is on the line? I have ExamKrackers assignments at WikiPremed but I would like to have Berkeley Review options too, so hopefully they and I will find the time to set it up. But goodness Kaushik I've replied to your message because it kind of hurts, being low on the totem pole in terms of money at WikiPremed and I depend on students actually feeling comfortable that saving money is okay in MCAT preparation. On behalf of free stuff everywhere I just have to speak out. Air and sunlight are free, but you don't enjoy them the less? Food is not free, but look at food scientifically and you will see the value of food is the nutritional content not the economic price.

I guess I also have a problem with 'tried and true' because my feeling is that just about everybody performs for the MCAT in an extremely suboptimal way. Who am I to say that? I am John with a B.A in English from Stanford. Visit WikiPremed and trust your MCAT preparation to an English major. Doctors all across the Southeast are my former students. I had lunch with one last month with a student I taught a long time ago when I was MCAT Academy here in Atlanta who is now a Professor in a medical school in another part of the country. We are life-long friends, and we respect each other very much, but he doesn't understand science with the kind of fluency my brain has developed, which is okay! The course I teach now is different than what it was in 1995, when he was my student, but both he and I know that while he has specialized, I have continued in the same work. I am also the marketing director and technical services manager of a biotech company that makes reagents for life scientists and I have been for over ten years. The portion of my science education captured by transcripts was at Georgia Tech where I spent my senior year of high school and at Stanford University. I had incredible opportunities when I was seventeen years old in that selected group that gets into Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Stanford, so I have memories of being able to do the work but being in awe of my classmates with a dozen others in Advanced Freshman Physics learning from Professor Cabrera who at the time was hunting for magnetic monopoles. That was a long time ago when you could say I received a world class education in the general sciences and humanities when I was young, though there wasn't advanced understanding until I read the Feynman's Lectures, Linus Pauling's General Chemistry, Bioenergetics by Alfred Loeninger, and Lubert Stryer's Biochemistry until I knew them by heart, until I had taught MCAT 50 times, and then a decade participating in the ferment of an R&D program run by a molecular biologist who is a real Edison. Now my scientific understanding has become something kind of unique. I have had the opportunity to develop a new educational curriculum for science which I am sharing with the world. Not too many PhD's understand science at the level I do, which I know having taken their technical questions for ten years. So I earned a 38 on the MCAT in 1994 and I postponed going to medical school for nearly twenty years to create my science curriculum. I chose this work because I am one of the only people in the world who can do it and I love it. I hope students won't use WikiPremed to save a few bucks but because it imparts a general scientific knowledge base worthy of doctor.

But regarding the money, the three month live course is where the real money gets spent, and I think there can be a lot of benefit in terms of discipline, course materials, and, if you are lucky, a good teacher. Also there is a hazard in the tendency of students in a live course to form study groups that mutually let each other sleep-walk to the MCAT together. Students comfort each other in the wrong pace. Another problem is that the quality of the instructor in the live course which can vary widely. MCAT teachers are like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're going to get. You might be currently enrolled in the Berkeley Review, for example, and now you know you are getting something great. Another kid in your class might choose to go with the 'tried and true' national company, though, not the risky local California company. For the second student their surprise will be different when their teacher walks in reading the chapter she's supposed to be teaching in ten minutes.

I think Berkeley Review must be excellent because I like their materials very much and I consider Todd to be my one friend in the business and I know that the process of developing an MCAT course will make a person go through an intense process over years turning you into great MCAT teacher. At Berkeley Review I am sure that is what you get with Todd and his partner. But how can you compare learning from someone who has taught premedical students for decades, who has spent ten thousand hours developing course materials, with a part time graduate student employed by a media company? There are only a few people of this stature in this uncredentialled field, the folks at Berkeley Review, me, and a few others like Brett Ferdinand or Jonathan Orsay. It takes years to get perspective on how to do this. What I predict is that MCAT review will settle out over to the experts away from the corporate model over the next few years because the web now allows an individual teacher to communicate with an advanced idiom.

