The General Consensus: TPR vs. Kaplan course

[premed414]

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Hey all,

I've searched, but I couldn't find the general SDN consensus between these two prep courses, just stories of peoples experiences. I know many suggest to just not take a course, study on your own, save the money, go to the closer one, etc.

Conveniently they are both equidistant, and if one were to choose, which course is overall the better course?

Thanks in advance!

 

[BestDoctorEver]

Hey all,

I've searched, but I couldn't find the general SDN consensus between these two prep courses, just stories of peoples experiences. I know many suggest to just not take a course, study on your own, save the money, go to the closer one, etc.

Conveniently they are both equidistant, and if one were to choose, which course is overall the better course?

Thanks in advance!

Dont spend your money in taking any prep courses!... Buy TBR set (not TPR) and EK 101 set. Do content review in TBR, then do practice questions on EK 101 to solidify the concepts that correspond to the content on TBR, and go back to TBR to do the passages since there are much tougher than EK. If you do that, you should be able to score 30+ in the real mcat assuming you are an average student and you can score at least a 9 on verbal.

 

[rjs2131]

...while the actual course instruction may not be as helpful, if you're going to take a class I would say go with Kaplan...they have MUCH more practice material and it's mostly online. I'd get verbal stuff from elsewhere though (EK101). Princeton has pretty good verbal, but I think Kaplan's resources for PS and BS far outweigh Princeton's, and Kaplan also gives you handy study tools like flash cards and an online quiz bank.

 

[blackandgold1]

I personally don't think you need a course, it is the biggest waste of money. Like said above, if you're a decent student with self discipline self study is MUCH better.

If you do plan on taking a course nmw, DO NOT DO NOT DO NOT DO NOT take Kaplan. I just finished their course a month ago and it was the BIGGEST waste of $2000. Their online material is ok, but most of it isn't anything extraordinary. Their FLs are not representative of AAMC at all and are pretty much useless, since the scores are extremely inflated. I had really good teachers, but all they do is go over basic concepts very superficially, and as long as you know how to read you can probably go over those concepts on your own, in more depth. I stopped going to class two months in bc the three hr classes were such a waste of time.

However, the only good thing was their qbank, which you can buy w/o the course. Seriously get Berkeley review for gen chem, orgo and physics and ek for bio along w verbal materials and you'll get the same results as w a course, without shelling out so much $$