2015 MCAT Unjustifiable?

[mehc012]

Makes sense. Fatigue could negatively impact scores as well, I suppose. Those 2013 guinea pigs weren't answering questions six hours deep.

They also had no skin in the game and did no real prep for those sections. So the test group probably did worse, respectively, than the initial crop likely will.

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[darksurg]

My only gripe is that because of this we won't really have a metric of what is a very high score for at least a test cycle or so.

Guess what, I hope to be in the very high score range.

 

[mehc012]

Guess what, I hope to be in the very high score range.

Guess what, so does every single other person who sits for the exam.

 

[deleted407021]

I'm taking it in August of 2015. There should be a few administrations prior to me sitting for it, so hopefully those of us who take it then will have a heads up to any potential weirdness.

 

[Roxas]

Yeah my husband is a ChemE and is the opposite of socially awkward. Was in a fraternity, brews his own beer, partied just as hard as I did in undergrad.

Being a plant engineer actually takes a lot of social skills because you are supervising a large number of blue collar workers. I really don't understand this socially awkward engineer stereotype.

You're lucky then. My wife's dad and brother are both engineers and they can be pretty weird sometimes...

 

[touchpause13]

You're lucky then. My wife's dad and brother are both engineers and they can be pretty weird sometimes...

What kind of engineer? I've been around of ChemEs and MechEs and they all have been very social

 

[Roxas]

What kind of engineer? I've been around of ChemEs and MechEs and they all have been very social

Her dad is electrical and her brother is mechanical. Admittedly her brother is fairly social but when he gets around my father-in-law they both seem to forget how to act normal lol

 

[touchpause13]

Hahaha. Well my in laws are socially awkward but in a whole different way, they aren't exactly what you would call educated.

 

[mehc012]

Hahaha. Well my in laws are socially awkward but in a whole different way, they aren't exactly what you would call educated.

I thought family was required to be awkward sometimes? Isn't that in the job description?

 

[gyngyn]

This is all the more reason why I believe that adcoms will probably ignore the new social science section for the first couple of cycles.

Don't bet on it.

 

[touchpause13]

I thought family was required to be awkward sometimes? Isn't that in the job description?

Well driving me crazy is what they are best at lol

 

[circulus vitios]

The 2015 MCAT is a steaming pile of ****.

 

[deleted407021]

The 2015 MCAT is a steaming pile of ****.

...I'm kind of excited for it. Why not be? I have few other options.

 

[cooksgenes]

The MCAT is considered one of the most flawless pre-pressonioal standardize test. It not like the old format was even mastered yet, in fact the percentile dipped a little between 2012 and 2013. Basically There is no justifiable reason to change the MCAT. I think if all the premeds ( or a very large number of them ) get organize and create some type of online petition we can stop this thing. We could even use this website http://www.change.org/petition , thoughts? Would you sign something like this or not?

Yea, and they need to add the Writing Section back to screen out people who can't write English correctly...

 

[Escape_Goat]

Quit crying and just take the test. Or don't. Either way, quit crying about it.

Also, lol @ calling the MCAT a "flawless standardized test"

 

[touchpause13]

Now I'm picturing someone crying while taking the MCAT. Lol

 

[BestDoctorEver]

The 2015 MCAT is a steaming pile of ****.

+1000... It's another way for these bureaucrats to justify the amount of money they are making. Why trying to fix something that is not broken? I am not too sure this NEW mcat will have a big impact on the quality of physicians medical schools will put out...

 

[listener23]

Told ya he was a troll. That "it's a trap" meme serves his threads justice.

Nah that meme is just weird....

 

[Dynam0]

The 2015 MCAT is a steaming pile of ****.

Yep. There's absolutely no reason why the old one should be changed and this just seems more and more like the humanities department wanting to get in on the gravy train that is medical school application process. There's very little credible evidence that applicants who are more knowledgeable on useless, non-scientific subjects such as sociology and psychology make for better physicians than those that do not.

