Customer Reviews

Kaplan MCAT Comprehensive Review with CD-ROM 2005-2006 (Kaplan MCAT Premier Program (W/CD))

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book falls short of its purported aim of being a "comprehensive review." It fails to explicitly describe many critical concepts (e.g., explicitly delineating the differences between lipids, carbohydrates, and proteins), and yet contains all sorts of detailed trivia which, if needed on the actual test, would be found in passages (e.g., pointing out the "incus" and "stapes" of the ear).

In the description of digestion, it explains "...allows their release into the bloodstream as LDLs, VLDLs, and HDLs (lipoproteins or proteins complexed with lipids)." Without explaining what "LDL," "VLDL," and "HDL" stand for, how can they expect the reader to remember or even make sense of them? And by "lipoproteins or proteins complexed with lipds," do they mean "lipoproteins, which are proteins complexed with lipids" or "either lipoproteins or proteins complexed with lipids?" (a comma after "lipoproteins" would disambiguate the parsing of the sentence). And again, what ARE proteins and lipids (since they never explain this)? (!)

In addition, it doesn't do very well even in explaining those concepts which it should and does attempt to explain. Often, details are given about a process, and only later is the context given for that process. For example, we are told that "specialized cells called gametocytes undergo meiosis." It is not explained until later what gametocytes really are or why we should care about them, as opposed to how processes affect them. This forces the reader to go back and piece the parts together.

Another problem is that they do not use precise wording in many places. For example, in the Enzyme Kinetics section, they explain: "The ES complex can either dissociate into E and S at rate k2, or form product P at rate k3." What they *really* mean is that the dissociation and formation are happening concurrently in a reaction, with the former rate being k2, and the latter being k3.

They go on to explain that "the relationship between the three rates is defined by the Michaelis constant, Km, as (k2+k3)/k1, or the ratio of..." when they really mean to say "The Michaelis constant, Km, is defined as the ratio (k2+k3)/k1." Rates are determined empirically, and cannot be "defined by" a constant, nor is it precise to say "or the ratio of" when they mean "which is the ratio of."

Although some of these points may sound like nitpicking, I firmly believe that precision and conciseness are essential when trying to address this subject matter.

The three stars it has earned were given because it does in fact contain a considerable amount of useful information, in spite of its shortcomings. Please do not rely on this book alone to prepare for the MCAT.

Kaplan's Comprehensive MCAT review offers a solid review of the core concepts that you will encounter on the MCAT. Some of its review sections are better than others but most of them are not sufficient to prepare you if you have never seen the material before. In other words, use this book as a REVIEW, it will work better that way.

The physics section is particularly concise and helpful and is probably the most comeplete review section in the book. The sections on general/physical chemistry and organic chemistry sections are also good, reviewing pretty much all of the relevant information from each discipline in a concise and digestible manner. The biology review is a little more hit or miss. This is the only section I would not recommend as s ole source of review to the student. Please consult your textbooks and or class notes in topics such as physiology and anatomy. All in all, if you can find this book cheap, which you can on Amazon.com, it is well worth the money if you are looking for a solid review.

For those of you who need to learn the material for the first time, I would recommend supplementing this text with other MCAT preporatories and buying some textbooks (or checking some out from a university library). I must warn the readers that it is better to stay away from the Princeton Review Comprehensive Review as it is rife with errors and poorly written and conceived. Exam crackers is a tremendous value, and you can pick up practice exams from Princeton Review for fairly cheap. Good luck!

The ExamKrackers books offer far more practice questions in MCAT format, and seem to offer better test-taking advice. I find it easier to carry around one or two of the ExamKrackers volumes than this 1,000 page behemoth. For my money, Barron's is a steal -- 4 good practice tests for under $20 -- a shame their comprehensive review is not very useful. Have not tried Princeton Review, but Amazon reviewers warn that the P.R. text has more than a few errors. Caveat emptor.

What Kaplan does that the others don't is to break down types of passages and types of questions. I'd rather have more practice material.

Personally, I found this book pretty helpful, and I have no complaints about it as I scored high having spent about half of my prep. time with this book. As I said, it's a good place to start. Beware, though, that this book alone will not be enough. As some reviewers complained, this book is not all that thorough, so it helps immensely if you have taken classes on the covered subjects and actually remember what you've learned. I personally had to use my old textbooks a bit to understand some things outlined in this book. But, MCAT being as comprehensive as it is, I don't think you can expect a single book to thoroughly cover everything you need to know.

With that said, I would recommend this book and a few other MCAT practice test/workbooks be used together. Kaplan has couple books that just has practice tests, and I can say they are helpful also from my experience. And unless you're a genius that never forgets anything you've learned in class, you will need your old textbooks from bio, chem & phys.

More than anything, what you need to do as you get close to your test day is you should pretty much be working on practice test most of the time and just occasionally look through this kind of review books. Start with review books and finish with practice tests. This strategy made the most sense to me, and it worked for me, but I suppose everyone has his own style of test preping. Good luck!

Many of the other reviews sound disappointed in the depth of the explanations. When using this book, it is important to remember that it is a REVIEW, not a teaching textbook. Kaplan definitely makes the assumption that you have had in-depth courses in the the subjects by making references to things but not providing much explanation. This book is best used, in my opinion, as a sort of checklist for possible material that could be on the MCAT. If there is any area the preparee is weak in, the best way to re-learn it is to find an actual textbook.

This book, while providing a helpful checklist of MCAT material, should have been further edited or revised or whatever it is publishers do to check for errors. Spelling, numerical, and punctuation errors are frequently encountered, not to mention the errors in the end-of-subject review sections (like missing a question and spending ten minutes reading their explanation and looking up the mechanism, only to realize the "C" on their key should have been a "D". Frustrating to say the least).

Overall, very worthwhile if you have the time

This book neatly summarizes all of the subject material for the MCAT. Its strong point is lots of information in a readable format. The one weakness is the small number of practice problems. There is one set of questions for each section (Bio, Phys, VR, etc..), and only one practice test. If you want lots of practice problems you should use this book as a starting point for knowledge review, but supplement it with something with more opportunities for practice.

I have used the MCAT material on the CDs before. After studying other MCAT material regularly for about 12 weeks, I cracked open this book and software, and took the practice exams over the course of 4 weeks. I got this book dirt cheap using the strategies given in this other book me and my roommate brought from admissionsmystery. com which also a very insightful book. This book at times is humbling and punishing. The reading passages are long and confusing. Nonetheless, this book was pivotal in me achieving a high MCAT score. Yet of course you are taking the MCAT, you are going to having more reference material than this book.

I recommend buying this book while taking the Princeton Review class.. that way you get a sampling of both. Also get the ExamKrackers audio CDs if you can afford it.

I expected this book to be as good as the books Kaplan has for their class courses but I was very disappointed. I guess you cannot get the same quality which you get for paying for a Kaplan prep course. I found this really neat book written by some Ivy med students at secretroute-dot-com this book talks a lot about med school admissions strategy. Good luck and keep studying!!!

This is a must have. I like the previous year's edition better, but its hard to find. Do as many questions as you can in this book.