So at the risk of being provocative why do the greatest portion of students trust their MCAT preparation to Kaplan, an educational company whose university division is a disgrace, where three quarters of the graduates are defaulting on their student loans? How can they know what a student is supposed to have in their brain on the first day at Harvard Medical School when they can't even meet the standard of Pheonix University or A Cappela? Okay that's not fair. There have been a lot of good people working over the years at these companies, and their course materials are good in spots, especially the practice passages, but what have they done that is 'tried and true' outside of their business practices? Has any major MCAT program ever been subjected to academic review? My feeling is that their courses are uninspired though competent with a good instructor especially if the student begins a few months earlier than the course. AAMC has shown there isn't all that much benefit to the live course. Why is that? I guarantee that if I ran Kaplan you would start preparing a lot earlier and it would cost more probably. I can't make the model work to teach the science. How do they do it in so little time? Sometimes the big courses are great and sometimes they are crap. It just depends on the teacher as to whether there is added value above the course materials.

I'm not invited to pop in and promote my stuff, and I hope anybody working hard at Kaplan isn't so insulted that they won't recommend giving me a big consulting contract and saving Christmas at the Wetzel house. The moderators always seem to tolerate it if I have something topical to say, and I hope this isn't too much. To tell you the truth I would like to have a place here at Student Doctor to help students with the MCAT, and I regret I've been incommunicado the past six months because there were a few of the MCAT threads I hope did well! For those at WikiPremed having a fear I may have gotten run over by a bus, I hope you may be reassured to know I have been working intensely to fill in the missing biology videos. Although people wouldn't say it, the missing videos, the convoluted seeming curriculum (it takes a few weeks to get it), the lack of complete advice, the pathetic verbal reasoning program, and the crappy customer service the past few months at WikiPremed (one thing after the other) all deserve criticism but I am doing my best.

Right now the biggest problem in the course is doing without the metabolism, genetics and physiology videos, which the whole course builds to. It's like a symphony where the last movement just cuts off halfway. Khan Academy and MIT courseware are good but the videos at WikiPremed all fit together so it is a big deal for me to close the circle. Every time you teach MCAT you learn new things, and I've taught it over fifty times. When I recorded the course cycle last year on video, I was having a lot of new ideas especially in the area of teaching the metabolism and I realized I needed about a year to work and I have done this. There have been many times I have said I need to do this part and it will take two years (and it takes three) or that part. Now I am recording these presentations and I hope to put up the Bioenergetics videos within the week. I am really happy with them. I feel like the years of work have been worthwhile. I have been working on this project since before many of you started kindergarten so I hope the new videos and the course as a whole will be well received even if they are free.

 

[Pre-Med Village]

In my judgment the websites below would have to be on any list of the most excellent online free resources for the MCAT, and I put my own site on the list asking forgiveness from SDN. I am a long time admirer of several of these teachers below. They are idols of mine in the world of science explainers. You are probably familiar with many of these websites already. Each has its own peculiarities, so you have to be your own guide. You need to know how to keep yourself on track in MCAT preparation anyway, so keep the MCAT books alongside to have a table of contents, bold headings and illustrations to keep you on track. If you are a person who is confident you know what you need to know, I think you will find a site or two in every discipline that is superior to MCAT prep books for general science concept prep for the MCAT.

However, please don't take these resources as sufficient. I think everyone should have a short MCAT prep book and one of the longer series with topically divided problem sets. In my opinion I think the best of the shorter MCAT prep books are Brett Ferdinand's excellent Gold Standard, the really well illustrated McGraw Hill MCAT book, MCAT Pearls, or Columbia. The best long MCAT series available outside of a prep course are Berkeley Review and ExamKrackers (Kaplan/Princeton Review materials if you can get them). Kaplan course and materials and what they sell at the bookstore are generally worth having. The same is true for Princeton Review except for the execrable job they did with the old Flowers book. What is necessary is a collection of conceptual explanations in short form, another more extended set of comprehensive conceptual explanations that include plenty of problem sets organized by topic. You also need plenty of real, or nearly real practice tests. In addition to the free stuff at AAMC, many companies often offer free, good quality practice tests. I've seen Gold Standard and Kaplan do this, so you can substitute book tests and free tests for a lot of those AAMC exams in my opinion. The testing itself isn't so important diagnostically (not enough instances) as the process of challenging your comprehension with diverse scientific prose, so in my opinion you could even substitute a discipline of reading journal articles in physical and biological sciences and imagining what passages YOU would come up with from them. Practice MCAT passages to increase your scientific vocabulary and comfort in the critical scientific frames of reference underlying medicine involving the diverse physical and biological phenomena of living systems and their surroundings.

