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How is berkeley review self-study for the new mcat?
- Thread starter atomi
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The bulk of the changes to our course for the new MCAT came in the lectures and the practice exams. We've incorporated in-class computer based questions (projected on screen) and we are in an ongoing development of the CBT exam. We currently have nine CBT exams on our way to seventeen (and eventually more). But the printed aspects of our course have undergone the same updating and modifications that we make with each new priniting (replacing some passages to stay with recent trends).
The reality is that although the new MCAT has a reduced number of questions and a different delivery platform, the science sections are the same test covering the same subjects. There are a few mental math tricks incorporated so that you can cut down on your need to use scratch paper, but very little strategy has changed in that it's still a POE (process of elimination) exam.
There were minor changes made to our science books in terms of changing a few passages (omitting ones on topics that haven't appearded for a years and replacing them with topics that have appeared more recently). The verbal book got the biggest overhaul, because that is the section where strategies for paper versus CBT differ the most. But to be brutally honest, the in-class strategy guides got the biggest revisions and the books are a step behind. The actual MCAT does not currently have word search, but you can bet it will soon. We are in limbo with our book based on the timing of when to incorporate strategies based on word-search.
I can't speak for any of the other companies, and any changes they made to their books, but I would assume we all did the same thing. Cosmetic changes at best. We did make our writing book shinier.
We thought about making the biology books scratch-n-sniff, but figured there were various smells that probably wouldn't be good. J/K The bottomline is that they still test the exact same pool of information, so there really was no need to drastically change the topics in the books. Such changes would be done solely to help with promotions and sales.
I hope that helps.
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Compared to Kaplan books, TBR's books are light years ahead in my opinion. Kaplan just regurgitates formulas and concepts for the most part, which makes for a pretty decent Bio section review but everything else required substantially more detail and explanations of various concepts. I could not find anything else that was as helpful as TBR was. Additionally, I have taken both the paper (2005) and the CBT (2007) and maintain that there is no real significant difference in the material you need to know for the CBT compared to the paper test.
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The funny thing is that their AAMC practice exams have the word search function already. It would seem that their actual exams should have it. I would assume, and this is purely an assumption, that if it's not available for January exams, then it will be another year without the word search option. They generally don't make midyear changes.
So, your guess is as good as anybody's guess.
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Although I definitely trust BerkReviewTeach, I still feel like I should mention that my Kaplan "teacher" told us that the AAMC was going to have an option on future practice tests to make them more like the real thing. (Wow. That's a really long sentence.) In other words, the AAMC is going to have a box you check that disables word search and makes the practice more like the real thing. Again, I'd trust BerkReviewTeach before the Kaplan person. It was not without good reason that people stopped showing up to this person's "classes."
