Informing Future Doctors Anmeldelser 77

TLDR: Not worth the $60.

Caveat I bought this resource to review it as I teach the MCAT for a living and try to keep updated on new resources that are out there so I can offer the best advice to my students.

If this was a free resource I would give it a 3.5/5, but for $60 dollars it feels incredibly overpriced. Why? It doesn’t really add that much value above and beyond a regular review set and you can buy a used review set for way cheaper than the cost of the guide (I checked and I can get an old used set of Kaplan books for around $27 on Amazon as of 10/24/2023).

While it covers a lot of the most important things you need to know for the MCAT it isn’t comprehensive and leaves a lot of important material uncovered/covers things that I wouldn’t really consider high yield. For example, the book doesn’t have anything about intermolecular forces or bonding, but covers the power stroke cycle. Why are circuits omitted, while Newton’s laws are covered? There are other examples and it makes me concerned about their sense of high versus low yield as a whole. I understand there aim is to cut through all the free resources out there and present a curated view of what’s important, but it fails in this aim.

The organization is really weird it starts off with the nervous system organization then jumps to amino acids, proteins, and enzyme then jumps around to operant and classical conditioning. This isn’t isolated to just these topics either one look at the table of contents will have you scratching your head as to what organization scheme they were going for.

It is an online only product, but lacks linked chapters so that I can click on a title and be directed to that page. This makes navigating the document a bit clunky. A giant IFD logo is watermarked on every page, probably as some form of content protection, making text that is on top of the logo more difficult to read. The pictures are sad and no different than what a simple google search could turn up.

The wording can be a bit confusing at times for example I get what this sentence means, but there are way clearer ways of saying what they are trying to:

“An amino acid is the building block of proteins. Meaning, it is the molecule that when in combination with other amino acids and other types of bonds, can form a peptide”

Why not say:

Amino acids are the building blocks of proteins. When these amino acids bind together, they form structures known as peptides, and if these peptides reach a certain size, they are labeled proteins.

The good it does talk about the type of questions that are covered for certain topics and how to approach certain types of questions. This type of advice is limited in many prep books and the one nice thing about the book. The advice is mostly solid, but limited, at times very obvious, and misses a lot of other important tips that should be included.

Missing a lot of biology content and not very helpful for reviewing physics content such as ideal gas laws and hydrostatic pressure. Would like a refund

Amazing ! Worth every penny!

Literally the best way to study the key ideas! It is truly amazing!!!

There aren't enough stars to rate you guys! I needed to start over with content review, but I tend to get lost in the weeds when it comes to reading the prep books and videos. This high yield + math combo with the anki deck, and IFD videos are a winning combination to annihilate the MCAT. Thanks guys!

Very helpful for many students trying to achieve their goals and is a great tool to remind oneself of the most important material need to get into med school (aka high yield info). Thank you John and Maggie!

I don’t think the guide was very helpful. Definitely not worth $30… it contained very basic information that is easily attainable through many other free resources. I was expecting the guide to contain more information on commonly used units or things like common questions on the MCAT related to high yield topics. Instead, it was only basic information about very common concepts, and the questions were not at all similar to what you encounter in practice questions. Overall, I don’t think this was worth $30. I did plan on buying the high yield signs book but after buying the math guide, I don’t think I’ll be proceeding with that purchase.

I wanted to wait until I got my score back, and I can now officially say this was the single most helpful document I’ve ever used. I saw an instant increase in my practice scores after reviewing the High Yield Sciences Review. It was worth every penny. I went from a 498 score on my first MCAT attempt to a 511 on my second. I am so grateful to have found this resource as well as all of IFD’s YouTube videos. Thank you so much Maggie and John!

I first stumbled upon their youtube channel when studying for the MCAT and found their videos educative for the passage walkthroughs. I then recently purchased their MCAT bundle and am finding it useful to understand overviews of high-yield topics. Using the IFD MCAT bundle along with test prep products such as Kaplan and Khan Academy has been so helpful so I recommend diversifying study materials for the MCAT!

I have loved yalls resources! I think that you guys at IFD are the first people to actually simplify high yield information into understandable terms; not to mention that you do it efficiently (99 pgs)! I appreciate everything yall are doing! Helping this pre-med gal on her way!