 

[deleted407021]

Yep. There's absolutely no reason why the old one should be changed and this just seems more and more like the humanities department wanting to get in on the gravy train that is medical school application process. There's very little credible evidence that applicants who are more knowledgeable on useless, non-scientific subjects such as sociology and psychology make for better physicians than those that do not.

I'm sorry. What?

 

[Dynam0]

I'm sorry. What?

Let me guess, you're a sociology or psychology major? There's no need to be butt hurt by the truth. It must suck to come to the realization that your overpaid professors have been teaching you nonsense for the past few years.

Whether you like to hear it or not, the fact of the matter is that sociology and psychology are not sciences. They are "social sciences", which can mean many things but certainly not real science in any sense of the word.

 

[deleted407021]

Let me guess, you're a sociology or psychology major? There's no need to be butt hurt by the truth. It must suck to come to the realization that your overpaid professors have been teaching you nonsense for the past few years.

I'm majoring in psychology, yes. I'm also minoring in biochemistry. I just would like to see your reasoning for calling an entire field of investigation, "nonsense." I really am very curious.

I know very little about sociology, by the way. I am yet to take that intro class, but that's all I need.

 

[touchpause13]

Lol at psych being useless. Okayyyyy

 

[deleted407021]

It's been 25 minutes @Dynam0 In SDN response time, that's quite a bit. What do you have?

 

[EMDO2018]

I feel for you kids though, AAMC just adding more hoops for future applicants to jump through. Its becoming harder and harder for our generation to succeed. .

 

[mehc012]

I'm majoring in psychology, yes. I'm also minoring in biochemistry. I just would like to see your reasoning for calling an entire field of investigation, "nonsense." I really am very curious.

I know very little about sociology, by the way. I am yet to take that intro class, but that's all I need.

Right, so that person is clearly a bit...interesting.
However, while I would not say that Psych or sociology are useless in the slightest, I do have to question whether Psych or sociology at all teaches what the AAMC is looking for here.

I mean, I don't know about you, but I have absolutely never met someone and gone 'wow, this person is really charismatic, they must be a Psych major!'
or
'Wow, this person actually understands my diverse background, they must have taken a Soc class!'

The whole idea of that is just absurd!
All it does, imo, is take the MCAT further away from what it currently is - a more standardized measure of academic achievement and study habits than GPA.

 

[darkjedi]

Let me guess, you're a sociology or psychology major? There's no need to be butt hurt by the truth. It must suck to come to the realization that your overpaid professors have been teaching you nonsense for the past few years.

Whether you like to hear it or not, the fact of the matter is that sociology and psychology are not sciences. They are "social sciences", which can mean many things but certainly not real science in any sense of the word.

you guys are exactly the type of people that med schools are trying to keep out. There's a reason that the shift in medicine is more about well rounded people and leadership.

 

[ChemEngMD]

What kind of engineer? I've been around of ChemEs and MechEs and they all have been very social

As a ChemE (from a family of engineers) I can say that the "awkward engineer" stereotype definitely exists, but it isn't necessarily the norm. There is a big divide in engineering where you have the super social (usually not the best academically, but still do well) students who go off into industry and do sales engineering or process engineering and climb the management ladder; then you have the super smart, super awkward students who either are going to go to graduate school or going to go directly into consulting where they can work more with design and less with people.

At least this was my undergrad and industry experience. The engineers you see out in industry tend to be pretty social, especially those that are climbing the ladder.

 

[Life Sucks]

I remember when this website was semi-serious.

 

[Escape_Goat]

Threads like this are the reason I only come to pre-allo to troll.

 

[touchpause13]

As a ChemE (from a family of engineers) I can say that the "awkward engineer" stereotype definitely exists, but it isn't necessarily the norm. There is a big divide in engineering where you have the super social (usually not the best academically, but still do well) students who go off into industry and do sales engineering or process engineering and climb the management ladder; then you have the super smart, super awkward students who either are going to go to graduate school or going to go directly into consulting where they can work more with design and less with people.

