Does the year/edition of TBR books differ significantly? Would I be ok with a 2013 or 2014 version of TBR for a January 2018 mcat? My only concern is that the amount of biochemistry might not be up to par for the new mcat. I'd love to save some money but I am also okay with spending more if it's worth it. Thanks!
Question about the Berkeley Review
- Thread starter lupindore
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Email them directly, that would give you the most correct response. They directly endorse resale of their books from student to student, even of older copies, so I'm sure they'd be very upfront and honest about it.
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With so many used copies for sale on SDN classifieds, why not get updated ones (we didn't update until 201, to make sure it reflected the actual exam)? The reality is that plenty of people have done well using older versions (like 2013 and 2014), and other than adding more biochemistry (especially in Organic Chemistry book 2) and removing untested material, the text portion is mostly the same. The biggest change in the newest books has to do with the passages (adding, replacing, or editing about 500 total). There was a change in the style of the AAMC questions starting with the new exam, so the new BR books contain passages that reflect this. If you are really struggling financially, then I'd just get the updated organic chemistry. If have a little more in your budget, then I'd add physics, biology, and general chemistry. If you have a fairly large budget, then having all the books would give you plenty of passages to do.
Thank you so much for saying this. We take great pride that people see that about us. There are little things that people likely never notice (like the quality of paper and the page brightness of our books for easier studying) which we build our entire company philosophy around. We love being completely non-corporate and only doing one exam (the MCAT), because it affords us freedoms in our approach. It's been working well to date, as we are the second oldest company doing the MCAT (yep, we've been doing MCAT longer than TPR, EK, and everyone else but Kaplan).
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from what I remember the biochemistry is sprinkled in with the biology stuff as opposed to having a separate section. you might be better off getting a biochem book from another prep company just in case.
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We did in fact sprinkle it around. The structural biochemistry material is found in Organic Chemistry Book 2 (the Amino Acids and Proteins chapter and the Carbohydrates chapter). The pathway and enzyme activity material is found in the Biology Books (Chapter 7: Metabolic Components and Chapter 8: Metabolic Pathways.) The material is in there, but it is scattered about and in all four of those chapters it is integrated with other material. Lab techniques are found mostly in the two biology chapters, but some are found in organic chemistry and even some in physics (electrophoresis.)
