Hitting a wall with TBR Physics

[bananaz]

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I'm taking the March 24th MCAT and am on a modified version of SN2ed's study schedule. Overall I'm doing pretty well, but I am seriously struggling with physics right now. I don't understand why - it was one of my favorite subjects and I got A's all the way through, but it feels like the Berkeley Review physics book is written by aliens and everything I thought I understood going in has been muddled and turned upside down.

Any tips or strategies? Is it worth getting a different book at this point? I'm starting to panic

 

[typicalindian]

Dude I'm feeling the same way. While reading the tbr chapter I'll understand the concepts and be able to answer the in chapter questions just fine, come passage time it's like all the questions are written in a foreign language. I've found that I get most of the concept questions right, but I havnt memorize the necessary equations just yet so the questions that require use of equations (most of them) I'll get wrong. So I'm going to memorize basic equations and see if that helps.

 

[TheWeeIceMan]

I'm taking the March 24th MCAT and am on a modified version of SN2ed's study schedule. Overall I'm doing pretty well, but I am seriously struggling with physics right now. I don't understand why - it was one of my favorite subjects and I got A's all the way through, but it feels like the Berkeley Review physics book is written by aliens and everything I thought I understood going in has been muddled and turned upside down.

Any tips or strategies? Is it worth getting a different book at this point? I'm starting to panic

Stick with TBR. I thought the TBR Physics passages were some of the hardest of all the TBR books, and I was an engineering major. There were definitely a lot of wtf moments, where I was certain I got a question right until I reviewed the answer. I wouldn't worry yet though, If you get through everything, you should be more than prepared for any Physics related questions on the MCAT.

 

[ridethecliche]

I didn't like TBR optics too much. I'm going to supplement that with NOVA.

TBR did a lot of 'memorize these cases' which doesn't really work that well for me...

 

[JohnSnow]

I didn't like TBR optics too much. I'm going to supplement that with NOVA.

TBR did a lot of 'memorize these cases' which doesn't really work that well for me...

Agreed. I used TPR's optics. I thought TBR unnecessarily complicated an easy topic. I would guess that they almost certainly had a different author for that section of the book than they did for most of the others. Some of the variables used were obscene too it was like f, f', f'' I just couldn't process that lol.

 

[DocGodfather]

Any of you taking the prep course with TBR? Pretty pricey, but I may go that route. I suggest taking an hour break to regroup, and dive back into the material. Always helps to have supplemental stuff as well.

 

[ridethecliche]

Agreed. I used TPR's optics. I thought TBR unnecessarily complicated an easy topic. I would guess that they almost certainly had a different author for that section of the book than they did for most of the others. Some of the variables used were obscene too it was like f, f', f'' I just couldn't process that lol.

Yeah. Seriously.

I think their E&M stuff was just okay...

NOVA did a better job of those topics. A friend has my book. I'll get it back this week and use it to redo those topics over the weekend, then do TBR passages.

I'm taking the March 24th MCAT and am on a modified version of SN2ed's study schedule. Overall I'm doing pretty well, but I am seriously struggling with physics right now. I don't understand why - it was one of my favorite subjects and I got A's all the way through, but it feels like the Berkeley Review physics book is written by aliens and everything I thought I understood going in has been muddled and turned upside down.

Any tips or strategies? Is it worth getting a different book at this point? I'm starting to panic

One of the issues with doing physics their way is that they teach you a lot of shortcuts. If you're good at doing the longhand, learning the shortcuts can be time consuming. I 'got' optics last time, even though it was one of my least favorite topics. When studying yesterday, I was totally bogged down by their different scenarios.

I think they'll be helpful when I commit them to memory, but it makes me overthink things.

 

[railgun]

I thought TBR physics was pretty good, but too detailed for some stuff. I got ~13's on all chapters and it compared really well to the aamc practice tests. I think if you can do good on the TBR, you'll be set for the mcat. If you need more practice, you can get the EK 1001 physics.
If you do worse than what you want on the aamc, you should probably push the mcat back one or two months. Physics can be mastered with some effort (unlike the stupid vr section 😡)