Kaplan!

So after careful consideration, I have finally made the decision to pay the $1500 to take the MCAT prep course with Kaplan. I figured since they have this high score guarentee, if I under-performed on the MCAT I can always get my money back. On the other hand, if I did well, I might be able to get into medical school, lol, in which case $1500 should come to me in no time at all. :) The course itself will consist of 24 sessions that is divided into 54 hours of instruction and 32 hours of mock tests. The class room instruction is divided into different parts, each focusing on a specific section of the MCAT, and there are also strategic sessions dispersed throughout the course to give tips on stress management as well as score optimization. Unlike with Princeton Review, the different sections of the course will be taught by a single instructor.

Personally I would actually prefer the course be taught by different instructors that are more "specialized" in their fields. Also, the likelihood of getting stuck with 5 lousy instructors is much lower than the likelihood of getting stuck with just one lousy instructor, lol. However, I do like the way the Kaplan course is set up. The Kaplan program is much more spread out compared with the Princeton Review program. From what I have heard, Princeton Review program consisted of 5 classes per week, where as the Kaplan program only had 2 classes per week. (This still has to be verified...) I am personally a very slow learner, and I really need the time to digest the material taught in each class before moving on. So admist my busy research schedule, it would be a lot better to take the Kaplan program so that I can spend some time to review and preview each class' material before attending the session.

I really hope that the $1500 will be worth it... lol, I was saving up for a MacBook Pro... but I guess I am back to square one with that... >< From my previous experience with the SAT's I think I am in good hands. Kaplan people seems to know what they are talking about. The most important thing is the database of questions Kaplan has on the Internet. It was IMMENSE! I hope I can find enough time to fully take advantage of the database. I might even share some difficult questions on this blog ;)

MCAT Classes?

I talked to a few friends who's done the MCAT in the past and some of them recommended taking prep courses such as Kaplan and Princeton Review. From what I heard, these courses are good because they teach you more than just the material covered in MCAT but also strategies such as time management and stress relief techniques (I totally need to learn that right now...) Also I was told that these prep courses provide huge databases of practice questions to better prepare their students.

All these sounded very appealling... then I went on their websites to find out more about them and their price scared me, lol... I was expecting something in the ball park of $500, alas all of them cost well above $1000 (!@#$%^&) ... I start to ask myself: Do I really need it?

I think for the time being I am going to study on my own. Then in a few weeks I will attempt a practice exam to assess my progress, and from that I will decide whether or not the class is necessary.

If I decide to take the class, another question remains -- which class should I take? According to my research the three courses that really stand out are Kaplan, Princeton Review and Prep101. From my SAT experiences back in the days, I think Kaplan would be a good choice (although I somehow still managed to fall asleep during my SAT and end up flunking it...). I have heard a few nice things about Princeton Review as well. The only thing I have against is that its classes are screezed into a very short time frame, where as Kaplan spreads its classes out over a much longer period of time, which would allow time for the digestion of materials learnt. As for Prep101, I don't personally know of anybody who has taken it, but out of the three it provides the most number of hours of instructions. I don't know if that's just because their instructors are slow at talking or because they actually have more to say.

Well, for now I will be reading the books I just got from the library. I was lucky to be the first to grab the Kaplan MCAT 2010-2011 Premier in the library. It does look pretty thick, and I don't think the library will allow any renewal because this is the MCAT season... meaning that I have to about 1000 pages in three weeks... *sigh* FML