difficulty of kaplan mcat passages/questions

I thought they were about the same.

 

I've only done their exams (not books), but their questions seemed different than the MCAT I took. It's not that they are harder or easier, it just seemed that the real MCAT asked for different things. The Kaplan tests are maybe a bit easier, by the smallest of margins, because they based their questions on the passage. On my MCAT at least, you needed to interpret data and extrapolate information more. I also had to know a few trivial facts on the real MCAT.

As far as difficulty, it's probably a good estimate. But as far as style goes, expect that the MCAT will feel different.

 

I felt that Kaplan VR and BS were very comparable to the real McCoy, while Kaplan PS was more calculation heavy.

 

agree w/ doctor octopus

until u get to the later kaplan full-lengths, which r just CRAZY hard.

 

I agree, all the ones that they will proctor for you (1-5) are pretty good indications of how well you do. Actually many people score higher on the actual one than they do on most of their practice ones (I did). I agree that PS is much harder on Kaplan. To go into a little more detail, BS and VR are pretty similar, but I think BS is slightly harder than the real one and VR I thought was much easier than when I took the real thing (April 2002). However, I scored very similarly on the real one compared to the practice ones, even though it was harder/easier in some respects, so the Kaplan curve is a good indication of how you are doing at a particular point in your study.