How complete are the MCAT books?

[exmissionary]

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I am currently studying from the Kaplan Premiere MCAT prep book. I bought it a year and a half ago from Amazon. I am currently going through the book and making flashcards for all the information I don't feel I know well enough. My question is the following...

Say I do understand very good everything on everypage of the this book (or another similar book), how much more in depth should I study the given topics?

In theory if I (1) had all the information on every page memorized and understood (but not in more depth than given), and (2) took many practice tests... where can I go wrong?

Any advice would be great.

 

[LostInStudy]

I think it really depends from test to test. Some people have said they were completely prepared with Kaplan (but then again they could have had a solid knowledge base to begin with) and others say Kaplan isn't enough. I think the consensus on these forums is that you must do practice with your content review and then practice tests. So if you are doing practice to get a hang of doing questions MCAT style with content review then you will probably be fine I suppose. If not then all I can suggest is get your hands on some practice.

Also you don't need to have everything on every page memorized. Especially for PS. You just need to know how the concept works and how to apply it. Some things like equilibrium, density, or stoichiometry don't need memorization and you just need to know how everything works and is setup. Other things like solubility you need both memorization (solubility rules) and how Ksp works. It varies from subject to subject but I think you probably need to memorize most for Bio. The rest is just figuring out and knowing how everything works. Just my experience from my content review. Someone who has taken an MCAT might want to chime in.

-LIS

 

[ShinyDome19]

Exmissionary,
I used the Kaplan books as my primary study aid and I have taken the MCATs a couple times. I think the Kaplan books prepare you for 98% of all the information tested on the MCAT. There have been a few topics that I have come across in the Physical Sciences and Biological Sciences on the actual exam, that I dont remember ever seeing in the books for kaplan (ex. Time Dialation in physics).
If your like me and have a hard time with VR, one thing you will probably want to do is supplement your studying for Verbal Reasoning with something other than Kaplan. I found Kaplan's Verbal Reasoning book to be a fairly poor representation of the real MCAT. I ended up doing EK's 101 VR passages and also The Berkely Review's VR book. IMO, TBR provides passages that are the closest to the real MCAT VR passages.
The one thing that the kaplan books lack are questions which make you "think outside of the box". There are several passages on every MCAT which combine the differnt subjects or present them in a fashion that is some what awkward. These are the passages that really make the difference for getting double digit scores. So, once you have all the information down for the different subjects, I would concentrate on this. The best way I found to do this was the AAMC exams. You may also look into the TBR physics and Bio books. I have not used them personally, but I have read on SDN that they provide passage based practice material for both subjects, which is something I have yet to find in any other study source.

 

[2010houston]

Have you also printed out the AAMCs outlined suggestions? They are at: http://www.aamc.org/students/mcat/preparing/creatingstudyplan.htm#preparing, go down to "Preparing for the Test Sections". They give you an outline of what you need to know. It generally mirrors Kaplan's, but maybe a couple of additional things there.... I found that to be 100% of what I needed to know.

 

[2010houston]

OK try the link again:
http://www.aamc.org/students/mcat/preparing/
creatingstudyplan.htm#preparing