What to Look For

 

If you’ve chosen to study on your own, you must realize that there’s a distinction between study and practice. Study is when you learn the methods for tackling MCAT questions. Practice is when you sit down and practice those methods. The best move is to buy one, and only one, commercial test preparation book, complete it, and then practice the methods you’ve learned on former MCAT exams.  Afterwards, review those exams thoroughly, including questions you got correct – make sure you got those questions correct for the right reason, not through lucky guessing.

 

 

You’ll need to make a decision on which commercial book you pick – but pick one and stick with it. The methods for tackling MCAT questions in retail books don’t vary much. As such, don’t concern yourself with much with whether or not a book has ‘better’ methods than the others. Instead, you should be more concerned with how well a book teaches someone who is self-studying. For many people, learning something from a book, without a teacher, can be a difficult experience. If this is true of you, then you may want to seek out a book which guides you through the material well.

 

What NOT to Do

 

Buy more than one commercial test prep book. Working through multiple books won’t help more. Indeed, it will actually hurt, as you’ll spend too much time learning methods and not enough practicing. Pick one book and stick with it.

 

Buy textbooks from someone who took a live MCAT course. This is an enormous waste of money. The books are designed for classroom use, not self-study. As such, you’ll be confused and frustrated. Even if the student took copious notes, the text is still not designed for self-study, and, as such, will teach you little. Many students assume that the large companies teach methods in live classes not taught in the retail books. This is usually not true. The methods in the live classes and the books are usually exactly the same. 

SHOULD I TAKE AN ON-LINE COURSE INSTEAD OF USING A BOOK? 

If you think a book is too little information, but a live course is too expensive, consider taking an on-line course, which provides essentially the same content as a live course via video. Many on-line course options provide you with an e-mail contact if get really stuck as well - a big advantage over a book. If you're okay without a teacher but want much more material than is found in a book, then consider on-line options which are listed in the MCAT Course Comparison Charts.