I noticed that my chem and physics course textbooks have a lot of detail vs.

[alexfoleyc]

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I noticed that my chem and physics textbooks have a lot of detail vs. your typical mcat prep book/s. Should I learn those details from textbooks just to do well in class and forget it or do you think that extra detail come in handy when it comes to the mcat?

 

[alexfoleyc]

And does this mean that MCAT prep books lack info or do they jsut keep it to the point?

 

[goldenwest]

I find that knowing things in greater detail allows me to remember the simpler things with much less effort, but certainly don't re-study and worry about that information for the MCAT as you won't need it.

 

[45408]

They have to cut out some details, or else they wouldn't be review books. They'd be textbooks.

Know it all. They're assuming you've already learned it once and just need a refresher.

 

[Narmerguy]

I personally need to understand the details of how things work in able to remember it. I'm very bad at someone just telling me "these and these do this while those and those do that" and expecting me to remember. I need to be able to reason on why these do this unlike those doing that. A crutch I suppose but it does help me remember concepts a lot better.

 

[wanderer]

If you want to get a 14 or 15 in the PS section, you will need to know a lot of the nuances. The same is true, but to a lesser degree, for the BS section. You obviously don't need to score that high, but knowing all the details certainly helps a lot.

 

[Mattabet]

And does this mean that MCAT prep books lack info or do they jsut keep it to the point?

Six of one, half a dozen of the other. It's both.

They cut out info that's less fequently tested to cut the book down to a svelte 400 pages. If it had all the info you'd ever need, it'd be thousands of pages long (hitchhiker's guide to the MCAT), and the really high yield stuff would get lost in the shuffle.