MCAT Third Party Material Suggestions?

[GreysAnatomy101]

Hi everyone! Does anyone have a third-party whose material or personal tutoring really helped them make the score jump? I have been using Kaplan but I am afraid that using only one third-party is not enough. I heard Berkeley review is good for content review?
Thank you!!

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[Osminog]

I found that the Kaplan subject books, supplemented with Khan Academy note documents (especially for P/S), were completely adequate for content review. I briefly tried to use the Berkeley Review books, but their "overpreparation is best" philosophy didn't jive with me; the dense style of the books and the unreasonable difficulty of the practice questions honestly served to intimidate me and made studying more painful, but YMMV.

Once you're done with your initial content review, do all the questions in the UWorld QBank with explanations. Fill in the gaps in your knowledge by reviewing the explanations on UW, re-reading relevant Kaplan sections, and watching Khan Academy videos. Once you're done with the UW QBank, do the MCAT Section Banks. These are super challenging, but they represent many of the more challenging passages/questions that you'll find on the actual MCAT.

Next, do several NS MCAT practice exams (strictly timed), starting with the free diagnostic. Review all of the questions and make sure that you know exactly why the right answers were right and why the wrong answers were wrong. Once you've done several NS exams and reviewed your answers, do the AAMC MCAT practice exams.

In another thread, you said you were getting low practice scores around 500 and plan on taking the MCAT in August. The most important thing you can do right now is to do a massive number of practice problems and to thoroughly review your answers and try to reinforce areas in which you are weak.

 

[GreysAnatomy101]

I found that the Kaplan subject books, supplemented with Khan Academy note documents (especially for P/S), were completely adequate for content review. I briefly tried to use the Berkeley Review books, but their "overpreparation is best" philosophy didn't jive with me; the dense style of the books and the unreasonable difficulty of the practice questions honestly served to intimidate me and made studying more painful, but YMMV.

Once you're done with your initial content review, do all the questions in the UWorld QBank with explanations. Fill in the gaps in your knowledge by reviewing the explanations on UW, re-reading relevant Kaplan sections, and watching Khan Academy videos. Once you're done with the UW QBank, do the MCAT Section Banks. These are super challenging, but they represent many of the more challenging passages/questions that you'll find on the actual MCAT.

Next, do several NS MCAT practice exams (strictly timed), starting with the free diagnostic. Review all of the questions and make sure that you know exactly why the right answers were right and why the wrong answers were wrong. Once you've done several NS exams and reviewed your answers, do the AAMC MCAT practice exams.

In another thread, you said you were getting low practice scores around 500 and plan on taking the MCAT in August. The most important thing you can do right now is to do a massive number of practice problems and to thoroughly review your answers and try to reinforce areas in which you are weak.

Thank you so much!!

 

[PlsLetMeIn21]

Berkeley Review definitely demands that you think, but personally I loved that and found they were the perfect resource for the MCAT I took. It can be hard at first to fall in step with their 'learn by mistakes' approach at first, but if you can get past that, they are the best materials out there for the sciences. I personally didn't find them dense at all, except for a couple biology chapters. I loved their great explanations and honestly didn't mind some of their tougher questions after a few weeks of working them, because they explained their logic so well. You learn how to work through questions better from TBR than anywhere else. They have so many passages and questions that you master the material and learn to think fast. You will not feel warm and fuzzy until you get your MCAT score. I used TPR and EK for CARS and P/S along with the 300-page reddit doc. This was perfect and for anything in P/S you may need, KA videos are a great resource. For me, seeing that everyone at SDN who used this combination was scoring where I wanted (had) to score solidified my decision.

From these review materials, go straight to AAMC section banks and Q packs. You don't need to find different sources for review and passages, because this combination includes both. You do NOT want to do content review without reinforcement and then do passages. For best results, do review and passages together. AAMC questions serve as a great review and get you ready for the FLS.

In terms of FLS, I did the four AAMC exams and a hybrid of exams from EK, TBR, and Altius. My big sib suggested that I mix and match exams from different companies to get a broader view and her advice was golden. I'm not sure which exams I liked best, but the combination was great.

As mentioned in a post above, the most important thing you can do to raise your score is passage after passage followed by thorough review, where you could get the right answer in your sleep if that question showed up again.

 

[atm14834]

I used NextStep as my main source. I supplemented with kaplan and a little khan academy here and there.

 

[Blueprint MCAT Tutor]

I obviously can't answer this question without being biased, but I would like to offer you to try our free MCAT practice bundle to see if our materials fit your study style! The link is in my signature and it includes our diagnostic exam, a full-length exam with explanations, content review videos, and the first two hour lesson in our MCAT course!

Whatever material you do end up choosing, the biggest advice I can give you is to make sure you thoroughly review every question you do. People will boast about doing every practice exam and question bank and then getting a score below their expectations. I think this stems from not thoroughly reviewing and learning from the questions. It's important to do the questions, but I would argue it's even more important to review them and figure out what mistakes you're making. Good luck with everything and please do not hesitate to reach out if you have any questions!