At least this was my undergrad and industry experience. The engineers you see out in industry tend to be pretty social, especially those that are climbing the ladder.

Yeah I'm mostly around industry Engineers. I think my husbands job title is like project engineer or something like that. A lot of them call themselves "redneck engineers" lol. They all act like blue collar workers that just happen to be really really good at math.

There were a few socially awkward people in my husband's classes but for the most part they all went into industry. A few grad school, and then one made it through the entire process and decided she wanted to be a missionary instead of an engineer. Because jesus.

 

[deleted407021]

Right, so that person is clearly a bit...interesting.
However, while I would not say that Psych or sociology are useless in the slightest, I do have to question whether Psych or sociology at all teaches what the AAMC is looking for here.

I mean, I don't know about you, but I have absolutely never met someone and gone 'wow, this person is really charismatic, they must be a Psych major!'
or
'Wow, this person actually understands my diverse background, they must have taken a Soc class!'

The whole idea of that is just absurd!
All it does, imo, is take the MCAT further away from what it currently is - a more standardized measure of academic achievement and study habits than GPA.

I thought, perhaps that they would defend their stance, but it' clear that they were just starting trouble. Obviously your major doesn't determine or define your personality; just your interests and goals. I agree that introductory psychology will teach you nothing in regards to how to best deal with people or be more intuitive. All it teaches you are a few extremely superficial symptoms of a handful of disorders, with a bit of history thrown in. However, someone with a full psych background would clearly bring something highly valuable to the table in terms of understanding behaviors, motivations and disorders.
Again, I don't know much about sociology, but I'm certain that what you learn in an intro class will be just as ineffectual as what's learned in it's psych counterpart.
Others on this forum have suggested that the social sciences section will be like a new VR. Some have also suggested, from taking the sample section during recent MCAT administrations, that it will be easy compared to the rest of the exam. Whether or not that is true come test day, I think my psychology background will be an advantage. That only makes sense.

 

[Microglia]

As a 3x MCATer, verbal was my weakpoint - finally clicked on the last one and got a 10. In my undergrad, I complained all the time about verbal when I took the MCAT twice. Now, working as a lab tech research asst, I've realized the necessity for triage skills/quick assessments. I continuously improved the amount of time it took me to skim through a 12-page article, pull out the juice and use it for my own publication. I'm absolutely confident that this is why I bumped my score. Maybe I've got a case of Stockholm syndrome with verbal - but I swear by that section now.

Totally agree. I think reading scientific articles for your job makes verbal wayyy easier. I found it super easy from the start, but had been working in a lab for 5 years when I took it.

 

[deleted407021]

Totally agree. I think reading scientific articles for your job makes verbal wayyy easier. I found it super easy from the start, but had been working in a lab for 5 years when I took it.

That's why I'm excited about taking a Research Methods course, as well as psych stats. By the time I sit for the exam, I should have quite a bit of experience with analyzing scientific articles.

 

[Lucca]

Let me guess, you're a sociology or psychology major? There's no need to be butt hurt by the truth. It must suck to come to the realization that your overpaid professors have been teaching you nonsense for the past few years.

Whether you like to hear it or not, the fact of the matter is that sociology and psychology are not sciences. They are "social sciences", which can mean many things but certainly not real science in any sense of the word.

Spoken like a real robot who hasn't held a job in the real world outside of being a pipette slave.

Business - you know, that field that basically drives the engine of the world and makes it so that we can have nice things like Unis, Labs, and such - is basically psychology+sociology+economics. All "useless" social sciences. It doesn't matter how much math you know, if you can't sell something you will last 0.0 seconds in business.

Education. A soft science that melds a lot of things, even science, together to try to build a better future for society. Yah, pretty ****ing pointless.

