Is this enough MCAT resources?

[xDNA]

Currently still taking prerequisite courses, but I plan on using the following resources for my MCAT studying and was wondering if this is enough to score well.

- KA free MCAT test prep material
- Kaplan 7 book series 3rd Edition, (not sure what year MCAT this set is for)
- AAMC official complete prep bundle
- uWorld? Maybe

I'm thinking just cutting the KA prep material and maybe even the Kaplan 7 book set. Just buy the AAMC prep bundle sooner than later, and in January purchasing uWorld Qbank to grind questions and hopefully be ready for MCAT by April/May? I do enjoy reading the Kaplan book though during downtime at work.

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[WrenchesToMD]

I think that's a solid set of resources, and for content review books I would pick one set and roll with it. While I didn't use Uworld during my prep due to time constraints, from what I hear its a great study aid.

 

[Cornfed101]

Currently still taking prerequisite courses, but I plan on using the following resources for my MCAT studying and was wondering if this is enough to score well.

- KA free MCAT test prep material
- Kaplan 7 book series 3rd Edition, (not sure what year MCAT this set is for)
- AAMC official complete prep bundle
- uWorld? Maybe

I'm thinking just cutting the KA prep material and maybe even the Kaplan 7 book set. Just buy the AAMC prep bundle sooner than later, and in January purchasing uWorld Qbank to grind questions and hopefully be ready for MCAT by April/May? I do enjoy reading the Kaplan book though during downtime at work.

I did this minus the KA books. I actually didn’t use any prep books, just videos. So these materials should be good. Focus your main effort on AAMC questions. Use them throughout to gauge your current progress and keep you focused on passages and questions.

 

[I'mJustCurious]

I did this minus the KA books. I actually didn’t use any prep books, just videos. So these materials should be good. Focus your main effort on AAMC questions. Use them throughout to gauge your current progress and keep you focused on passages and questions.

Did you do the KA passages?

 

[Cornfed101]

Did you do the KA passages?

I did some. The passages are good, but the questions are terrible. Probably the worst. I really tried to focus on AAMC questions for the most part. UWorld is good for P/S, and decent for the rest. Nobody does good CARS besides AAMC.

 

[xDNA]

Thank you all for your input, I'll try to purchase the AAMC ASAP, and work through those!

 

[WrenchesToMD]

Did you do the KA passages?

I also used KA passages and Jack Westin CARS. I didn't care about the representativeness of third party resources, because they were strictly used for extra practice (especially since initial CARS practice scores were abysmal). Going off of what @Cornfed101 mentioned, AAMC materials are where you want to gauge your performance/preparedness. For example, on the actual exam I scored 1 point better than the 4 AAMC practice exams' average.

 

[Blueprint Med School]

Depending on how strong you are in your sciences, it might be a good idea to even get another set of review books. Although having two sets of books might seem redundant, no book is perfect so having two helps cover any gaps another book may have and helps you understand what material is especially important. The Kaplan 3rd edition is the 2017-2018 version (but that doesn't really matter, the books hardly change each year) so those are solid. It's nice that they rate each subject so you know what's more important. It's good that you're planning to do so much practice- the only other piece of advice I would give is to make sure you save the AAMC full-length exams for the last month or so of your studying so you can take them to gauge how prepared you are for the actual exam, so you can decide to void if absolutely necessary.

Kevin W, MCAT Tutor
Med School Tutors

 

[Lawpy]

Depending on how strong you are in your sciences, it might be a good idea to even get another set of review books. Although having two sets of books might seem redundant, no book is perfect so having two helps cover any gaps another book may have and helps you understand what material is especially important. The Kaplan 3rd edition is the 2017-2018 version (but that doesn't really matter, the books hardly change each year) so those are solid. It's nice that they rate each subject so you know what's more important. It's good that you're planning to do so much practice- the only other piece of advice I would give is to make sure you save the AAMC full-length exams for the last month or so of your studying so you can take them to gauge how prepared you are for the actual exam, so you can decide to void if absolutely necessary.

Kevin W, MCAT Tutor
Med School Tutors

It’s better to use one set of review books and supplement with AAMC content guidelines and Khan Academy videos (which are free) or Wikipedia to fill the content gaps. Having two or more sets of review books is expensive and slows down studying by confusing between different resources and spending way more time on content review. Review books aren’t perfect and content knowledge gaps don’t become apparent until doing lots of practice passages and exams.

 

[Cornfed101]

I also used KA passages and Jack Westin CARS. I didn't care about the representativeness of third party resources, because they were strictly used for extra practice (especially since initial CARS practice scores were abysmal).

To clarify here. I read tons of CARS passages, but I would avoid the questions from anyone but the AAMC. 3rd party CARS questions can actually screw you up because the logic is vastly different. Not sure why no test prep company has figured this out yet, but they just haven’t.

It’s great to read all kinds of passages and work on finding the main idea, linking to that main idea, relating to stuff you already know, etc.. Yep, I said relating to stuff you already know. Don’t people say that’s a terrible idea? Not if you learn to keep your thoughts straight. If I’m reading a passage about an artist and I can visualize a painting by that artist in my head it will help me remember aspects of the passage 100x better.

 

[WrenchesToMD]

To clarify here. I read tons of CARS passages, but I would avoid the questions from anyone but the AAMC. 3rd party CARS questions can actually screw you up because the logic is vastly different. Not sure why no test prep company has figured this out yet, but they just haven’t.

It’s great to read all kinds of passages and work on finding the main idea, linking to that main idea, relating to stuff you already know, etc.. Yep, I said relating to stuff you already know. Don’t people say that’s a terrible idea? Not if you learn to keep your thoughts straight. If I’m reading a passage about an artist and I can visualize a painting by that artist in my head it will help me remember aspects of the passage 100x better.

Absolutely, thank you for clarifying! What I should have said is that KA and Jack Weston CARS passages were used for reading comprehension practice and honing test taking skills. The passage questions were a plus, and I was grateful for these free resources. They're good for when you're searching for your "ah-ha" moment where you find out which method of attacking passages works best for you.

 

[Ssha]

Currently still taking prerequisite courses, but I plan on using the following resources for my MCAT studying and was wondering if this is enough to score well.

- KA free MCAT test prep material
- Kaplan 7 book series 3rd Edition, (not sure what year MCAT this set is for)
- AAMC official complete prep bundle
- uWorld? Maybe

I'm thinking just cutting the KA prep material and maybe even the Kaplan 7 book set. Just buy the AAMC prep bundle sooner than later, and in January purchasing uWorld Qbank to grind questions and hopefully be ready for MCAT by April/May? I do enjoy reading the Kaplan book though during downtime at work.

Do you like Uworld so far? Have you used the Med-pathway 1600 question bank? contemplating if I should purchase them

 

[GreenDuck12]

Do you like Uworld so far? Have you used the Med-pathway 1600 question bank? contemplating if I should purchase them

UWorld is an excellent resource. It has high quality, challenging passages with excellent content descriptions and answer explanations. I highly recommend using it after finishing content review to simulate MCAT sections (59 questions in 95 minutes with the explanations turned off) and then thoroughly reviewing each section to identify content gaps.