Customer Reviews

Examkrackers 101 Passages in MCAT Verbal Reasoning

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This is a good book for practice. However I think this book can be misleading at times. For those studying for the MCAT, use this book to practice passages and more less of actually taking a test one by one. I would say use this book to practice a few passages a day. The questions are very challenging and will you get you thinking and focused for the real thing. I would say this can be easier than the real MCAT or AAMC verbal, but it is harder at times as well. So I guess we can say it balances out.

The passages for the most part are very interesting, compared to most verbal passages I have seen in the real MCAT and other prep companies. This book lacked humanity and philosophy passages, which is almost always present on the real MCAT. Although the questions are extremely difficult, some of the questions all over the book have more than one right answer, and will keep you guessing. So this book does have it's mistakes.

I would not actually score each practice verbal test based on the scale given in the back of the book. In my opinion I think some tests are harder than others in the book. Because of this I think that one and only scale in the back of the book should not be representative of each test in this book. If each test were graded accordingly, based on a pool of people getting certain questions right and wrong, then we would know each real score for each test. A lot of people I know, including myself, had verbal scores which fluctuated from this book.

As I mentioned before, use this book as practice. See which questions you got right and wrong, and why and how it lead you to the answer. Just use this book to polish your test-taking technique for the Verbal section, whatever technique it might be.

I give this book a 3.7 rating, which rounds up to 4. I do recommend this book, but with caution.

I took the MCAT just yesterday. In retrospect, one thing I really would not recommend to other people preparing for MCAT is using this book. This is a completely objective opinion. I have done almost all of the book, solved almost all the problems. I found that while the difficulty level of the questions themselves could be definitely tricky and challenging. In that aspect, this book is acceptable. However, the problem with this book is that the types of the passages and especially the difficulty level of the passages are NOWHERE similar to the actual MCAT or the AAMC practice tests online. I can confidently say that the MCAT passages, as well as the AAMC pratice tests' passages were definitely more challenging. Frankly, I really have to say this book screwed me over the verbal, because it really made me to think that the passages were as easy as it seemed- but they really weren't. Sorry for everyone taking the MCAT, but the verbal section is HARD. Don't have false hopes that it will have a few give away passages. EVERY SINGLE PASSAGE is equally difficult, and definitely more difficult that I'd say 80% of all the passages in this book. Examkrackers are good with practicing concepts, but only ones really worth getting and that I would recommend is the biology book, and maybe the physics book. Organic chemistry is way too easy... WAY to easy, and general chem and physics are unecessarily way more difficult and have some obscure topics you won't have to bother for the MCATs.

If you are preparing for MCAT, I'd rather purchase ALL of the AAMC practice exams, which is available online for a year, and keep practicing those than to purchase all of examkracker books like me and waste nearly a month doing all the problems. AH, one more thing. There are typos here and there in examkracker books... it looked very unprofessional to me. Buy them and use them at your own risk.

This book let me really think what are the possible type of questions on the MCAT. I scored highest among all other scores on my Verbal Reasoning. This book really gives you lots of practice before the actual exam.

I did one of these 60 minute verbal sections on days I wasn't taking a full length, and it's good verbal practice.

I took the first exam. It gave 18 answers to a 17 answer exam. Then it tried to convince me that if something permeates a landscape, its not present in that landscape. The only way this book helps train you for the MCATs is in training you to pick out bad rationales.

The only other study guide I used besides this book to study for the MCAT verbals was Kaplan so I can't say much about Barrons or other smaller brands. However, I can tell you that I found this book very helpful and beneficial- the Kaplan books... not so much.

So I believe practice is one of the more important things with Verbal, so the amount you get in this book is great. However, there are definitely a lot of mistakes in the book (typos, and more than one correct answers). I don't quite follow some of them logic used to describe the right answers, and I'm pretty sure some times they make too large of a leap. It also doesn't have many humanities passages which are definitely on the exam.

I picked this up along with your verbal strategies and I went from 7-8's to 10's and 11's. The biggest thing for me was getting flustered worrying about time. When you pointed out that people spend 80% of there time answering questions and only 20% reading, that allowed me to actually take time to comprehend the passage before tackling the questions and it helped substantially.

And these passages are much more similar to official AAMC questions than kaplan's.

very good study materials for mcat, will give 5 star if the explanation of answers could be more detailed.

This isn't the best MCAT Verbal test prep. About 1/3 of all answers in the back of the book seemed to me either poorly explained or wrong. Maybe this book is just too hard for me, or I just don't get the answers. But on real MCAT practice tests, the answers given always make perfect sense to me. They are no doubt the right answers once they are revealed.

This book is good in quantity. It has many passages and questions that mimic the MCAT Verbal. But, practicing from this guide might hurt a premed student's intuition regarding the real MCAT test, so I don't recommend using it. I found that Kaplan makes higher quality MCAT Verbal tests, at least in my opinion. And if a premed student can afford it, I would tell him or her to just buy real MCAT tests.