Kaplan MCAT Material/Prep Course - best way to use it?

[BleedinBlue2016]

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Hi all,

I am currently planning on taking the MCAT in Jan 2019, and the resources I have/am likely going to use as of now are the 2nd edition (2015) Kaplan 7 Book series and Khan Academy videos/practice.

However, I am currently a Kaplan SAT instructor and my manager, knowing that I am taking the MCAT and could potentially eventually teach a course for it, kindly sent me over the teaching material for their MCAT course as well. This includes practice tests and their full home study kit and annotated prep book.

I'm getting pretty overwhelmed with the amount of material I have to get through in the next 4-5 months of study, and I'm just wondering if anyone who has self-studied with Kaplan (or any other) material or taken the Kaplan prep course has come up with a good strategy for how to get through it all.

Did you go through all of the available types of prep (books & videos) and focus a month each to master subject/strategy at a time? Or did you focus on reading all of the content first and then move to practice test-taking strategies/questions? Did you take practice exams once a week or just studystudystudy and then take practice exams all of the last month?

I understand that it could be that this is all completely up to personal preference, but as I am in a place now where I don't even know where to start I would really love any and all input on what others would do if they were in my position to get an idea of what could work for me. I was really excited to be able to have access to all of this material originally, but now I am just feeling really overwhelmed.

 

[towercons]

Hello,

I took the kaplan course and exclusively used the kaplan set for content review. Personally I wanted to get through content review first so I read 2-3 chapters a day from two different books until I went through all of them except the CARS book. I would recommend KA plus the 300 page document for P/S. The course does not offer anything useful in terms of the classes but it does have a ton of practice passages and FL's. After content review I recommend practicing passages from UWORLD, KA except C/P, and all the AAMC material. Buy a couple NS or EK FL exams as well. Instead of reading a CARS strategy book I reccomend buying TPRH verbal and/or EK 101 verbal and do 2-3 passages every day to practice CARS. You can also practice cars passages from KA

 

[pgswimmer]

Kaplan MCAT isn't the best. They focus too much on content/memorization and the practice passages do not reflect the actual exam at all. Stick with princeton/EK. Also, getting a tutor is a lot better investment than a course for the same amount of money as they can fine tune the lessons to individual needs.

 

[PapaGuava]

Depending how cold you are with some of the content, the Kaplan will be a good refresher, but definitely don’t get bogged down with content review and sacrificing practice time. From my experience, I spent too much time on content reivew and not as much practice as I wanted.

 

[KiddCo]

I'm getting to the end of content review with Kaplan myself. It always makes me curious when people say not to do too much content review. Wouldn't you want to know as much as you can about topics to answer the questions? Or is the thinking that by answering questions, you'll have to brush up on topics and review content anyway?

 

[PapaGuava]

@KiddCo
I think it’s great once you have a good knowledge of most content, then the rest is practice. So you’re doing it right, I think it’s more the second half of the review you should focus more on practicing.

 

[gek4321]

I am using the 5th edition Kaplan set. For subjects that I am not comfortable with I go through 2 chapters a day taking notes and watching related videos (from Kaplan). For subjects I am comfortable with I can get through 5-7 chapters. I blaze through those chapters because I can just spot review later after taking an FL. I didn't focus on one subject per month. I switched up the subjects every single day to keep the material fresh and interesting, but at night before sleeping I review the notes I took from the day before. I took a FL once I was 50% through with content review just to see what it was like and assess my "looking at a screen" stamina. I plan on taking a FL every other week. I'll begin taking one once a week around 30 days out from test day. I am using the Kaplan FL and saving the AAMC ones for last. Many believe that the Kaplan FL is not the best representation of the real one, but in terms of finding out what you need to work on I think it works perfectly fine.

If you have the opportunity to take the Kaplan course, I would recommend it. I'm taking it right now. Although the class itself is not the best in terms of content review they give some pretty good strategies. The practice questions we use during class are good wake up calls to concepts you should know but may have not covered.