Customer Reviews

CliffsTestPrep PCAT: 5 Practice Tests

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

Decent practice test questions for math, biological, & orgo & general chemistry. However, the verbal analogies/sentence completions are too easy, and the reading comprehension section depends primarily on outside knowledge and assumptions, rather than actual reading of passages. E.g., a question asked about the bioethical scientist's view on stem cell research. The direct statement from the passage states that the bioethical scientists want more stringent laws regarding the research, without explaining why they advocated legal regulations. However, the correct answer given by Cliffs is that the scientists debate whether people have the right to play God...Nowhere in the passage was God/religion ever mentioned.
Also, some answers to chemistry and math questions provided wrong letter choices, even though explanations were correct. There are also typos in the questions and answers.

This book provides a comprehensive review of everything you need to know on the PCAT but cannot be used alone. For more detailed help, supplement with an MCAT prep book because the information is pretty much the same on the PCAT.

Great general review for the PCAT experience. Just plug through all five exams and use them as a means to identify weak areas. NOT a review or reference book. Few errors/typos stop this from being a 5.

This book appears to have been written by a 2nd grader. SO many typos, so many contradictions--and the reading comprehension, well let's just say that just about every question has two possible answers, ambiguous and opinionated. The typos alone make this book not worth purchasing. I'm going to have to buy a different book--do NOT under any circumstance buy this book--by the way, it's not really five exams--many of the same questions show up again and again throughout.

There are so many typos, it's almost a joke how bad this book is. It's also TOO simple, the actual test is much harder than this. save your money. i suggest you use mcat books for everything, and GRE/SAT book for verbal.

Working through the biology section i found that another name for prolactin is luteotropic hormone (archaic name if you ask me the scientific community uses prolactin). Grammar could be revised to show current scientific acceptions for scientific words. Seems the book was written by someone who is not currently in the field of physiology more 'old school' vocabulary. This confuses the readers with what the questions is asking. Following up with math there is one error i have found so far. prob 198 test 1 there is a missing negative sign which messes up the entire answer. One thing i feared most was looking over the answer key explanations for the math section, there is little explanation of the tricks involved to solving the problems. Stick with kaplan/pearson products, they give you shortcuts to solving problems. This makes understanding the problems a little easier instead of you pulling your hair out. Cliff assumes your sophisticated already and don't need a hand to direction for the correct answer. STick with another practice test guide.

These practice tests were very useful for me as I prepared to take the PCAT. I got in the 90s on the exam, and this book helped contribute.

This book was FULL of errors! You cannot do an entire section without finding errors! This book was also a lot easier compared to the real thing so I was very disappointed. I scored 93% composite on my PCAT but it had very little to do with this book. >:( WASTE OF MONEY!

This book is styled exactly like the real PCAT. If nothing else, it will improve your speed in answering questions if you complete the entire book. I feel the questions in this book were really similar and at some point almost the same as the real PCAT (not for every question of course but, once in a while). This is a good learning tool to help you review the questions you missed and show you areas you need to study. I feel that while the explanations to the answers were brief at times, they were sufficient.

The cons of this book (and why I give it 3 stars) are that it is not proofread as well as I would like it to be. You can drive yourself crazy trying to figure out why you got a question wrong only to find out that you were actually right and the answer was marked incorrectly. I think from a reputable publisher such as this they should have more focus on putting out an accurate and quality product where every single question is correctly worded and every answer is correctly stated. I mean how hard is it to have a group of people like me (recent college graduate) sit down and take these tests and point out mistakes?

In summary DO buy this book if you need to improve your test taking speed however do not depend on it as a reference source and approach the questions with a mindset that the book authors could be incorrect in their answers.

Excellent Review book for follow up after using Kaplen. I'm in Pharmacy school now :)