Of all online resources for teaching physics, I think Hyperphysics is the very best for MCAT, although you have to think about how to use it for it to be effective. Just dropping in different places at Hyperphysics can make physics, honestly, seem like appearing inside of a mountain with just a torch onto an isolated concept. I think Dr. Nole's concept mapping model only goes so far. With HyperPhysics you need to have a set course of topics to follow. Predetermine a pathway through it for a certain study time. Keep an Excel sheet of web addresses from Hyperphysics for problem topics. This can be a great resource to revisit. Some things in physics you just need to see the fundamentals a few times to properly digest.

As far as general chemistry goes, Dr. Lower at Chem1 is the best explainer on the web. His proton pressure - thermodynamic approach to acid base chemistry will take you to an entirely different level. However the Bodner Research Group's website at Purdue may be the best overall site for learning general chemistry. Bodner's pages are perfect MCAT level and carefully comprehensive.

With Organic Chemistry, you can learn 85% of everything you need at the Virtual Textbook on Organic Chemistry. It's exactly at the right level and you won't be wasting any time anywhere at the virtual textbook.

For biology review, Kimball's Biology Pages is not only the best. It may be my favorite of them all. Although the web design is definitely old school, his explanatory stylings are Raven & Johnson or Stryer level. I really think he is among great textbook authors in simplicity, clarity and comprehensiveness. However, at Kimball's Biology Pages you need to always keep in mind the difference between Biology 101 and MCAT biology so you don't get too far off the track of MCAT preparation. In other words, just because it's on the site, unless you want to, don't get drawn into memorizing all of the animal phyla or taking more than a few hours to look at plant biology. If you make your way through Kimball's Biology pages, stick to macromolecules, organelles, cells, metabolism, genetics, animal tissues, physiology, viruses, fungi, bacteria, populations and evolution. This is the human biology curriculum. That's MCAT biology. Also, of the four topics, physics, general chemistry, organic chemistry, and biology, biology is the one topic for which Wikipedia is perfectly in tune, so always keep a tab open for Wikipedia no matter what resource you are using for MCAT biology. Reading Kimball's of oxidative metabolism and following up with Wikipedia's sections on glycolysis and citric acid cycle would be a good idea, for example. That combination would provide you with a better quality overall conceptual presentation than you will find in any dedicated MCAT treatment in print or otherwise.

I hope these are helpful.

Physics

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/hframe.html

http://theory.uwinnipeg.ca/physics/onedim/node1.html


http://physics.bu.edu/~duffy/py105/

http://www.archive.org/details/AP_Physics_B_Lesson_01

http://www.wikipremed.com/01physicscards.php?card=2&msgtog=yes


General Chemistry

http://www.chem1.com/acad/webtut/atomic/qprimer/

http://chemed.chem.purdue.edu/genchem/topicreview/bp/ch9/redox.php



Organic Chemistry

http://www2.chemistry.msu.edu:80/faculty/reusch/VirtTxtJml/nomen1.htm

http://www.chemguide.co.uk/index.html#top

http://www.organic-chemistry.org/namedreactions/

http://www.wikipremed.com/03_organicmechanisms.php?mch_code=030202_050



Biology

http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/



Biochemistry

http://themedicalbiochemistrypage.org/



Video

http://www.khanacademy.org/

http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm

http://www.wikipremed.com/

 

[geodad]

Good to hear from you John. I'm glad the missing wikipremed videos are still on their way. Been quite impressed by what I've watched so far (currently just finished Module 7). Am also using ExamKrackers and TPRH Verbal workbook with a set of Berkeley Review on the way. I was at Stanford in my grad student days too - EE Phd now thinking about career change - my thesis was medical imaging....

