Kaplan PCAT 2010-2011 Edition [Paperback]

Kaplan (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 720 pages
• Publisher: Kaplan Publishing (June 2, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1419553224
• ISBN-13: 978-1419553226
• Product Dimensions: 10.9 x 8.3 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (33 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #221,718 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

39 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A good tool but shouldn't be your only one, October 20, 2009

By 

BooksFromTheBasement - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Kaplan PCAT 2010-2011 Edition (Paperback)

I used this text extensively as test preparation. It's a decent review book but if I were to do it over I would use another resource as a significant supplement to this.

As others have stated, the sections on writing, verbal, and reading comprehension are so short that they may as well have been omitted. Then again, I don't know what could have been included to realistically help for these sections, so I was satisfied with the content.

Biology and chemistry have extensive review sections, but I don't get the feeling that the amount of effort I spent to review the material in this book was really helpful compared to the subject matter variety on the actual exam. For example, the organic chemistry review was laughable to the point of being misleading about the content of the actual exam. Chemistry could really help more if it helped zero in on these are the elemental data, formulas, etc. you really need to memorize, etc. With the amount of biology material presented, I was surprised how many questions on the actual exam were not covered at all in the review (thinking of entire subjects not touched on - I am obviously not expecting the review materials to cover every possible question.)

Quant review was decent, though more practice problems for the calculus and more difficult problems could easily substitute for the simple problems included. Just having more MC problems would be nice. Many of the concepts had only 1 or 2 practice questions - not enough IMO. More practice would be better!

With respect to format, one somewhat frustrating aspect of the text is that many of the "review" problems are short answer format instead of multiple choice. Thus, though it reviews the material, it doesn't do so in a PCAT-specific manner (i.e. helping get used to the way questions are presented.)

This book is also missing any relevant test taking tips. Maybe this is because Kaplan really doesn't have a good handle on what Pearson (the PCAT administrator) is doing - I don't know. It would have been helpful, for example, to comment on the unlikelihood of realistically completing the quant section and how to identify good problems to cherry-pick to maximize score. Or, state whether you will get a periodic table (yes, you can find out this info elsewhere, but this seems to be content appropriate for a review book.) It just isn't really helpful in suggesting how to approach the exam.

Reading this again, I was probably too hard on this book. In summary, it's a decent resource, but I would be interested in supplementing with other materials if I were to take it again. Hope this helps someone.

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Much less than what I hoped for, but still essential, August 21, 2009

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wahoo mike (Richmond, VA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Kaplan PCAT 2010-2011 Edition (Paperback)

I expected this book to be well-organized and very helpful. It is fairly thick and certainly contains some very good review material in it. Especially biology and chemistry material. However, there are very brief descriptions on many concepts that require more in-depth explanations. A lot of the chemistry equations weren't explained too well, for instance. As I understand that only so much material can fit in one book, this is acceptable.

What is entirely unacceptable is that many of the questions, both practice Q's and questions in the final exam (a ton in the math portion) have severe typos that cause the questions to be unanswerable. I felt uncomfortable with the severe amount of typos. It made me wonder whether some of the answer key had typos too, which would lead me to misgrade my answers. Also, the answer sheet lacks choice E on all questions on the exam that have choices A-E. This book is completely amateur for these reasons.

Also, the organic chem section is completely lacking.

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good for chemistry and biology., October 4, 2009

By 

Lazy Student (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Kaplan PCAT 2010-2011 Edition (Paperback)

I just got my PCAT scores back and this book was close to the only thing I used to study. The chemistry and biology sections are very good reviews. Yes there are many typos, but they are usually obvious enough that they will not mislead you. However, the organic chemistry section only addresses a few functional groups. The math section does not have enough calculus, so I took a practice test and reviewed the concepts that appeared on that exam. The verbal section and reading comprehension section are too short to actually help the reader. Lastly, the writing section is basically two pages. In closing, this book is a good review of inorganic chemistry and general biology (I was in the 99th percentile for both the chem and bio sections), but I would get an additional aid for the writing, verbal and reading comprehension sections... and look over your old organic and calculus notes. The organic chemistry on the exam is a breeze if you are a chem major so I wouldn't worry too much about it.