Medicine. This field that we go into. The one where all the vulnerable, scared, sick people place all of their trust on your ability to heal them and make them feel better. Bonus points for understanding their cultural norms and nipping pseudocience, institutional distrust, and bad habits in the bud. Minus points for thinking that medicine is a hard science.

Political Science. Those guys that run our country. But not just them. PoliSci is everywhere. In the office, in the hospital, everywhere. Maybe if physicians understood a little more poliSci we wouldn't have the disjointed, encumbered physician voice we have in Washington and would instead have a uniform machine trying to lobby for the good of all physicians.

I remember a professor at Perelman and Wharton saying that a liberal arts education is the best preparation for becoming a physician.

It just sounds like you're a STEM only major that wants to think their degree is "useful" because all of the engineers and compsci majors rolling bank around them make them nervous.

 

[mehc012]

That's why I'm excited about taking a Research Methods course, as well as psych stats. By the time I sit for the exam, I should have quite a bit of experience with analyzing scientific articles.

Yeah, that was why I loved tutorials at my school...the coursework was 1 10pg paper every other week synthesizing 10-15 primary literature sources, often conflicting, into one coherent, supported discussion. If there was disagreement between sources you had to either figure out how they fit together or compare the two, figure out which seemed more sound, and decide whether you could go with one vs the other based on anything. 'Class' was you and 1 other student sitting down with the professor and shredding that week's report paragraph by paragraph, bringing in any data they forgot to address or conflicts which they forgot to mention, occasionally quibbling over wording or whether too many conclusions were drawn without enough support, etc. It was always rather fun to try and ferret out political bias in the papers...some had near-identical data yet opposite conclusions (and a clear left/right slant in the writing!)
Those were, without a doubt, the most useful courses I took in undergrad. But hey, I went to a libarts college, so what could I possibly know about science?

 

[knv2u]

That's true. I didn't think of this. This will all be published, yes?

For the current test sections, they are provided. Now I don't know how long those scores will take to be released, but I am sure that medical schools could easily convince the AAMC to gather that data. Moreover, there already is some data with regards to the experimental section that students taking the MCAT 2014 are taking.

 

[Boolean]

For the current test sections, they are provided. Now I don't know how long those scores will take to be released, but I am sure that medical schools could easily convince the AAMC to gather that data. Moreover, there already is some data with regards to the experimental section that students taking the MCAT 2014 are taking.

Awesome. Thanks for the clarification

 

[knv2u]

Makes sense. Fatigue could negatively impact scores as well, I suppose. Those 2013 guinea pigs weren't answering questions six hours deep.

I think fatigue is a large factor for some students in testing. I had to cancel my SAT score once because I fell asleep during the exam, so I could see something like that happening to a student on the MCAT. Many students probably have undiagnosed sleep disorders (as I had in high school).

 

[mehc012]

I think fatigue is a large factor for some students in testing. I had to cancel my SAT score once because I fell asleep during the exam, so I could see something like that happening to a student on the MCAT. Many students probably have undiagnosed sleep disorders (as I had in high school).

I fell asleep for 10-15min at the end of every section...and the goddamned proctor kept waking me up! No matter how many times I told her that I was finished and that I was in miserable abdominal pain and would rather be asleep than awake, she would wake me EVERY time I nodded off, completely unnecessarily.

 

[knv2u]

I fell asleep for 10-15min at the end of every section...and the goddamned proctor kept waking me up! No matter how many times I told her that I was finished and that I was in miserable abdominal pain and would rather be asleep than awake, she would wake me EVERY time I nodded off, completely unnecessarily.

I'm sure that was annoying, but at least she was attempting to be thoughtful to help you had you not finished (although realistically, no one would refuse to cancel their score in that scenario, I wouldn't think).

 

[mehc012]

I'm sure that was annoying, but at least she was attempting to be thoughtful to help you had you not finished (although realistically, no one would refuse to cancel their score in that scenario, I wouldn't think).

