Preparing to write mcat for first time in august; anyone not do tpr or kaplan?

[gzahalan]

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Hi everyone,
I'm writing the MCAT for the first time in late August 2009. I need some advice as to the materials to purchase in order to get a relatively high score. I've written the PCAT (pharmacy college admission test) and OAT (optometry admission test) so far, but the MCAT's format is quite different.

Is there anyone on this forum that did well on the MCAT, without shelling out approximately $1500-2000 for the Princeton Review material or the Kaplan material?

I am going to be purchasing all of the Exam Krackers books, along with some of the Kaplan and Princeton Review books, but cannot afford to shell out all the big bucks for the courses. Is this advisable? Are the courses really 100% necessary? Can studying the books I just mentioned helped me score relatively well? Let me know what you think, everyone.

Thank you.

-gzahalan.

 

[yousafob]

Take a look at the 30+ MCAT Thread (stickied at the top). You'll notice that many people who scored really well never took a prep. course at all and just self studied using a combination of Kaplan/EK/TPR/TBR materials.

Make sure you supplement EK with either 1 of the other 3 prep. companies listed above because EK is good, but its written to be as concise as possible and thus skims over topics that you might need more detail on.

I took the Kaplan prep. course twice and didn't find it helpful because A) everything covered in the class could be found in the review notes B) I learn better by self-studying.