Kaplan vs TPR in class course

[BamaMedik]

Advertisement - Members don't see this ad

Ok, folks just wanted to get an opinion of what you thougt of these prep courses. I'm considering taking one of them in Jan and wanted to see what you all thought before I paid that kind of money. I'm retaking the MCAT so I'd like to hear from people who have retaken the MCAT after one of these courses.

Which course you took?

Did your scores improve after taking it and by how much?

What you thought about about the teaching methods?

What are your recommendations?

Thanks👍

 

[Inessa]

save the $1500, get books and all practice materials and questions from someone for significantly lesser portion of the course's price, and study on ur own, then practice with AAMC's to get a feel for CBT. These prep courses provide you with a structure, a syllabus, and cover material to some degree that you could as well read in their review notes or Examkrackers. They are good if one is having difficulty sticking to plan or have hard time refreshing on concepts, but otherwise not sure if worth the time and huge $. If lacking content knowledge- go with TPR, much more in class hrs, if more of self-studier, want more 'techniques of taking actual test"- go with Kaplan. At the end of the day, though, it will come down to how well you understand the concepts, and whether practiced enough in their application- something you can do w/o class. Good luck!

Ok, folks just wanted to get an opinion of what you thougt of these prep courses. I'm considering taking one of them in Jan and wanted to see what you all thought before I paid that kind of money. I'm retaking the MCAT so I'd like to hear from people who have retaken the MCAT after one of these courses.

Which course you took?

Did your scores improve after taking it and by how much?

What you thought about about the teaching methods?

What are your recommendations?

Thanks👍

 

[AZhopeful]

I shelled out the 1500 for the kaplan course and i would have to say that I had a few benefits that i would not have had following my original study-on-my-own plan. if you can do some of these things on your own, then studying on your own may be for you:

-learning how to APPROACH the MCAT. i mean not just designating time, but learning how to figure out what's important in the passages. when i first looked at a practice mcat before taking the course i just opened it up and started reading a passage just like anyone would read a book. yeah, and that made me feel like i was going to get about a 9. total.

-taking 5 full length practice exams every saturday before the exam. this was HUGE once i figured out how to approach the problems in the exam. the first 1 or 2 practice exams i took i pretty much ran out of gas towards the end of each science section, especially the bio. by the time the real mcat came around i wasn't even that tired by the end of the test.

-forcing me to study and stick to a schedule and be dedicated. i know lots of people say they could just do everything that kaplan does on their own, but i really do not have the discipline to, for example, truly shut out everything for 8 hours to take a fake test.

if you can REALLY duplicate these features w/o paying $1500, go for it. I originally thought i could, but thankfully realized i was bs-ing myself before it was too late.

 

[estairella]

-learning how to APPROACH the MCAT. i mean not just designating time, but learning how to figure out what's important in the passages. when i first looked at a practice mcat before taking the course i just opened it up and started reading a passage just like anyone would read a book. yeah, and that made me feel like i was going to get about a 9. total.

Something I want to point out is that confidence is a big factor. If you're confident doing it by yourself, go by that route. I personally did exactly what AZhopeful did on his/her own - I read passages like a book (only exception was PS passages with scary looking formulas and/or graphs, then I tried to skim a bit). I never annotated, underlined, skipped around, read questions first, etc.

So you could say my "approach" was flawed (from Kaplan's perspective), but it did make me confident, and my score definitely didn't hurt because it wasn't Kaplan's approach.

My point is that, there are plenty of approaches, most of them are crap (I would say Kaplan included), but hey if they make you confident, all the more power to you. But don't think you should take a prep course to learn "THE RIGHT WAY" to do an MCAT.

(On another note, I know a lot of guys who took a prep course, and assumed it would do the work for them... and now they're taking it again because they didn't put in any effort outside of class.)

 

[xylem29]

Oh yes, I agree with trozman - what made me drop out of the TPR course was b/c the first day, the instructor told us some total BS about how verbal is the toughest section, how the average is an 8 and we should strive for an 8. Then proceeded to teach us methods like underlining words, read the first couple of lines then decide whether it's easy, tough, or medium - he said all tough passages should be skipped....my god, with this method - they make verbal seem like some impossible section that you can't crack!!! Anyone who's taken a full-length verbal test knows these company tactics are useless b/c they'll know that a difficult passage (to read and comprehend) may have easy questions, and easy passages may have insane questions - underlining and skimming doesn't help. You need to read and comprehend as best you can - then attack the questions. The EK VR method was the best.

Anyway, another thing I found annoying was the class was going at too fast a pace - and the practice passages we do in class were too difficult and diminished your confidence. Confidence is real important, and I didn't need TPR to tell me that I was not prepared.

Honestly, ANY and ALL tactical approaches to the MCAT can be developed on your own once you start doing AAMC practice tests - you develop tricks that work for you...and if you need tactics help, ask SDNers.

 

[AZhopeful]

Something I want to point out is that confidence is a big factor. If you're confident doing it by yourself, go by that route. I personally did exactly what AZhopeful did on his/her own - I read passages like a book (only exception was PS passages with scary looking formulas and/or graphs, then I tried to skim a bit). I never annotated, underlined, skipped around, read questions first, etc.

So you could say my "approach" was flawed (from Kaplan's perspective), but it did make me confident, and my score definitely didn't hurt because it wasn't Kaplan's approach.

My point is that, there are plenty of approaches, most of them are crap (I would say Kaplan included), but hey if they make you confident, all the more power to you. But don't think you should take a prep course to learn "THE RIGHT WAY" to do an MCAT.
QUOTE]

Yeah, you kind of got my point across better than I did the first time. I think you're right that as long as you HAVE a method of some sort, and it works for you. Some of the methods are crap, but they just happen to convince people that they're going about it the right way. I would agree that a lot of the VR methods are especially flawed, and in that section I DID apply my own method in place of Kaplan's.

Now that I think about it, my methods on the other 2 sections were really hybrids between Kaplan's and my own ways. Thanks Trozman for speaking the truth!