TBR 2014 good enough?

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siefer1322

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Hi,

Is the TBR 2014 version good to use for the 2015+ MCAT? I specifically referring to their physics set, organic and general chemistry sets?

Please let me know as I am about to make a purchase! Thanks!

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Content wise its the same, if not they took a little out in the new books. Just the formatting of the passages and amount of passages might vary. Overall, you'll be fine with them.
 
I've asked the rep about the 2011 books. They told me even these were fine and not to buy new copies, surprisingly!
 
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That is extremely surprising to hear...

I know! I would think they would tell me to buy the new ones since it's more money for them. I am sure you can call/email them if you want, and see if they tell you the same thing.
 
I think over the next month that message will be changing a little, but it will always be what is best for our students. It may seem surprising (which is kind of a sad statement about the prep industry in general) that someone says you don't have to spend money when they can profit from saying you should, but BR has been doing MCAT longer than anyone except Kaplan and an honest, sincere approach to everything has worked so far. No reason to change that philosophy now. It's a company run by teachers.

However, like I said, the message will be changing little. First off, after hearing back from several students following their recent MCATs, our NEW organic chemistry books are the most important books of any kind anywhere (more helpful than every source you could find). The first book is a conceptual review of organic chemistry and the second book is heavy of biology and biochemistry examples. The feedback has been overwhelmingly favorable at how useful the passages were and how insightful the tricks and strategies have been. So given the recent and repetitive feedback, we feel you should invest time in our newest organic chemistry books (over our older ones and especially over other sources). Organic chemistry and it's analytical approach, is key on the new MCAT and that is what our books do better than anyone.

Our new physics books are finally printed and ready to go. They have several new passages and more biological applications. The same is true for the general chemistry books. If you can afford to get the new ones, you definitely should. If money is tight, then working from the old ones and omitting material that was removed in 2015 will work too.
 
Thanks BerkReviewTeach for the informative post, however, as a Canadian student, I am having difficulties contacting your company. I am not getting my emails returned and the phone number on the website seems to be offline. What do you recommend?
 
@BerkReviewTeach Would you happen to have an updated study schedule with the new TBR books?

The schedule is now printed in the back of each of the new book 1s. One small problem is that as each book was released, the schedule changed ever-so-slightly, so the schedule in the back of the physics book is the most current. Any schedule will work, but that book has the best version.

There is also a version of it in one of the threads in my signature. That should be a good plan, although it is based on the new books (which have a different number of chapters in general chemistry and a different sequence in physics and organic chemistry.)
 
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Thanks BerkReviewTeach for the informative post, however, as a Canadian student, I am having difficulties contacting your company. I am not getting my emails returned and the phone number on the website seems to be offline. What do you recommend?

There are sometimes 800 number issues from Canada (no idea why but it happens). I'd try the 510-843-8378 number and see if that works better. As far as emails go, thanks to someone trying to steal our website and then sell it back to us, the ending is berkeley-review.com (with a dash). Without the dash, I'm not sure where it ends up.

That said, my recommendation for people buying books from Canada is to try to find them used, because there is no tariff on used books. The cost of shipping and the import/export tariffs are insane from the US to Canada. Send me a PM and I can offer a suggestion about this.
 
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