Ask a med student - MCAT Prep
I was wondering if you had any recommendations for studying for the MCAT - class or no class? Is there somewhere I can find practice tests without actually taking the class? Thanks!
First a disclaimer – I taught Kaplan MCAT courses for a year and the Examkrackers courses for another year, but I’m not currently affiliated with any test prep companies. I took the MCAT back in 2003, so maybe some of the things I’m going to say aren’t true anymore, although I did my best to look things up.
I would recommend taking a class for the MCAT. The classes are expensive, but most premeds end up taking a class and they are a good investment. Of course it is possible to study on your own by buying question books and review materials, but classroom courses usually get you access to more and better practice materials, and the classes really help you focus on what to study and help you pace yourself.
If you want to study on your own:
If you don’t take a class, I would recommend buying some good review books. From my experience, Examkrackers makes really concise and helpful review books for all the subjects, and unlike Kaplan, their course prep books can actually be purchased without getting the full classroom course. The Kaplan ones are just a little painful to read sometimes, while the Examkrackers ones get to the point and have color and diagrams.
Next you need a source of questions – you need to do practice questions regularly and try to do as many full-length exams as possible. For practice questions, Kaplan has some good review books, but I prefer the Examkrackers books – I think they’re more representative of the actual exams. They have a series called “101 Verbal Passages”, “101 Biology passages”, and so on. The titles are pretty self-explanatory.
You need to do full length exams, and as many of them as possible. The advantage of taking a class is that you get proctored realistic exams on a regular basis. However, you can also get access to full-length exams on your own. The American Association of Medical Colleges makes 8 previous MCAT exams available online. You can take these in either printed form or as a computerized exam. One of them is available for free, and the remainder cost $35 each (but you get to use them for a year).
http://www.aamc.org/students/mcat/practicetests.htm
If you take a class:
So of course the next logical question is which class to take. I can tell you about Kaplan and Examkrackers – I took the Kaplan course to study on my own, and later taught for both companies. I have no experience with Princeton Review, so if you’re interested in their offerings, you’ll have to do some research
Kaplan:
They have been around for longer, and so they have accumulated more practice materials. Their strength is the wealth of practice tests – subject tests and full length questions. Kaplan has something like 11 of their own full length exams, and you do 5 of those as proctored exams as part of the course. They also give you access to all the AAMC old MCAT exams that I mentioned above. So altogether, you have almost 20 full length exams, which is more than you could probably actually do without going crazy.
The downside with Kaplan is that the teaching is often hit or miss. They don’t pay very well, so they don’t always get the best teachers. They have a very standardized lesson plan, which is both a good and a bad thing – in general it does little to encourage the teachers to work hard. Of course, there are some great teachers out there, and Kaplan gives you the option of going to any of their offered classes, so you can jump around. Another thing I disliked is that they have 3-hour class sessions, which makes you want to stab yourself in the eye with the free Kaplan pencil.
One other major advantage of Kaplan is that they have nice prep centers where you can go for classes, to use their library of materials, and whatever else you do.
Examkrackers:
This is a relative newcomer – they weren’t even really around when I studied for the exam. Their strength is the teaching. Examkrackers pays their teachers about twice as much as Kaplan, so I think they have an edge in recruiting. Plus a significant part of the teacher salary is linked to student satisfaction, which makes the teachers work harder. The lessons are shorter overall and the material is laid out better. This is great if your knowledge base is lacking and you actually need to learn rather than just review for the exam.
Examkrackers has plenty of questions in their course books, and you do full-length exams in class using the AAMC released exams. Overall, however, they have less material available to you as part of the course. You can always buy more of the AAMC exams and more questions books, but you should factor that when comparing prices for the two courses.
Summary:
Take Kaplan if you have a good knowledge base and are just looking for a lot of practice questions and some basic review. Take Examkrackers if you need to review and re-learn a lot of the material you forgot from your premed classes, but be ready to get some supplementary practice material.
Good luck
Eugene
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