trying to contact:
Nova Press
MCat-prep.com (Dr. Ferdinand's Products)
Berkley Review
Thank you so much for the invitation. I am so sorry I didn't learn about it until late last night. The gesture is appreciated. Perhaps next go-around we can take part. It's a great idea to offer exposure to everything, so that the consumer can be a much better shopper.
trozman said:
(And you already have all the "big" companies. The smaller they are, the worse the quality of their materials, as sad as that may be.)
There are more differences, sure, but I don't think there's anything that test prep presenters could tell you that couldn't be better (i.e. more honestly) told by people who have experienced the course.
Brilliant second comment, but you couldn't be more incorrect in your first statement. As a point of history, I started writing prep materials about three years before Princeton Review started their MCAT course and about six years before ExamKrackers entered the scene. Princeton Review went on to buy a company I co-founded (Hyperlearning), so that they could have a more credible MCAT program. The credibility you bestow upon them has much to do with absorbing a
small company that was similar to ours before being sold. Small companies have some great products, especially if they spend more on development and little on advertising.
Every year, we (Berkeley Review) add and/or upgrade between one hundred to two hundred passages to/in our collection. We take incredible pride in the answer explanations we write, because the reality is that nothing in materials matters more. You learn more going over questions than you do anywhere else. I assume you have never seen any of our materials.
We are definitely not big, and have no plans to become big. I know everyone of our students by name and there is a great satisfaction in that. We share their experience from anxious first day of class to getting that first acceptance letter to sweating out a waitlist. Getting big would lose that, and that's far too high a price to pay just to become rich. That's why we chose not to sell when a large corporate entity came courting us.
That said, I have to agree with your second comment whole-heartedly. But just because this site offers a material overview, doesn't mean members don't/won't/can't listen to the feedback of others. What a project like the prep materials week offers is a chance for someone who would normally miss out on having several options to get exposure and know what's out there. After exposure, they should start to ask members here about their experiences and draw their own conclusions. Personally, I am grateful and touched that our company was considered, because it might make ten or fifteen people who normally wouldn't know about us discover our existance.
My apologies for my impassioned response, but I have spent many all-nighters writing passages that incorporate multiple topics with answer explanations that discuss concepts, analysis, definitions, test-taking logic, mnemonics, and most of all speedy ways to do things. I am proud of the materials I've written and would put them up against anything on the market and bet my life they would lead a student to a better score on the exam. The quality of materials is measured in how they make a reader a better test-taker on MCAT passages and questions.
