This book is not worth more than $10. First they try to sound impressive by saying "I got a 15 on verbal, na na na!", attacking other prep companies, and saying "LISTEN TO US!!" They actually yell at you while you're reading. Impertinence! Then they basically tell you to try really hard during VR. Thanks for that gem. Then their main advice for improving your score is, "understand the main idea of the passage." Duh. They actually tell you to ignore the details. Perfect way to drop your score about 3 pts, as 1-2 Q's/pssg is detail based. Then they try to give you a bunch of useless test-taking techniques which any college student would have picked after freshman year, and which will only slow you down during testing if you have to think of them. (i.e. avoid simple answers or distractors to narrow the choices so you can improve your guessing efficiency). All common sense.

Perhaps my perspective is skewed having gone through a college course in philosophy on argumental analysis before looking at this, and so I can score 11's off the bat. The main idea of this book is, 'buy our verbal 101 and practice for about 4 months.' Useless. I would advise you not to waste time on this book or verbal 101. Pick up a book on inference and implication in the philosophy section of your local library and study that, then take the Kaplan and AAMC practice exams to get your feet wet. And then place confidence in yourself, not EK.

This is a small book that is a great asset to anyone taking the MCAT. I took Kaplan and the strategies in this book is better than any Kaplan verbal strategy.

I bought this book because I had heard such good reviews about it from practically everyone that's used it, and I am now the first person I know to discourage the use of this book. The techniques that they offer are really basic reading techniques that anyone can pick up from a typical college English course (although EK writers claim otherwise). While they assert that their methods are different from other prep-course books intended solely to market rather than to raise your scores (which may be true), they are not all that different from another prep-course book that I'm using. I actually found that the techniques from prep-course book were more helpful. In fact, using only EK techniques and nothing else gave me a score lower than the one I got when I first started prepping for MCATs.
The book should at most be worth $5- the content is so sparse and basic that i can probably list the techniques offered by this company in a paragraph or so. If you can borrow this book from a friend or buy it for $5 or less, by all means do so and use it as a supplement- that is, if you are already scoring fairly well on the verbal section. For others like me, it may be detrimental to use this book even if you can get it for free, because your score will actually go down.

I tried using the strategies of another large test prep company (the one I work for now, actually) and the best I could do after 3 months was a 9. After 2 weeks with this book, I was regularly getting an 11, and that's what I got on the MCAT. If I had just picked up this book earlier, I probably would've gotten 12+.

Bottom line: If you're taking a TPR/Kaplan course right now, forget what your verbal teacher says and just go by this book.

(About me: Current MCAT Instructor, 3 Med school acceptances, 35 MCAT

This is a very good book when you want to start working on the MCAT's verbal section. However, it does not have enough passages to practice.

Don't waste your time reading other people's review. Just get this book and work with it.

This book takes out all the random unnecessary stuff that is not needed for the MCAT. I had a really bad experience with kaplan. Those books, I believe are never updated and are lengthy for no apparent reason. Some person in book review recommended a book at secretroute-dot-com , which is very good for strategy. I shelled out a ton of money for prep courses, when all I needed were these two books.

Before having purchased this book I found myself very frustrated doing official MCATs from previous years under timing. I was trying different methods that I've gotten from word of mouth or from other books and it just wasn't working. This book illustrates the absolute essentials in order to do well. I went from a 4 to 9 in about a week with increased practice. Core examples of what the other companies are spewing and how these methods will not work efficiently was very well laid out. I recommend this book to any future MCAT takers

I have taken 2 different review courses found this book to be a blessing in disguise. It's a must read for improving your verbal score. (As proof I went from a 6 to a 10 on my diags.) Altho seemingly short, I found the techniques to be profoundly simple and effective. Examkrackers relies heavily on main idea and using questions/answers to help cut through the BS. Also u'll find yourself freed from the use of heavy (and time consuming) annotations which most prep companies OVERemphasize. You don't need to read tons of books for Verbal or stress out your optic nerves with time. Also gives good math and essay advice.