The first time, sure...by the 5th? She was ticking me off. And remember, I was already miserable and sleep deprived taking a pointless exam which I had forgotten about until the night before, which is probably why 'ticking me off' escalated to 'still remember this 6yrs later'.

 

[487806]

Yep. There's absolutely no reason why the old one should be changed and this just seems more and more like the humanities department wanting to get in on the gravy train that is medical school application process. There's very little credible evidence that applicants who are more knowledgeable on useless, non-scientific subjects such as sociology and psychology make for better physicians than those that do not.

Let me guess, you're a sociology or psychology major? There's no need to be butt hurt by the truth. It must suck to come to the realization that your overpaid professors have been teaching you nonsense for the past few years.

Whether you like to hear it or not, the fact of the matter is that sociology and psychology are not sciences. They are "social sciences", which can mean many things but certainly not real science in any sense of the word.

I'm sorry but...

Yeah. I think you deserve the @Aerus education treatment on getting informed dude. What you just said is a complete joke by all means, and frankly quite insulting to social science/humanities majors, but your uninformed posts made me laugh.

 

[deleted407021]

I'm sorry but...

Yeah. I think you deserve the @Aerus education treatment on getting informed dude. What you just said is a complete joke by all means, and frankly quite insulting to social science/humanities majors, but your uninformed posts made me laugh.

I insisted that they support their claims, but they never got back to me. I called troll.

 

[487806]

I insisted that they support their claims, but they never got back to me. I called troll.

I call sheer ignorance, although your claim is too tempting of an offer to refuse

 

[deleted407021]

I call sheer ignorance, although your claim is too tempting of an offer to refuse

There was another guy recently who was making similar claims. He was even worse off because he kept trying to supper them.

 

[487806]

There was another guy recently who was making similar claims. He was even worse off because he kept trying to supper them.

Sheer ignorance. I support the idea of making social sciences part of required prereqs, but as part of the MCAT? Yeah, no. It's too much of an unnecessary hassle unfortunately. Who knows? Maybe it'll be useful when 2015 kicks in, but with the longer duration of the exam, it can be a problem.

 

[deleted407021]

Sheer ignorance. I support the idea of making social sciences part of required prereqs, but as part of the MCAT? Yeah, no. It's too much of an unnecessary hassle unfortunately. Who knows? Maybe it'll be useful when 2015 kicks in, but with the longer duration of the exam, it can be a problem.

And they're just intro courses. The addition on Biochem I makes sense, but the material covered in introductory psych and sociology is just too minimal to have an impact on anyones's understanding of complex social interactions.

 

[Jolt]

The current MCAT has worked fine over the years and is generally a great predictor of one's success in medical school and the practice of medicine overall. Why fix something that isn't broken?

 

[music2doc]

The MCAT is considered one of the most flawless pre-pressonioal standardize test. It not like the old format was even mastered yet, in fact the percentile dipped a little between 2012 and 2013. Basically There is no justifiable reason to change the MCAT. I think if all the premeds ( or a very large number of them ) get organize and create some type of online petition we can stop this thing. We could even use this website http://www.change.org/petition , thoughts? Would you sign something like this or not?

Huh? lol... who do you think the MCAT is used by? You, as a premed, labeling it unjustifiable is like me, as a medical student, calling Steps 1-3 unjustifiable. It's so laking in credibility that to simply call it laughable would be laughable in itself.

The test, as it stands, does not test what medical schools want to know; therefore, it makes sense to change it. Medical schools are moving away from the classic prereqs to higher level sciences being required due to shortened preclinical curriculums. Additionally, a major criticism of medical students (and consequently physicians) from schools nationwide has been a lack of understanding of human beings and a lack of interpersonal skills. While the latter is essentially impossible to test with an exam akin to the MCAT, adding required coursework in the behavioral sciences at least provides some foundation upon which medical school curriculums can begin to build programs centered on things like cultural humility and interpersonal communication.