finding enough full length practice tests

[Jugador75]

I am trying to do as many full length practice tests I can before april. There are, of course, the 6 from AAMC, plus their practice sets which is equivalent to about another 3. So there are really about 9 real tests. But who makes the best full lengths if I want to do more than the 9 from AAMC? I know Kaplan has a few of their own if you join their course (as I plan to). Can you buy the PR ones without joining PR? Any other source people have been using?

Thanks,
David

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[Kermie]

Hi David,

Many people sell tests from prep companies like TPR and Kaplan on ebay. Also, examkrackers has 2 full length exams that you can buy from them (examkrackers.com), berkeley review has exams you can buy (berkeleyreview.com), columbia review also has a book of exams that you can buy at bookstores. I would save the AAMC tests for last (March-April). You should also check out the "for sale" forum on sdn.

 

[Jugador75]

Thanks very much Kermie. That was extremely helpful. Have you taken all or most of those tests? If so, which ones (other than the AAMC of course) are the closest to the real thing? That is, if I could only do a few of those, which would you recommend more strongly than the others?

 

[mpp]

There are also commercial books that you can buy new (or used on e-bay) or get from your local library (try inter-library loan if they don't have them on your local library shelf). Although these books are not as good as the AAMC ones, they do help you practice timed exam with material that is very similar to the MCAT. The ones that I used for practice exams (and be warned that some of these are really not very MCAT-like even though they say they are) include

Kaplan MCAT Comprehensive Review
Peterson's Gold Standard
Flowers & Silver MCAT (by TPR)
Baron's How to prepare for the MCAT (piss-poor)
ARCO MCAT Sample Exams
REA MCAT (by far the worst of the bunch)

For sample reading comprehension tests, you can also use test prep books for other tests such as the GRE, LSAT, GMAT, DAT, OAT, VCAT, etc. All of these have some reading comprehension section that is similar to that on the MCAT. Again, buy these new, used on e-bay, or get them from your local library. Doing many reading comprehension passages can help you with speeding up your reading and in mastering the types of questions asked on reading comprehension tests (which are all almost always of the same six or seven types). The reading comprehension portion of the exam is not a knowledge exam at all, but rather a "how well do you take this kind of test" exam, and therefore, practice makes perfect.

 

[Street Philosopher]

I haven't done Kaplan, but I found PR verbal to be pretty good. Nothing comes close to the AAMC verbal though. It's subtle, but the focus of the questions are different.

For science, any test is good practice, even if the format isn't exactly the same. Near the actual test date you will want to use AAMC or other similar format ones to develop a feel for timing and stuff. But if you are preparing like 2 months in advance, just doing as many as you can get your hands on will help. Berkeley Review science passages were tough, but good practice. PR was ok, I don't remember much about them other than they were pretty close to the AAMC format.