"Never retake a 30 or higher" - Is this good advice? State your opinion and ideally also state your qualifications. Members of admissions committees are especially sought for comment.
Several people have said "never retake a 30 or higher", because having two MCAT scores looks bad and a 30 is decent. Indeed, the data tables published by the AAMC show that the median score for med school acceptees is 29.77.* For rejects, the median score is 25.
However, I am dubious of the advice "never retake a 30". What if you are 95% sure you can do considerably better? What if you really want to go to a school with a much higher average? Neither of these is necessarily true for me. I think I might be able to do better on a retake, especially because I only studied for 50 hours and I didn't read about VR strategy at all. However, I am not dead-set on a top school. In fact, I would really love to go to my state's public university - I could save all that money and stay within an hour of my friends. Given the choice between my state school and Stanford, with all of Stanford's prestige and beautiful weather, I am really not sure which I would pick.
People often mention the risk of getting a 30 on the retake, which would be a bad outcome. But if one 30 can't get you where you want to be, then two 30's may not be measurably worse. Sure, two 30's is worse in theory. But for some people, one 30 is bad enough to make them change careers.
Another reason to retake a 30: Schools like their own numbers to look good. If an applicant has a 30 and a 36, the school can probably accept them and then use 36 when calculating statistics.
I strongly suspect different schools and different admissions officers have different reactions when they see multiple MCAT scores. Some of them probably do think "retaking a 30 was a sign of poor judgment", as has been stated on this forum. But some of them probably see the two scores and think, "Wow, look at that improvement. Maybe they were sick on the first test date, or maybe this shows their strong motivation and ability to learn. Either way, this tenacious applicant will be a boon to my med school."
* The MSAR only says 33 to terrify you, they are quadruple-counting people who got 4 acceptances, and so on. The MSAR says it is 31 without duplication, but this is not borne out by the data. 31 is close enough to 29.77 that I think they may just be using different time spans or different methodologies for counting people who get in off the waiting list. Or maybe they are counting retakes differently - maybe 29.77 averages retakes, and 31 takes the highest score.
Several people have said "never retake a 30 or higher", because having two MCAT scores looks bad and a 30 is decent. Indeed, the data tables published by the AAMC show that the median score for med school acceptees is 29.77.* For rejects, the median score is 25.
However, I am dubious of the advice "never retake a 30". What if you are 95% sure you can do considerably better? What if you really want to go to a school with a much higher average? Neither of these is necessarily true for me. I think I might be able to do better on a retake, especially because I only studied for 50 hours and I didn't read about VR strategy at all. However, I am not dead-set on a top school. In fact, I would really love to go to my state's public university - I could save all that money and stay within an hour of my friends. Given the choice between my state school and Stanford, with all of Stanford's prestige and beautiful weather, I am really not sure which I would pick.
People often mention the risk of getting a 30 on the retake, which would be a bad outcome. But if one 30 can't get you where you want to be, then two 30's may not be measurably worse. Sure, two 30's is worse in theory. But for some people, one 30 is bad enough to make them change careers.
Another reason to retake a 30: Schools like their own numbers to look good. If an applicant has a 30 and a 36, the school can probably accept them and then use 36 when calculating statistics.
I strongly suspect different schools and different admissions officers have different reactions when they see multiple MCAT scores. Some of them probably do think "retaking a 30 was a sign of poor judgment", as has been stated on this forum. But some of them probably see the two scores and think, "Wow, look at that improvement. Maybe they were sick on the first test date, or maybe this shows their strong motivation and ability to learn. Either way, this tenacious applicant will be a boon to my med school."
* The MSAR only says 33 to terrify you, they are quadruple-counting people who got 4 acceptances, and so on. The MSAR says it is 31 without duplication, but this is not borne out by the data. 31 is close enough to 29.77 that I think they may just be using different time spans or different methodologies for counting people who get in off the waiting list. Or maybe they are counting retakes differently - maybe 29.77 averages retakes, and 31 takes the highest score.
