MCAT

Do you think you are preparing far enough in advance ! I think I studied for about 2 months! Good luck to you though. If you have questions about Kaplan materials, let me know, because I teach for them.

 

Hi. I took Kaplan course last summer and took the August MCAT ('00). What I have to say: Kaplan scores seem to be pretty representative of what you actually get (unlike hyperlearning/Princeton scores which I hear majorly deflate your scores to make you practice harder). The AMCAS ones are the ones they released many years ago, correct? I took them all from the Kaplan library because they had them. What Kaplan told me, and what I found to be true: these tests are *not* representative of the actual exam, even though some of them are old exams, I think, because they're so old and things have gotten harder. They're really easy compared to the Kaplan practice exams, which I found to be pretty on par with the actual MCAT. If anything, a few of the Kaplan's were maybe a bit more difficult than the real MCAT (they have a couple verbal passages that are known to be killers--they say it's unlikely that you'll see anything that difficult), but the scores turn out about the same because they standardize them well to let you know what your position is. Mostly, that's just true of the few passages we were forewarned about in the Kaplan course, though, in all 3 sections. I'm not sure if you even have those in the book, since I think some of the materials are for the course only. Anyhow, my only advice would be to take as many Kaplan practice tests as you can lay your hands on, the more recent the better. They are very in line with the actual structure, and (although this may have more to do with learning style), it was the practice tests, not the class itself or any other "studying" that helped me most. By far. (A caveat there is that I had basically just completed all the college coursework--bio, chem, o-chem, phys--so I didn't need as much content review as you might if it's been a while. Particularly o-chem. ) Good luck!

 

I would agree about the Kaplan tests. My MCAT scores were very close to my kaplan scores.

 

My Kaplan scores were lower than what I got on the MCAT. My AAMC practice test scores were closer.

I found the Kaplan stuff very helpful. I would recommend it to anyone. I took the class though.

Pam

 

I found the Kaplan physical sciences to be harder than the real MCAT and the verbal reasoning to be easier than the real MCAT. Overall though, you should get a pretty good idea of what to expect on the real thing.