The Gold Standard MCAT

It's easy to be frustrated by the sheer amount of practice material available for the MCAT. You have Princeton Review, Kaplan, Examkrackers, Berkeley Review, Columbia Review etc. You type in MCAT on Amzon search, you will be bombarded with thousands of materials. And to maker matters worse you have people posting fake reviews from the publisher or the manufacturer. Just look at a couple of the very enthusiastic reviews and you'll see what I mean. All these companies profess that their material is the one that will help you get a competitive score but sadly very few companies deliver the goods. That said, I picked up the Gold Standard based on word of mouth. Although the book and the author is reputable, you will not hear about this book as much.

I picked up this book simply for its three full length exams on the back. And unlike certain full lengths that are much harder or easier than the actual MCAT or cover material not tested on the MCAT, these tests are very close to...Read more

I don't understand how people can write a review on mcat books if they haven't even written the mcat. I wrote the april 2005 test and here is the result: PS 13 - VR 14 - WS T - BS 12; overall 39T.

Here is my review of The Gold Standard: excellent science teaching/review, only pertinent information, below average verbal section (simply not in depth enough), very good writing sample advice/review, three very realistic challenging practice exams. I would have given the book 4 and 1/2 stars but it wasn't a choice.

How does it compare to the others? Kaplan and Princeton also have excellent science review books but they only have one full length practice exam. You can't go wrong with Examkrackers but they are long so I stuck to their Audio Osmosis CDs which were very helpful. I supplemented this with the mcat science videos from mcat-prep.

And finally, of course, I wrote all the aamc past tests and I went over them with a fine tooth comb. All I...Read more

I used the GS, AudioOsmosis and the video CD's by mcat-prep.com and got a 36S on April's MCAT. This book was clear and complete. I wish that the Verbal Reasoning section had longer explanations but the science was very well covered. I used the paper exams in the book (you get free online exams but I did not try them).