 

[Pre-Med Village]

Good to hear from you John. I'm glad the missing wikipremed videos are still on their way. Been quite impressed by what I've watched so far (currently just finished Module 7). Am also using ExamKrackers and TPRH Verbal workbook with a set of Berkeley Review on the way. I was at Stanford in my grad student days too - EE Phd now thinking about career change - my thesis was medical imaging....

Thanks geodad. The story of my life for the past month is that a leak behind the kitchen sink has led to me having to remove and dispose of all of our family's cabinetry and the dry-wall, this while everyone feels like crap because of the black mold and I am trying to close the circle on the MCAT thing, fix broken fuser rollers for the printer and the left door assembly and carry out introducing a new marketing and sales intranet system to our folks around the world in my day job and two product launches.

But the slides and talk for the biochemistry section are all prepared. Although this is true for most of genetics and some of the physiology, the videos for Module 12 on respiration, oxidative metabolism and biosynthesis are along the lines of a more ambitious plan than the others. This is because this section of about three hours is not only for module 12, but is watched first at the beginning as the introduction to the curriculum.

The first part is about the sciences as a whole. This takes about an hour to recover the territory up to that point in the course, to get to the point of view from module 12. As an introduction, you are previewing what YOU WILL KNOW at module 12. So the first hour is here comes everything. We go in a very efficient way through the topics of the course. Try to think of the shape of a system of vocabulary of about 2000 terms. We will use about 750 in the talk to comprise the fundamental general science vocabulary you work to master in Wikipremed along with the learning goals within the modules. I want people to understand the course sequence which is a spiraling curriculum built along the lines of how the conceptual vocabulary inherits from math and the simplest physics step by step to biochemistry. At the beginning you would watch this part for familiarity but in module 12 you hold yourself responsible for kinematics, newtons laws, momentum & impulse, work & energy, rotation, harmonic motion, fluid mechanics, waves, gravitation, electrostatic force, atomic theory, periodic properties, chemical bonding, intermolecular force, organic functional groups, stereochemistry, temperature & heat flow, ideal gas & kinetic theory, 1st law of thermodynamics, thermochemistry, 2nd law of thermodynamics, states of matter, the physical properties of organic compounds, chemical thermodynamics & equilibrium, chemical kinetics, solutions, acids & bases, organic acids & bases, organic reaction chemistry, proteins, carbohydrates, nucleic acids, lipids, biological membranes, prokaryotic cell, eukaryotic cell, coordination chemistry, oxidation - reduction, organic redox, electrochemistry, MODULE 12 bioenergetics and cellular respiration.

This part should be a lot of fun because I have two ideas for inventions, one for us to imagine some MCAT passages in fluid mechanics as well as some thermodynamic concepts, the other for thermodynamics as well. These are not perpetual motion machines. I am doing a bit of an experiment with a set of open science projects that if an associated group can put a prototype together the legal patent would belong to the Fernbank Science Center here in Atlanta. This is kind of a bet, kind of a wedding present for the best man at my wedding who is finance director for Dekalb County Schools. There are a couple of others that I will share. These are things like using a chiral surfactant like sphingosine or some other to co-migrate or serve as primary emulsifier in SDS-PAGE electrophoresis of proteins. This would be a UV free method of visualization using crossed polarimeters and a standard flat screen monitor or other source of polarized white light as a light box. I think the sensitivity might be enough for educational purposes where safe, chemical free methods which are also quick have a role, though I don't know if it's possible to get a signal with the path length available. This kind of thing. I want to make a book of MCAT passages on a theme of things that haven't been built yet, and if somebody makes a device and patents it, for these particular ideas it's no skin off my nose.

Not all of my inventions are viewed like this, but I'm bringing out four or five of them during the presentation so there is definitely a 'Prepare to be Amazed' feeling about it.

Anyway, what I hope people will take away from this message is to try to go through the sequence above mentally from kinematics to bioenergetics in a way to imagine the mental space and conceptual vocabulary of each topic growing out of the earlier topic. When you reach the metabolism look back over it and learn the art of applying a unified knowledge base in physical and biological science to interpreting the beautifully integrated reactions of the metabolism.

