MCAT book recommendations

grungebox

My fiancée is planning to take the MCAT during the next school year. Do you guys have any specific recommendations regarding what prep books to use? Are there books that collect old MCATs the way they sell collections of old LSATs? Or is Kaplan and/or Princeton Review sufficient?

Any other tips/pointers/advice regarding the MCAT would be helpful. She's very smart but it's been a long time since she last took any standardized test.

Thanks a lot for any help, PA peoples.

Svelte Penguin

I highly recommend the Kaplan course. It's expensive, but they are really good at teaching the test, not just the material. If not, then make sure she does a ton of practice questions. The MCAT is weird in that you really need to know how to do the test just as much as you need to know the information on it.

There's a couple of tests you can buy from the test-makers themselves, but if I remember right they are a little outdated now.

And don't worry too much about the writing sample section. No one cares about it at all, as long as you don't do mind blowingly bad. Doing perfect on it won't get you anything.

Walter

Take Kaplan or Princeton review. This is one of the best investments you can make if you are serious about getting into med school. I took the Princeton review and was really impressed with their program but I've heard good things about Kaplan too. You can take old tests and learn the material but like Svelte said, its way more helpful to learn how to take the test.