Examkrackers Complete MCAT Study Pkg: 5 Book Package [Paperback]

Jonathan Orsay (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 1088 pages
• Publisher: Osote Publishing; 7 edition (March 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1893858499
• ISBN-13: 978-1893858497
• Product Dimensions: 11.7 x 8.7 x 2.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (98 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,416 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #17 in Books > Medical Books > Medicine > Reference

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

290 of 312 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars I compiled the data from all the 5 star reviews, an honest look., June 4, 2009

By 

Robert Mckee (tucson, az) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Examkrackers Complete MCAT Study Pkg: 5 Book Package (Paperback)

EDIT: I want to preface this review saying that Examkrackers is a good resource and may be great for some and not for others. I don't want to give the idea that it is a bad resource.
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Advantages:
- the materials look great (color)
- it seems to cover all the material necessary
- great marketing

Disadvantages:
- The concepts are very weak, especially in biology. You need to understand WHAT is going on conceptually. You can't just be thrown facts and material without knowing WHAT is going on. I quote another reviewer, "I have to say, the science is very conceptually weak... they teach you shortcuts, but if you don't grasp the concepts, the mcats is about tricking you on the weaknesses and you'll go for all the tricks."
- Not all of the books are excellent, the physics book is particularly weak.
- SIDE NOTE: Exam Krackers 101 Verbal passages is actually very strong and a quality resource.

I went through nearly all the reviews for this site for 30-40 minutes after I found the series to be less than 5 STAR quality (closer to 3) as so many reviewers were saying. I also noticed that a lot of the 5 star ratings were quick little "this is great, blah blah" short reviews. Please read some of the 3 star honest well written reviews. I did this. I also noticed over half of the 5 star reviews were following a certain pattern. The other thing that raised a flag was that this series had 96 reviews! 96! I tried to find ONE other MCAT comprehensive review that was close. Not one. The Kaplan 2007-2008 had 15 reviews, that was the closest.

So I asked a simple question, "how can I be sure these reviews are real or not?". One possible answer was, reviewers like to review. So if these were REAL reviews then I would assume there may be at least ONE other review by that reviewer. JUST ONE. So I decided to waste an enormous amount of time (I have a nice quad-core HP computer less than a month old, so it helped me go faster) and open every reviewer to see if they had reviewed any other books, I felt compelled to do this if there was any foul play going on. Here is what I found:

Here are the results as of June 4th, 2009:
There were 58 reviews that gave 5 stars:

---37 of these reviews only reviewed this book (2 anonymous "by Customer"). That is over 63%

---Another 2 were fishy in that they only reviewed this book and another Examkrackers book OR this book and gave a Kaplan book a low score saying in the first sentence, "I would use the Examkrackers books". In the first sentence made it tough to swallow. Also they were referring to some site called secret-route-dot-com which I looked up on amazon and google and found to be a scam type book with glowing reviews and then people calling it a scam.
All in all I estimate that 67% of the reviews were SINGLE reviews for this book (with only 2 that were this book and another EK book). 2 of every 3!

---33% of the reviewers that gave this book 5 Stars had reviewed some other book by some other publisher. Which looked real.
Crosscheck me on this, it is verifiable and true. Also because the reviews were fake it is likely that Examkrackers will not be able to remedy this situation because when you create a fake email to write a fake review you can't log in again because you will forget the log in/email.

To be fair I went to check out the Kaplan Premier Program with the highest number of reviews. The 2007-2008 had 15 reviews, I was only interested in the 5 star reviews as on this book (as if someone is to falsify reviews that would likely be 5 or 1 star reviews). There were FIVE 5 star reviews, and of the 5 all 5 had reviewed at least one other book or product from amazon.com.

--100% of the people who highly reviewed the Kaplan product were REPEAT reviewers and had reviewed some other book.

I am not advocating Kaplan's book as I haven't used it yet. I am very worried about the fidelity of some of these 5 star reviews. I would estimate that most of them are fake.


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---------I have spaced this out as a poster didn't think I was being fair to examkrackers (objectively I do give them a 3)--------

Overall I would give the EK books a 3, but I had to give them a 2 because of the high probability of dishonesty.
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I almost gave them a 1 because I am strongly against cheating and my gut tells me that employees created a lot of those reviews.

No one can be 100% sure, but after reading over the ones that seem fake, I see an eerie resemblance and repetition.
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EDIT:
So all in all, I would say this. If you are really conceptually strong and did amazing in the classes then ExamKrackers is ok because the quick summary fashion in which they present information will be great. If you haven't taken a class in a few years and are a non traditional student, these may not be for you. The other option is using the Examkrackers as a good base and when you don't understand the quick overviews to use a textbook or some other more comprehensive source that explains concepts better.