So the 2nd part of the presentation builds of the understanding specifically of the chemical changes that occur on nutrient molecules, how to understand energy flow in life in a direct common sense way.

A lot of these points are very fundamental here. So there is a lot of built in repetition.

Here's something I've been thinking a lot about. I know there will be elements of this one idea but I'm not sure how deep to go. It's kind of interesting. Basically, what I am going to introduce at about the mid point is the latest bench-top and speculative research in the field of abiogenesis. Abiogenesis deals with the origin of life processes on earth and elsewhere. I have found some of the work in the past year to be what I think is a really interesting and effective way to convey and understanding of the transcendence of phosphoryl transfer power in metabolism. So this may be the only MCAT treatment of respiration that uses abiogenesis within a postulated hydrothermal mound four billion years ago as a way to make it easier to understand. For the really advanced who watch I have a few questions I think are really interesting and I'm hoping people out there can answer. One is whether the geological formation encompassing the beginnings of metabolism and replication can be thought of as a cell. If a simulacrum is constructed which demonstrates an abiotic process for generating a system of RNA & peptides from inorganic precursors that evolves, a question that perplexes me is whether such a device could be considered a computer in the way that computers use methods such as Archimedes' inscribed and circumscribed polygons to develop a better and better approximation of pi. So this has me thinking about whether there is an intersection of number theory, statistical mechanics and the Hammet equation where one could find a relationship between a normal distribution and the state ensembles of the expressome or proteome to living systems the way that a transcendental numbers such as pi or Euler's constant relates to algebraic or rational numbers. For me these are open questions for which I don't have enough mathematical or scientific understanding to judge whether or not they are even trivial so there is a sense of growing research interest and a change of direction.

Something to think about, though I'm not suggesting the presentation will provide new scholarship. One thing about the style of these particular videos is that I won't hesitate to show you the entirety of how things are working. There's a pretty good segue late in the presentation talking about thiamine pyrophosphate and lipoyl transferase in the pyruvate dehydrogenase complex, a really interesting classic from biochemistry, so I"m always reassuring even my 12th module students that while you don't need to be concerned about remembering all this biochemistry for the MCAT, you want to be comfortable talking about it. The MCAT won't have a passage about prior knowledge of thiamine pyrophosphate and lipoyl transferase. It will have a passage presenting another biochemical process, maybe even stranger, but from obscure fungus. The order of merit wouldn't be prior factual knowledge but your general comfort in science and intuitive fluency. MCAT preparation should be an intensely interesting experience because the ability you are aiming for to be able to place any passage you are reading within a context of prior understanding corresponds to a style of life where everyday experience is incredibly fascinating.

Sorry about the prolixity.

 

[SFO-IST]

People, you've paid around $100,000 for your undergraduate education. Why worry about cheap when you're studying for a test that will count as much as your GPA? If you think you can get a more effective test prep without Kaplan, PR, etc. then great. but effectiveness >>> cheapness.

 

[Geekchick921]

I paid very little for my MCAT prep materials and got a 14/11/14. I primarily used wikipremed and khanacademy, mostly because of their videos. I learn best hearing, seeing and writing, so just reading a review book wasn't really going to help me. I had a couple of those enormous review books that were given to me as gifts and they quickly turned into entertainment for my daughter, who would just rip them up and scribble in them while I studied.

John's already in here suggesting www.wikipremed.com, and I will totally back him up. He helped me a LOT. Also, www.Khanacademy.org is completely free and an absolute godsend. Wikipremed's videos are longer, but provide very in-depth explanation and relation of topics (which is helpful), while Khan's are shorter and more to the point. I would pick and choose based on whether it was a subject I thought I needed to review more thoroughly or if I just needed a quicker refresher. Also, when I was studying (first few months of this year), wikipremed didn't have all of the videos up (I'm sure there are more now) and khanacademy had no organic chemistry, but he does now.


I also really liked http://mcat-review.org , especially as a last-minute review. I scanned over that website quite a bit my last week before the test, especially for organic chemistry. I also made o-chem flash cards from this Gold Standard website.

