Is it a bad thing to have too many prep book sets?

[deleted688779]

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Hello everyone,

I'm thinking of self-studying for the MCAT this summer. I currently have the TBR full set. I am thinking of purchasing the EK full set along with either TPR or Kaplan. That will be a total of 3 sets (not including full lengths and questions). Is there some sort of diminishing return with having too many prep books?

If not, Kaplan or TPR full set (given that I will buy EK and have TBR).

Thanks everyone

 

[eteshoe]

You'll just be fighting a losing battle with your limited time. People tend to mix and match but I'm not sure you'd have enough time to finish all 3 sets. Though you'd want as many FL's as will help you (typically 5-10)

 

[aldol16]

Any test prep company's books will prepare you adequately content-wise for the MCAT although some will go about it in a more roundabout way than others and demand more time. I personally used Kaplan and I enjoyed it - it gives you three FLs as well, which was a plus. In terms of FLs, no test prep company now has any that are anywhere near representative of the real thing so it doesn't really matter which company's books you use. Having many different sets will drive you crazy because in the end, you only need one.

 

[Wolfpack93]

TBR will be more than enough for most sections of the test. If your spending time reading three companies test prep books that's time wasted you could be doing practice passages which are much more important. The only addition to TBR I would add is khan academy for psych and sociology.

 

[DesitnationMD]

Hello everyone,

I'm thinking of self-studying for the MCAT this summer. I currently have the TBR full set. I am thinking of purchasing the EK full set along with either TPR or Kaplan. That will be a total of 3 sets (not including full lengths and questions). Is there some sort of diminishing return with having too many prep books?

If not, Kaplan or TPR full set (given that I will buy EK and have TBR).

Thanks everyone

all the books are overall pretty equal in terms of content, just like med schools. Go with the books that jive with your learning style. I picked the EK books and have no regrets cause i liked simple and to the point. I have a solid science background so i didnt need lots of detail. TPR is on the other end of the spectrum from what I heave seen.

khan is a great free resource. it has a bunch of errors but the social science stuff is good and free. Some of there passages have good figures too so you can practice analzying them. this is a big part of the new exam.

As for Fl exams, I tired em all. They all mimic the real thing to one degree to another (its not that hard, there are thousands of Qs released) but they all get wonky with their scaled scores. No one except the aamc has the data to properly estimate those. take every "score" you get wqith a grain of salt and in the end, only the sample test and scored test mattur

But, don't believe the hype that its only the aamc stuff that is useful. it is the best, but EK and NS were both good at emulating the feel and difficulty of the exam. EK was better at subtle concept questions while NS had the best explanations and tons of tough data analysis passages. Both are really good.

Getting a mix of both is easy enough as EK you can buy 1 at a time and NS I you can get in groups of 3 or 4 IIRC.

across reddit, SDN and others, these two seems to be head and shouler above the rest. The aamc just doesnt have enough and the Khan stuff is worthelss for practicing any real mcat strategy (not to mention less than stellar explanations)