Guide is what I need and they’ve been supplying tons of value for free. I am more than happy to contribute to their business

Product lives up to its name. Truly a high yield guide. Just the explanation of enzyme kinetics is worth the price alone. Thanks IFD!

The IFD Highyield document is great resource for MCAT test takers because it is way better than Kaplan. The information are well-stated and very easy to understand since it allows you to absorb in a simple manner. Highly recommend!

Warning: VERY, VERY LONG review on their 2 products but one I wish I had seen before purchasing. Disclaimer: I LOVE John, Maggie, and their agressively charming southern accents. They and IFD are doing the lord’s work in democratizing the pay-to-play MCAT prep industrial complex. Now that we’ve established that I’m not a hater, let’s dive in. The guide is well written and organized so that was nice. Right before I bought it, I was feeling down about my prep and really LOVE their channel, thought this would help, and bought this in an emotional/rash decision. For context: BP diag - 493 (121,123,121,127), I’m two months into my prep with 2 months to go, I study full time-ish @ ~25-30hrs/wk, my last FL was a 509 (126,128,126,129) on BP FL2, and my goal score is the 5teens (e.g 513+). I seem to be plateauing in my B/B and C/P section scores was feeling panicky about this and thus purchased this high yield review book. The vast majority of the info in the guide, I already know and maybe just need to practice more - which this guide can’t help with anyways. The minority that I don’t know can be learned from their wonderful channel, other YouTube vids/prep material I already have, and will need to be practiced in depth anyways. Even if you won’t already know any of it, you’ll already have their free wonderful channel as well as other free review sheets online. Look up “Kaplan Quicksheets download” or “Milesdown summary sheets download” if you want something relatively similar. Although, the two review sheets I mentioned above don’t have little quips about how certain concepts will be tested in the MCAT. But, when you’ll inevitably need to study or practice these concepts more in-depth beyond a few sentence summaries, you’ll notice the very basic trends on how they’re tested anyways. This feature of “how it’s tested”, in my opinion, is a relatively small-ish part of the document (most of it is a pretty straight forward definition/explanation of content) and pretty surface level pattern recognition and not worth the $75 I paid for the bundle. Also when you Google / YouTube a topic to learn more about it but don’t want any extraneous info that’s out of scope for the MCAT, just type “[literally any topic] MCAT” (e.g [Enzyme kinetics MCAT]. Between their PHENOMENAL YouTube channel that says the exact same thing just in video format, free high yield review sheets online, and the in-depth studying and/or practice you’re going to need to do anyways - you probably don’t need this. I really can’t see this summary resource doing for you what other already available, free, and very similiar resources can’t. Also Also, if you’re using this guide to adress specifc content deficits like I was trying to do for my C/P and B/B sections, don’t. The majority of the doc seems like 55% P/S, 35% biochem, 6% bio, with a dash of C/P for taste. No really, there’s relatively little any Chem/phys on this. I was struggling with electrochemistry(not really high yield), waves, optics, several other Chem and physics topics that are at least mid yield, several high-ish yield organ systems (e.g endocrinology) and these among many other high to mid yield topics were no where to be found (there is a comprehensive C/P formula sheet at the end but you can literally find that anywhere online). Although, the “high yield applications” section with 10 well explained C/P practice problems were actually pretty good. The point is, be very clear to yourself on the role you want this guide to play in your prep. Need a rough overview in highest yield P/S and Biochem topics, This could probably help you, although there are free-er ways to achieve that. Need help to fill in your content gaps / weaknessses that are largely in Biology, chemistry, or physics? I would skip it. If you’re scoring <120-123 in B/B, C/P, or P/S, reading this may actually be a great help (Depends on the person and what they need help with). In a pit of dread and despair over your rapidly approaching test date on the one thing between you and your dreams? Definitely skip it, if you’re panic buying this thinking it’s going to be some silver bullet or key that you’ve been missing for your content prep. I bought this thinking it’ll be helpful to me breaking through the 126+ barrier in B/B and C/P and while I haven’t done a FL since going over it, i don’t think it’ll be helpful in getting me where I want to go and wish I kept my $75. For me and my prep it was negligibly useful at best if not completely unnecessary. Good luck everyone!