As Berk and a few others have said, do not skimp on the AAMC practice tests, especially the later ones, which are newer and therefore more reminiscent of the actual test you will take. I also bought two EK books, but I didn't use them as much as I thought I was going to.

Oh, and really, I know it's not the most accurate representation of MCAT questions, but I do love mcatquestionaday.com. They certainly won't replace taking actual practice tests, but I think they're good little brain teasers regarding some of what you may be tested on.

 

[NickNaylor]

This thread is chock full of tl;dr. Also, I agree with the above post.

 

[Janieve]

People, you've paid around $100,000 for your undergraduate education. Why worry about cheap when you're studying for a test that will count as much as your GPA? If you think you can get a more effective test prep without Kaplan, PR, etc. then great. but effectiveness >>> cheapness.

Actually, I've paid for my education with loans and multiple jobs. I don't have an extra $2,000 sitting around for a review course - and besides, studies have shown that students who take review courses actually don't do better than those who self study. The results are about the same. If you need structure, maybe they're a good idea - but if you know how to manage yourself well, there's no statistical bonus.

And again, it wouldn't matter if there was - I can't afford it. If I budget carefully, I can afford books and other materials, but that's it.

How exactly do you propose I take a course when I'm job hunting and my remaining job covers my bills and not much else? When I'm already taking out more loans than I'm comfortable with? How can I justify paying for something that the evidence doesn't support, especially when there are a thousand other things I need to upgrade or replace and another term's tuition coming up fast?

Please, enlighten me.

 

[Pre-Med Village]

This thread is chock full of tl;dr. Also, I agree with the above post.

There is a lot to say. Critical evaluation of MCAT programs is difficult and I am sharing the benefit of years of experience. There isn't a definable relationship between price and quality in MCAT preparatory courses. There is no accrediting body and no professional society. None of the private courses open their methods or materials to academic scrutiny. Students can't judge based on experience because there is no opportunity to compare programs based on prior knowledge. Normative impulses define the plan because this seems the least risky. It's best to take responsibility for your own learning, though, because right then you have made the best plan. After teaching literally hundreds of Atlanta premedical students in small group study I have come to the unshakeable belief that the capacity of current practices in premedical education to convey fundamental scientific understanding is profoundly suboptimal. Premedical students are awesome. They work hard and they put a lot in their heads but learning in the 101 system of modular courses in which a person could just as easily and just as innocently take biology, chemistry and then physics as the reverse, advanced understanding doesn't happen at the undergraduate level as it should. I know this is true where I took my sciences at Georgia Tech and at Stanford even in the most elite groups. The feeling in college is always like waking up in a cave in the middle of a mountain with a torch, being asked to survey it a bit, take the test of the week, and move on to more disconnected material. This is true for everyone. I've taught a lot of students from Emory, the premed capital of the world. In all my years I have yet to meet an Emory student who had half a clue about what they had been studying in college before reviewing for the MCAT, so MCAT preparation is more important than test preparation. Just because you receive A's all your life or you go to an elite school doesn't mean the educational product you received is the best quality or that you are ready for medical school. Preparing for the MCAT a person should make sure their general science knowledge base is worthy of a doctor, that it all fits together because this will be your last opportunity to gain a proper understanding of general science before medical school, where it will not be about these concepts but you will need good understanding to ask good questions and really see your patients some day in their condition of health in the most deeply coherent way. I think if students could get out of their careerist mentality where the universe is revolving around their achievement and think about the work itself, they would enjoy this process a lot more and be successful more easily.

 

[Charles_Carmichael]

John, thanks for the posts. I haven't had a chance to read through everything you wrote but I'll try to get through it all over the next day or two.

With that being said, I still stand by what I originally said: there has been a lot of success with the BR books for PS and orgo, the EK books for bio and VR, etc. Both in real life and on this website, I haven't come across too many people who used your website or Khanacademy or something like that. So, based on anecdotal evidence, I would still recommend to people to go with the tried and true method where there's been a lot of experience already.

