Kaplan is mediocre for content review across the sciences. EK and BR are better with EK being stronger in Bio, and BR being stronger in the rest of the sciences.
If you're talking about the Kaplan sectional tests people usually do poorly on them. If you're talking about practice passages in general, then you should bolster your post-practice review and identify what's giving you problems. However, it sounds like you have a problem with application. That can be improved with more practice passages. You may also have a problem with synthesizing different topics.
Here are some guidelines for reviewing your practice passages and something that will help you bring different topics together:
General Guidelines for Reviewing:
- Go over EVERY question. Both the ones you got right and the ones you got wrong.
- Reviewing should take 2-3 times longer than taking the timed practice problems.
- If your tests are fluctuating, it is due to the different topics on the various tests. In other words, you have some glaring weaknesses that when targeted, nail you, badly. You have to find out what those weaknesses are because they are evident by your scores. Do NOT dismiss any wrong answer as a "stupid mistake." You made that error for a reason. Go over your tests again.
- You might want to consider making a log for all of your post test results where you work through the questions below. Doing so, you'll be able to easily notice trends.
Some things to go over when reviewing:
1. Why did you get the question wrong? Why did you get the question right?
2. What question and passage types get you?
3. How is your mindset when facing a particular passage?
4. Are you stressed for time?
5. Where are your mistakes happening the most? Are they front loaded? Are they at the end? All over?
6. What was your thought process for both the questions you got right and the ones you got wrong?
7. For verbal, what was the author's mindset and main idea?
8. Did you eliminate all of the answer choices you could from first glance?
ex. You know an answer should be a positive number so you cross out all of the negative number answer choices.
9. What content areas are you weak in?
10. How can you improve so you don't make the same mistake again?
Hat Trick:
Get a hat and write every single MCAT PS and BS topic onto a piece of paper. Then, when you're ready to practice PS, put all the PS topics into the hat. Draw two or three pieces of paper and connect the topics together. In addition to connecting them, come up with what a passage might look like and what kind of questions you might get. If you can't do this, go back and review each of the three sections. Rinse and repeat.
The hat trick days are important because they aid you in synthesizing the various topics together. On the MCAT, you utilize this skill for every passage because MCAT passages combine topics. Furthermore, you may also discover content weaknesses that you will need to go over.
PS Topic List:
http://www.aamc.org/students/mcat/preparing/pstopics.pdf
BS Topic List:
http://www.aamc.org/students/mcat/preparing/bstopics.pdf
Page to get topic lists if you dont want to directly download the pdf:
http://www.aamc.org/students/mcat/preparing/creatingstudyplan.htm
