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Khan Academy
Started by ral22
1. The information itself is very good.
2. The presentation of the information could hardly be worse*. I'd love to see an SNL skit of that guy (he's so slow).
*My understanding is that he just released a bunch of new videos. Hopefully, those have improved presentation-wise.
EDIT/CORRECTION: Some or all of Khan Academy's NEW videos are NOT slow! His "old" ones from about last year sure are. Good for him/them for speeding up! I have no complaints now. (Regardless of what MCAT prep material you use, remember that AAMC practice test scores generally predict the score you will get on the real thing within a couple points. Khan may stand alone these days or may serve better as a supplement to some other study plan. Khan is evolving and now I'm paying attention to it.)
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100% disagree with #2. I used the new MCAT videos for virtually all of bio. Went from a 10 to 14/15 on AAMCs, but part of that could have been the effects of practice. The lower scores were after I used TPR. I thought the Khan videos were wonderful. There's more detail than necessary, but they* make it all VERY intuitive.
* there's a number of different presenters now besides sal.
Edit: should also say that the PS videos are even better. They're what I used when learning the concepts the first time around in my classes. Didn't really need to do any content review for PS after learning from those.
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The videos are made by people who are experts in it, for free. I heard biochem and bio were the best because the people put a lot of time and effort in making the videos, while there's a missing component for the sociology section (something like socioeconomic disparities.)
I agree with the second part of that. Maybe things have changed, but about a year ago everyone who watched Khan did so on fast forward. Here's a thread about that, http://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/youtube-videos-at-2x-speed.901238/
I got a 12's on all the sciences with the later and one other very concise test prep book. (Not TPR which IMO goes way beyond what you need to know, and in that sense, is a waste of valuable time.)
*Mods thought I was advertising when I said nice things about products I liked, so I've switched to saying what I don't like about the products I tried and didn't choose. I don't mean to be nasty.
EDIT/CORRECTION: Some or all of Khan Academy's NEW videos are NOT slow! His "old" ones from about last year sure are. Good for him/them for speeding up! I have no complaints now.
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This is after my time so I don't know the product.
But I'm picturing a bunch of premeds only scoring 20, looking up into the sky and screaming "Khan!!!" like Kirk stranded on the planet in the Star Trek movie. 🙂
But I'm picturing a bunch of premeds only scoring 20, looking up into the sky and screaming "Khan!!!" like Kirk stranded on the planet in the Star Trek movie. 🙂
Chad>>>>>>>Khan
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To answer this question more thoroughly, I would only use the videos as a minor study tool. What I did is watch all of the videos on a topic (I just needed biology), and then tackle that subject in the MCAT prep books. I found that after being out of school for a while, the Examkrackers material was too dense for me to really learn from effectively. The Khan videos (never tried Chad's) were a nice easy way to cover the broad outlines of the material in a very quick fashion. Then you can hit the books and learn the meat-and-potatoes of the material really quickly and easily. It's essentially combining various methods of learning, rather than relying strictly on the books, which the brain will sometimes want to resist due to the oftentimes dry and boring nature of some of the material.
To provide some context: I was out of college for years and learned enough biological sciences in only a few weeks to score a 12 on that section. Granted, I'm a bit smarter than the average bear, but the rest of you probably are too.
I'm a Nontrad so I'll be supplementing my studies with Khans videos and other resources as needed since I'm pretty far out from taking that stuff.
Nah, it's more of a "you get what you pay for" type of situation going on.
I used Khan academy to teach myself all the MCAT material since I hadn't taken a science class since freshman year. Of high school. Once I understood the material, I used more traditional MCAT materials to refine/reinforce. Overall, this let me reduce my total career change/post-bacc and gap year time from 2-3 years to ~9 months.
Graduating med school in May. I'm a big fan of Khan's work. 🙂
Graduating med school in May. I'm a big fan of Khan's work. 🙂
How did you end up doing on the MCAT?
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You have a point. I just tried out Khan Academy again and he has certainly improved. He's not slow anymore in the videos I watched. (He sure use to be.) I made edits to be fair.
Heh, no. Chad is crazy expensive. Watched the majority of Chad's videos. The vast majority of his examples are dead easy to solve. People must be getting paid to preach for Chad, because his video's are worth half the price.
Ok so when you don't agree with people you accuse them of lying to get money for endorsing a product. Nice.
How much are the Chad videos for mcat?
Alright, so maybe I was extreme. But you have to admit, the endorsement for Chad around here seems to go along the lines of "Chad helped me get X score" without much evidence. Basically, Chad does a nice job of covering the basics in an expedited manner but is not intended for those who already have a basic understanding of the concepts. While I did learn some useful mnemonics, my knowledge on no single topic was expanded from Chad. However, Khan's video's have expanded my knowledge on a few topics. This is of course my opinion. The cost for Chad's videos is $50/month. For a website without biochem, psychology, sociology, or any of the new pertinent stuff, I'd say this is overpriced. I'm sure it worked for some or even many, but all I'm saying is I wish I didn't spend my money and time on his videos. His approach is similiar to exam krackers, which again, is useful for the basics but I doubt there are many 13+ on an mcat section without background knowledge who prepared entirely with EK.
I have not opened my physiology book this semester, waste of 80 bucks. Instead, I just study the slides and watch Khan videos.
Those human bio videos are so clutch. And the guy who does them has a much softer voice than Khan, I can listen to it for hours.
Hi! I'm on the sameish boat, I haven't taken science courses in 6 years, though I was a science major. I just started khan, and the way I'm doing it, I'll finish the mcat course in 5 months . I was wondering approximately how long it took you to finish reviewing all mcat material on khan?
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All of it? I did all of the P/S stuffand half of each chem and bio and it still took me a month..at least. But i work a lot.
As my study prep for the MCAT, I looked at the khan academy videos exclusively and recieved a 517. I hadn't taken chem in a while and hadn't taken biochem or psych ever.
Do you guys have a link to this "course" or content review videos. Whenever i go to their site under MCAT, its only practice problems for each section.
Thanks
Free is always good but KA does a great job of presenting information for novices in the field (i.e. pre-meds). If you took the course four years ago and reviewed using KA, you would be in a good position. However, I think KA's strength derives mainly from it's practice passages (in B/BC and P/S - the C/P passages are horrendous).
Try clicking the links on the other sections. The first section is all practice problems and each section starts out with practice problems