Also, no one's telling people to take a review course or anything (that's way too much money to lock yourself into only one company's material). What myself (and a few others) are saying is to get the books that a lot of us have experience with and that helped us immensely. Buying just the books will cost a few hundred bucks if you buy them new. And if you get them from the For Sale section of SDN or from someone you know in real life, it'll be even cheaper. You don't have to break the bank in order to get these books that SDN users have had so much experience with.

 

[liam braoski]

You could study by buying a few AAMC tests, and using your college textbooks. There are plenty of online resources to figure out exactly what material is tested and what is not. You don't need to pay hundreds of dollars to prep companies, nor spend countless hours working through those books. The MCAT is relatively straightforward test, with an average of only 1 difficult passages in a section. About 80% of the exam is very straightforward, which should be enough to give you well over 30.

 

[Pre-Med Village]

John, thanks for the posts. I haven't had a chance to read through everything you wrote but I'll try to get through it all over the next day or two.

With that being said, I still stand by what I originally said: there has been a lot of success with the BR books for PS and orgo, the EK books for bio and VR, etc. Both in real life and on this website, I haven't come across too many people who used your website or Khanacademy or something like that. So, based on anecdotal evidence, I would still recommend to people to go with the tried and true method where there's been a lot of experience already.

Of MCAT printed materials I agree that the best over the counter are the BR books and the EK books, although I think that BR are better all around than the EK books for all four sciences, not reserving biology for EK. Nobody does VR well in print, though the Kaplan and TPR courses are fairly sophisticated in this area because of their institutional experience with the SAT, LSAT and GRE.

In my experience it seems that while these study books are very good in combination with AAMC tests, you usually can only gain 2 points in each science compared to the beginning of MCAT study unless you have forgotten everything. Careful study of EK or BR from the front cover of the first book to the back cover of the last will regain you the familiarity with fundamental principles learned over the undergraduate career in a comprehensive way. The difficulty with such a strategy for conceptual review, however straightforward, is that it doesn't really deepen the understanding. Any student not beginning at 11 can reliably gain 2 points per section with a thorough basic concept review and practice test. If a student wants not only to meet their potential on the MCAT, but increase their potential, then use MCAT review to challenge your knowledge base in a more sophisticated way. You don't need my course for this. Linus Pauling's General Chemistry, Loeninger's old classic Bioenergics (probably out of print), Serway's Physics for Scientists and Engineers (use the calculus to help you conceptually but don't worry about it; his conceptual explanations are very good) will all stretch you. Reading journal articles is a great way to acclimatize your mind to the level of MCAT passages. This is good because you aren't worried about memorizing but your power of understanding.

Also, for every 3 or 4 hours in topic review, down at the street level, a person should spend a half hour at least looking at the city as a whole, reading the table of contents, flipping through looking at pictures and bold headings, practicing outlining the sciences. Even a little attention is like fuel to the keep your memory system fortifying what you have learned and to prepare for what is coming. Also, it's critical to see the general sciences as a whole from beginning to end, not only to be able to self-diagnose weaknesses but also to be ready on the MCAT to interpret an MCAT passage because you understand where it is coming from in the sciences and you can place it in the context of fundamental principles. Many students don't seem to have a very developed consciousness of the learning process, and so one area I feel self-directed students neglect is to understand the interplay of synchronic and diachronic modes of study and how these relate to how their brain actually works, not only seeing a concept in itself but also for the rest. You can direct yourself through a spiraling learning dialectic that will make science much more interesting and your MCAT score higher by giving over a portion of time for overview and repetition no matter how much pressure you feel from the main study cycle.

 

[dohlo]

I think one girl even went to Borders or Barnes and Nobles everyday and just bought one coffee at the cafe, but studied all day with the books they had there.

I used this method as well. It isn't even really necessary to buy a coffee if you are reeeeaaally trying to save, but I found the coffee conducive to my learning. Pro tip: There are many serial numbers in various books within the store for extra online materials as well (not sayin that I used them... but it is possible).

I went through the Kaplan and PR books in borders/B&N and made outlines of the material and notes on things that I needed work on and then you can use these to study when they happen to be closed.

Definitely shell out a little cash for the AAMC tests though.