I ended up taking the plunge on a Princeton Review MCAT LiveOnline course back in April. I took the MCAT in August and would like to share my experiences here.
First, I'll share what I liked about the course.
1) The MCAT LiveOnline course is completely identical in content to TPR's classroom courses, plus is a few hundred dollars cheaper.
2) Perhaps to try to compensate for the online format, the TPR LiveOnline instructors seem to be the "cream of the crop" - all of my instructors had been teaching for TPR for several years. Some had attained TPR's highest instructor rank, indicating that they had received very favorable reviews from colleagues and students. One of the other LiveOnline bio instructors (not mine) was the woman in charge of all of TPR's MCAT science content - I don't think you can get any more expert than that!
Note: This didn't mean that all my classes were great. See below for details.
3) I thought TPR's set of MCAT books was fantastic. Their philosophy is to go into "110% detail" - slightly more detail than you need on the MCAT, but you understand the material better as a result. This may not work for everyone, but it worked well for me because that is the sort of learner I am. My shakiest subject was physics, because I am a nontraditional student and the last physics class I had taken was 10+ years ago. Fortunately, TPR's review books were comprehensive, very clearly written, and taught me all I needed to know about physics (and the other subjects). I loved their Science Workbook, a huge, several-hundred-page volume with thousands of practice questions and passages on every conceivable MCAT topic. I worked through (almost) the whole book during the course and it was great preparation for the real thing.
For me personally, the TPR books worked much better than Examkrackers. I found that EK was too concise for my liking and often spent too little time discussing what seemed like important points. The TPR books certainly didn't have that problem.
4) If you do LiveOnline, you get a set of online resources that I found very helpful. They include access to all AAMC MCAT exams, a ton of TPR practice drills, plus (most importantly) recordings of all the classes delivered by their best teachers. I think you get access to the practice drills and exams if you take one of their classroom courses, but I'm not sure about the class recordings.
Next, what I disliked.
1) The online format is very different from a real classroom and is challenging for instructors to adapt to. As a result, my experience was hit and miss. The main issue is that there is a lot of "lag" between when the instructor asks a question and when someone answers. Typically, it would go something like this: Instructor types in a question. Several (5-10) seconds later, a student types an answer, if there is a student who knows the answer. Otherwise, 15-20+ seconds go by without anyone responding. Then, another 5-10 seconds later, instructor responds... and so on. Contrast this to what happens in a real classroom, where the instructor can ask a question and immediately get a response, or determine that no one knows the answer.
This may seem like a minor issue, but it is not. The reason is that many of TPR's best instructors understandably like to keep their classes very interactive. When teaching in real classrooms, they ask a ton of questions in class in order to keep students active and engaged. This method of teaching translates poorly to LiveOnline, because the "lag" is so much greater online than in a real classroom. In the example I outlined above, if the instructor asks a question every minute (which is realistic), there is 30 seconds of "dead time" where nothing is happening for each minute of class time! This made some classes go by very slowly.
I found that some instructors understood this problem and adjusted accordingly by asking fewer questions in class, but not all. Thus, my experience was really hit and miss depending on the instructor. I had a fantastic general/organic chemistry instructor who was very clear and knew not to ask too many questions in class. Unfortunately, my other instructors were not as great. Two of them asked a ton of questions in class, which I am sure makes real classes more compelling, but made online classes very slow. I compensated by tuning out in some parts of class and doing practice problems or reading ahead instead, or simply skipping class when I felt like I already had a good understanding of the material.
2) The LiveOnline classroom is not much like a real classroom. There is no video. There is audio, for both instructors and students, but in practice only instructors use the audio - students pretty much exclusively use the text chat function. I used audio at first, but eventually reverted to text chat because it was easier and faster. This means that in each class, the instructor is the only person who speaks. Everyone else communicates via text chat. This takes some getting used to for both instructors and students. I found that communicating via text chat was fine - the main downside was the "lag" because everyone has to type in their comments instead of just speaking (see above).
3) TPR's verbal strategy simply did not work for me. They encourage you to rank verbal passages as "easy," "challenging" and "killer," then recommend that you save the "killer" ones for last and don't focus too much on them. This may work for some people, but it did not work for me at all because my target verbal score required doing well on all of the passages, not just the easier ones. I didn't like the fact that TPR was recommending I consider "giving up" on some of the passages because they appeared to be harder. Also, TPR has an elaborate system where they categorize the questions into 10+ categories and give you tips on how to approach each one. I thought this was gimmicky and didn't feel like it was useful for me. This contributed to my decision, after the third or fourth verbal class, to skip the rest of the verbal classes (and I still did well on the verbal).
In the end, I felt like the most useful verbal advice I got came from Examkrackers: strong focus and great pacing are key. I think these two tips were more helpful than anything else I picked up from TPR verbal material.
Conclusions.
I felt like TPR prepared me very well for the MCAT. I scored in the 39-42 range on seven AAMC practice MCATs, and got a 38S on the real thing (14 PS, 12 VR, 12 BS).
However, I also feel like most of my useful preparation came from the excellent TPR review books, not from the LiveOnline classroom sessions, due to the issues above. Also, in the end, I realized that I didn't really need classroom instruction, even though I originally thought I would for physics. I think I could have scored nearly, or equally, as well if I had just used the TPR books and paid for AAMC practice exams a la carte, instead of taking the TPR course.
In conclusion - was my $1500 well spent? I got a 38S on the MCAT, which is a good score and within my target range, so I feel like it was. But would I do it again? Maybe not. For people who find classroom instruction essential, I think LiveOnline is certainly worth considering. But for me personally, I would give a lot of thought to just buying an unused set of TPR MCAT books on eBay, instead of spending much more money on the full class.
