I have the complete set. What questions do you have? No one knows what material will be best. I chose EK because my major is biochemistry and I'm fresh from many of the Pre reqs so I don't think I need that much depth. Plus with the khan Academy videos you should never be at a loss to find extra content review. I'd go out on a limb and recommend to a degree most major test prep company content books EK, Kaplan - though TPR 2015 is supposedly not what is was for the old test because you can, and should, supplement the material with Khan Academy content. I've given the Kaplan books a thorough review and I like what I see overall. They are direct and seemingly and favorably skimp on extraneous details think TBR bio. However, they are weak on practice questions. But again, this is where Khan and even old MCAT practice sets can come in handy. I have the complete set. What questions do you have? No one knows what material will be best. I chose EK because my major is biochemistry and I'm fresh from many of the Pre reqs so I don't think I need that much depth. Plus with the khan Academy videos you should never be at a loss to find extra content review. They're par for the course for EK. Meaning they're good, but frankly I can't recommend them. Here's the problem with buying EK books - you're spending the same amt of money you would on the Kap or TPR books but you're not getting nearly so many practice passages. The TPR set has 2 passages at the end of every chapter and more chapters EK has 3 passages but fewer chapters but more importantly, TPR set comes with online access to three full practice tests. The KTP set has NO passages but it does come with access to an online syllabus that includes 3 full tests and a number of other resources. I'll give the KTP online syllabus another look in January to decide whether the KTP online syllabus out-shines the add'l passages you get from TPR. Really what I'm seeing here unless EK is going to add more practice somehow is that EK is following the same philosophy they did with the old MCAT, but they're not reacting to the fact that the landscape has fundamentally changed. For Next Step's content books, we went the route of focusing solely on content review - so there's some passages, but more importantly there's 1000+ content review questions like short discretes to focus solely on content. We then have Strategy and Practice books that are separate for folks looking just for timed practice sets. The content review books are intended primarily for our in-house tutoring students, but are good for self-studiers with a bigger budget. At this point, what I'm recommending is something like this: 0. Buy the KTP full set for the online syllabus. Buy Next Step's Strategy and Practice books for add'l practice if you need it. Buy Next Step full online tests for additional full test simulation. I'm going to revisit my materials and study plan thread over the holidays and give them all updates so there's a good summary all in one thread. They're par for the course for EK. Meaning they're good, but frankly I can't recommend them. Here's the problem with buying EK books - you're spending the same amt of money you would on the Kap or TPR books but you're not getting nearly so many practice passages. The TPR set has 2 passages at the end of every chapter and more chapters EK has 3 passages but fewer chapters but more importantly, TPR set comes with online access to three full practice tests. The KTP set has NO passages but it does come with access to an online syllabus that includes 3 full tests and a number of other resources. I'll give the KTP online syllabus another look in January to decide whether the KTP online syllabus out-shines the add'l passages you get from TPR. Really what I'm seeing here unless EK is going to add more practice somehow is that EK is following the same philosophy they did with the old MCAT, but they're not reacting to the fact that the landscape has fundamentally changed. For Next Step's content books, we went the route of focusing solely on content review - so there's some passages, but more importantly there's 1000+ content review questions like short discretes to focus solely on content. We then have Strategy and Practice books that are separate for folks looking just for timed practice sets. The content review books are intended primarily for our in-house tutoring students, but are good for self-studiers with a bigger budget. At this point, what I'm recommending is something like this: 0. Buy the KTP full set for the online syllabus. Buy Next Step's Strategy and Practice books for add'l practice if you need it. Buy Next Step full online tests for additional full test simulation. I'm going to revisit my materials and study plan thread over the holidays and give them all updates so there's a good summary all in one thread. Here's a little review. I still need to finish a chapter before bed. I never used EK before. I started my MCAT prep with the 2013 TPR books as you can see in the pic I posted above. TPR is good imo, especially for the old MCAT. However, like it's been said before, their 2015 MCAT stuff is nearly identical to their 2013 books, which is bad. They include topics that were taken out for MCAT 2015 like momentum and fungi for example. I also had kaplan 2015 books, and was originally gonna prep with those, but was dissuaded not to. They supposedly did change their material and it's pretty good. But no passages in book and online material only has like 15 passages total out of the 50+ chapters that they have.... I have tried reading them before and they do seem good. And they do seem to have taken out topics that were removed, which is good. Their physics book is 400+ pages though! With physics only being 6% of the exam, I don't see why they'd do that. What I really like about EK is they definitely reformatted their books.. The amazon review on them is spot on. Also, very colorful pictures, much much better than TPR's bland illustrations. I have EK old editions, and even when I found parts with the same picture, a lot of the content was very different. So they seemed to have really changed everything around. Plus they listened to the outline from AAMC and got rid of untested content which is great. They are pretty concise which I like. Maybe too concise though... I won't know till the exam. So yeah, they really condensed stuff for the new mcat, and combined many chapters together. Physics only has 5 chapters. I really like that they have 3 passages per chapter, and ~20 FSQ per chapter. I'll be using EK 9th edition as my main source of reading material. I'll also be using chad's videos, and TPR's online homework as well as TPRH workbooks and TBR passages.. I'll be using it all lol. I tried one video on torque and it didn't help me at all. And was from 2008. I may still supplement with them as well but I think chad is still better at explaining and making info simpler. I just don't quite trust khan academy's videos as much, even if they worked with the aamc. Chads vids have a ton of prasie here too. Ill probably use khans practice passages though. Yeah that's not a person. Amazon and many of the sellers who use Amazon have bots that decide their pricing for them, using a variety of different factors. So that bot thinks that that item is some exceptionally hard-to-buy thing. It scrapes the other seller data and sees: 1 Nobody else is selling this book; and 2 It is out of print. The bot will probably then slowly lower the price until it sells. Yeah that's not a person. Amazon and many of the sellers who use Amazon have bots that decide their pricing for them, using a variety of different factors. So that bot thinks that that item is some exceptionally hard-to-buy thing. It scrapes the other seller data and sees: 1 Nobody else is selling this book; and 2 It is out of print. The bot will probably then slowly lower the price until it sells. They're par for the course for EK. Meaning they're good, but frankly I can't recommend them. Here's the problem with buying EK books - you're spending the same amt of money you would on the Kap or TPR books but you're not getting nearly so many practice passages. The TPR set has 2 passages at the end of every chapter and more chapters EK has 3 passages but fewer chapters but more importantly, TPR set comes with online access to three full practice tests. The KTP set has NO passages but it does come with access to an online syllabus that includes 3 full tests and a number of other resources. I'll give the KTP online syllabus another look in January to decide whether the KTP online syllabus out-shines the add'l passages you get from TPR. Really what I'm seeing here unless EK is going to add more practice somehow is that EK is following the same philosophy they did with the old MCAT, but they're not reacting to the fact that the landscape has fundamentally changed. For Next Step's content books, we went the route of focusing solely on content review - so there's some passages, but more importantly there's 1000+ content review questions like short discretes to focus solely on content. We then have Strategy and Practice books that are separate for folks looking just for timed practice sets. The content review books are intended primarily for our in-house tutoring students, but are good for self-studiers with a bigger budget. At this point, what I'm recommending is something like this: 0. Buy the KTP full set for the online syllabus. Buy Next Step's Strategy and Practice books for add'l practice if you need it. Buy Next Step full online tests for additional full test simulation. I'm going to revisit my materials and study plan thread over the holidays and give them all updates so there's a good summary all in one thread.
