You have a serious conflict of interest here and I completely disagree with you on a number of points. The EK questions are significantly more challenging than they are in other books I have seen (though I have not come across material from your company), and there are an absolute TON of questions accompanying every concept to teach you to "apply the information."
This sounds more like sales pitch than genuine advice to me, and it is lame.
Yes, I perhaps am a bit biased. I have admitted this in many threads and don't try to hide it (as my moniker points out). I did teach for BR for quite a while and absolutely loved my experience. But I think it's pretty out of line for you to make your allegations.
First off, if you feel it's a sales pitch, what am I specifically endorsing? I'm not recommending what he should buy nor where he should buy it. Second, why am I not allowed to have an opinion? I have tutored and taught premeds for nearly ten years (counting TAing) and have seen many different materials. I have seen students both succeed and struggle, and from those observations have developed some opinions of what works and what doesn't.
And I have to ask, who are you to question my ethics? I don't mean to pick a fight, but character attacks are not a part of the culture here. By all means disagree with my opinion, but please refrain from making any comments on my character, especially if you've only been here a few days.
Now as for you opinion, I'm glad you feel good about the materials. But I will again say that the biggest problem is that their answer explanations do not teach the student very much. Often times they were hardly even a sentence long. It is my opinion that the most important learning occurs when someone reviews their answers, both right and wrong. A challenging question with no answer explanation to speak of is not helpful.
And lastly, if you are judging the quality of a book by the difficulty of questions, then I have to ask you why? There is nothing wrong with having challenging questions as long as they (a) teach the student some strategy or concept and (b) they are realistic for the style of the MCAT. If the challenging question has no answer explanation beyond "page 83 says so." (or something like that), then how helpful is it? It doesn't build confidence. Also, if the challenging question is there just to impress the reader with how much the author knows, then again, what good is that question. There is plenty of
author muscle flexing going around between all of the prep materials on the market and many posters here have pointed this out in one way or another. I just happen to think that such tactics are detrimental to students or at the very least a waste of their study time.
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