eBook PCAT: Complete Preparation for the Pharmacy College Admission Test, 2001 Edition: The Science of Review epub

I hate to say this because I'm currently trying to sell my copy of this book on Amazon, but this book was not very helpful. Like the last review says, it's really just an outline with a few sample questions. Even the sample questions were nothing like what I just took, and the explanations of the answers were too brief to be helpful. There was a lot of BS about preparation and test taking strategies which was all common sense. It really seems like this book was just thrown together to make some money, not to help students. The MCAT Review book, on the other hand, was very helpful. I didn't even look at the sample questions, but I read over the organic chemistry sections the night before the OAT, and the organic part of the OAT was a breeze. I also used it last semester to study for my Chemistry final, which I aced! Obviously since it's not made for the OAT, some parts were irrelevant, but it was worth the buy.

I've ordered this book from Amazon and I have to tell you that Amazon knows how to choose a good PCAT test preparation book. Despite the few errors it has, it is a great help aid in preparation for anyone who wants to take the dreaded PCAT. It has complete "quick and dirty" review of the subjects emphasized on the PCAT, it has concise and clear examples and it even gives you some test stragety. If anyone gets this book at least 6 months before taking the PCAT, there is a good chance that you will do well when you take the PCAT.

I am still trying to figure out how the authors of this book managed to include hundreds pages of text with so little review material. If you are buying this book because you want a condensed review of the topics on OAT exam then don't. For all the sections except physics, and quantitative reasoning, it just gives outline and a few sample questions. You can get similar outlines for the sections when you get your OAT application. Some optometry schools also list the topics covered in the exam on their web site. You are much better off just getting out your school books or buying discipline specific review material for all the sections. If this book was the only resource you had to study for the test then you would utterly fail. The physics portion of the book has the most review material, but manages to leave out extremely important equations for linear motion, motion in two directions, torques, etc. Instead it gives cryptic descriptions of these topics which aren't very useful in an exam setting. There are a couple of theory questions on the samples exams I have seen, but most of the questions require you to substitute variables and solve equations. Also, i did the physics section of their sample OAT exam. In no way would that section ever be on the test. I have a BS in engineering and physics is one of my better subjects. I struggled with the section and was not able to finish it in the alloted time. It was very difficult and even required solving a quadratic equation to answer one of the questions. I took the physics portion of the test under timed conditions from sample exams included in the application packet and the Top-score pro software. They were more realistic to questions on a real OAT exam. It is a shame that this book is the only OAT specific book that I know of. For people who have to study for the exam at the last minute don't expect this book to be very helpful.

I don't know what the negative reviews are talking about, maybe they're trying to sell Barrons' book or something because I got this book from the library and compared it to other PCAT books that were available there and this one is clearly the best. After using it for a while, now I am buying it here at Amazon. If you want sample tests, this is not the best book, but if you are looking for a book that will help you prepare for the test, there is none better than this one that I have seen. What makes this book uniquely good is its in depth outline of topics that will be on the test (and by the way, the guy that said he got 99% on all parts of the exam is lying because the scores are NOT given in percentile, they're rankings, and to get the exact same ranking in 5 different categories would be statistically near impossible). All of us have taken tests before and think about what helps you STUDY the best: knowing in great detail all the possible topics that are on the test, or having an old exam from another profesor which has multiple choice questions which will NOT show up on the actual exam. You can get an idea of what the test will be like by seeing an old exam, but it will not help you know to select A B C D or E on the actual exam which has completely different questions on similar topics.
I am STUDYING now to take this test a 2nd time. The first time I took it I just wanted to get an idea of how I would score and I ended up with an overall ranking score of 73 without studying at all. If English is your first language and you normally use a dictionary when you read a novel, the analogy/vocab section will be a breeze for you (I got an 86 on that section). I am 37 years old and have not been in school for a number of years, until recently, and I absolutely did crappy on the quantitative section which is full of basic math skills that I forgot long ago (eg. percentages of two 7 digit mostly zero decimal numbers multiplied together, order of operations, numbers to a fractional or decimal power, etc.), by using the outline in this book I know I will do MUCH better this time on the quantitative section. There is a tiny, tiny bit of organic chemistry in the chemistry section but if you haven't taken organic yet don't worry about it (you can guess on those 2 questions). The main thing you need to concern yourself with on the chemistry section is the TIME. You have 35 minutes to answer 65 questions which means you have about 25 seconds to read, decide, and color in the box (go to an art supply store and get a big FAT #2 pencil OR one of those new liquid pencils, yes liquid, so you can make one quick swipe instead of wasting seconds coloring in the multiple choice bubble). I sort of blew it because the proctor announced "5 minutes left" and I had about 15 questions left and I totaly freaked and rushed to finish (which I did) and I finished early, but I shouldn't have panicked because if you are answering the questions at a pace of about 20 to 25 seconds each you should have about 5 minutes left when you have 15 questions to go, so understand your timing for the different sections and don't freak-out like I did. This book does tell you how many questions will be in each section and how much time you have to finish each section. Well this is getting way too long, I hope it helps. Good luck!