I think this is why you can see some people really enjoying this and some people who don't think it is that great. A person who HAS a concept down can read this and say, "oh yeah I remember this, I need to know this? ok" while someone else can read it who has the concept down and say, "wow, if I hadn't learned this really well I would have no clue what this is saying. This is horrible."

You see, 2 people with the same strength reacting to the same resource differently. And of course those who don't have a concept down will have a vague understanding based mostly on memory but their ability to think critically in new directions (which is what the MCAT truly tests, not memory) will be tough. They may be able to get a 10 but I think a lot of us studying are setting goals higher than a 10 in each section.

EXAMPLE OF WHAT I'M SAYING: The section on the electron transport chain is 1 long paragraph. When I read it I had NO idea what it was talking about other than all the definitions of all the major constituents involved. If asked a difficult question on proton gradients or what would happen if you inhibited ATP synthase I would have been clueless and unable to get it right. If asked a simple Q I may have been ok.

So, what I did was also buy the TPR hyperlearning books and I read the EK (with a lot of questions and confusion, filling in gaps with wikipedia sometimes) then I read the TPR section on the same topic (2-3 pages instead of 1 paragraph), now I am conceptually stronger, then I will create a small review back with the EK material.

So I am using the EK as my backbone, because it helps me make the review BUT with only the EK I wouldn't be able to excel (as I took bio years ago). Had I just finished bio and had an excellent prof that covered everything, then I may have been conceptually strong with something like the electron transport chain and the EK short paragraph (as opposed to 2-3 pages in the princeton book) would have been sufficient.

Not ALL the EK sections are this much shorter than the TPR sections BUT you will find more effort to make sure you know everything that is going on and why in a TPR book while EK's goal is cleary: HERE IS WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW in the shortest way we can do it. (useful if you already conceptually strong).

GOOD Luck peoples!

25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not the best series, November 14, 2007

By 

A. Sun "Bruin08" (CA, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Examkrackers Complete MCAT Study Pkg: 5 Book Package (Paperback)

I bought this set of books this year to study for the mcats and I have to say that I'm deeply disappointed. Given the hype about everything that's been said online, I figured, so what if the writers aren't PhD, MD, or science majors, test-taking is different. So I studied with their 10 wk schedule, did most of their practice problems with the 100 problem/passage series, and what I noticed are the following weaknesses:
1.) General concepts are not covered to great enough depth for true conceptual understanding = very important to ace the mcat.
2.) some practice questions are irrelevant.
3.) Biology section--> nervous system, so badly written it is a bit funny, never seen it so badly written, so bad :)Don't get me started on thermo in the chemistry review.
4.) physics --> concepts do not follow with actual examples. Physics is really about applications. Can't apply the concepts, you'll be sad on the mcat.
5.) verbal - the only awesome thing about EK!
6.) the practice 100/1000 problem series do not give a good reflection of actual mcat where it's passage based and you need to know how to handle the information presented. The workbooks are all stand-alone questions.
7.) The science is not well presented. As a biology major with a near perfect GPA, I have to say, the science is very conceptually weak. Some explanations are a little funny. They teach you shortcuts, but if you don't grasp the concepts, the mcats is about tricking you on the weaknesses, and you'll go for all the tricks.

Maybe the books are meant as a supplement to the actual course, or as references with supplement of great background. I have no idea of why the ratings are so high for this series. Audio-osmosis is SO annoying. I'm really beginning to wonder if people from the company are reviewing the books.

One other thing, the text is colored, but honestly, you're no longer in gradeschool, so having content over visual entertainment with salty the annoying cracker is better at this point.
If you have to, buy the used as supplemental material to the Princeton review course which i highly recommend. Their texts are amazing!!!!!

Gluck everyone.

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Awesome but.., May 23, 2007

By 

taylorw187 (Seattle, WA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Examkrackers Complete MCAT Study Pkg: 5 Book Package (Paperback)

The Examkrackers series is great to improve your MCAT score for home study. Just make sure to follow the home study guide on their website. The books are colorful, easy to read and...yeah almost fun to study from. The only major downfall is that the typos and errors can be frusturating. I got the 7th edition and it was still littered with typos! The typos and errors are so obvious that they could have been fixed if someone just proofread the final draft ONCE!! Seriously! For example: The front cover says "Includes exercises with OFFCIAL AAAMC material", you might see 4 answers and they forgot to ask a question. There are parts where they say remember these FOUR things and go on to number THREE things. It's still the best study guide for the MCAT. All the little typos and messups just get really anoying considering that anyone could have fixed them after one proof read. And after the SEVENTH EDITION?!?! Come on guys. Don't just pump out a new edition every year to make a quick buck without even fixing the retarded typos. That's just lame and cheap.