Customer Reviews

Peterson's Gold Standard McAt: 2000-01 (Peterson's Gold Standard Mcat, 2nd ed)

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

 

 

The day I recieved this book I knew it would help. Being an 800 page long book, it was small enough to carry with me when going to other activities. I studied every spare moment I had, and with this book along with a few others, I felt I was ready to take the test. When testing time came, I looked at the problems and understood them. I passed the test with flying colors, and am now in my first year of medical school, thanks to this guide.

I got my April scores back recently, as well as my acceptance to nine of eleven schools and I owe the mainstay of my preparation to this book. Don't forget to get the AAMC's admissions requirements book; it is also very helpful. The only way to know how realistic (not perfect, but very realistic) these exams are is to practice with AAMC materials and to write the real exam. These tests can't be compared to Princeton Review exams, etc. You need to compare them with the real thing, after you've written the real thing. I have done this, and I've found the exams in this book to be very similar to the real MCAT.

I like this book in many different ways. I think it is concise and gets the facts across to students in an efficent way. However, I was a little disconcerted that they didn't put practice problems throughout the book. I found that after I read a section I wanted to do problems to reinforce my memery of the material but there was no such section. The practise tests (at the end of the text) are excellent despite this. With that said, I think the book is well made and good; however I think that it needs refinements.

I'm taking the MCAT in April and am also enrolled in a Princeton Review prep course and the primary reason I bought this book was that I wanted more practice materials. I read a lot of the online reviews, and almost all of them spoke of how great the practice tests were so I bought it.

DO NOT BE DECEIVED. While the tests may be good (in the sense that they're something to practice on), I immediately noticed several flaws in the design, particularly in the Verbal section (which I want the most practice in). First off, the verbal passages are not numbered. Not only is this annoying, it forces the writers to NOT include any questions that refer to a specific word or sentence BY LINE NUMBER (Which the MCAT DOES. Note that the MCAT DOES HAVE numbered passages). Occasionally you will, however, come across a question that says something like, "The word fiord most likely refers to..." This type of question is difficult to answer without a referencing line number which the word may be found on (which I alluded to earlier) since you will not only need to scour for the word but then to re-read the surrounding sentences to figure out what context the word is used in. This is a waste of your time.

Second, several of the answer choices say something like A and C are correct. This is NOT realistic as the MCAT NEVER has answer choices like this. Also, there is a noticable lack of questions that ask which of these statements MOST WEAKEN/STRENGTHEN the author's claims. These types of questions ARE on the MCAT, but very few are found in these practice exams.

Also there always seems to be at least one or two answer choices that are blatantly obvious (that they are INCORRECT). While the real MCAT does have stupid answer choices much of the time, they usually aren't quite as bad as some of the answer choices here.

Basically I'm saying that all these factors put together will lead to an unrealistic practice exam where the results may be flawed. That's not to say the educational material in the beginning parts of the book isn't good (I haven't looked through that), but the verbal sections of these practice exams are not very good.

this is a solid book because of the tests, and thats about it. The exams are solid - but the scoring seems to be a bit off. The info is spotty and incomplete, do not rely on this book for all your info, maybe just as a last minute review. Regardless be sure to take these 3 tests before the real thing, as they definitely keep you honest.

This book has the best organic chem and physics reviews of any text I've read. General chem and bio were as expected. The exams are realistic and the explanations, especially for organic, are very complete. Great book!