labaholic2 said:
i know the perfect answer to your question.
first, there are a lot of non-traditionals out there. as in 30-year old business guys that want to be doctors. or someone from another practice that wants to be a doctor (MD). at drexel, ive even heard of DOs applying to the drexel program. these guys are not your traditional applicants that come straight from college. these non traditional applicants dont have like 5 recommendatiosn because no professor remembers them! they probably have very minimal clinical experience and at 30 years of age, it's hard to break a 30 mcat score. hence, med schools are more lenient and show more SYMPATHY for these non-tradiationals over the traditional students who work / sweat their asses off.
second, there is a group called the URM, or in long, under represented minorities. it's probably the 2nd biggest problem in medicine today with the URM populations. in 2025, 80% of the US will be minorities!!! so med schools need to start recruiting and they will take minorities with lesser numbers than just say a traditional applicant who work/sweat their asses off.
Actually, my experience with nontrads, is that they are amongst the highest scorers on the MCAT. And if they don't get high, they at least get near 28-29 range.
I've known many nontrads ranging in ages 28-44. ALL OF THEM have had some sort of significant clinical experience, whether it was through the nursing or another medical profession, doing research and volunteering in a hospital, going on medical mission trips, or working in a different aspect of a hospital as with public relations and getting to know doctors who would allow for observervation.
ALL OF THEM also scored either rigth near the national average or quite a bit above it.
Two of them got at least 24 range but with even distribution such that no subscore was lower then a 7. The remainder of the people I know scored anywhere from 28-43 on the MCAT, with a good percentage of them scoring in the 34-35 range.
So what you say about nontrads is DEAD wrong.
The one person who scored a 35, did NOT STUDY for the test due to work and still pulled a 35, from developing proper critical thinking skills through his career and having been well read in different subject areas.
The others worked full time and still found time to study for the test.
So I tend to think you are wrong there.
I tend to think the people with the lower scores fall in one of several categories:
1. Foreign immigrants who do not have English as a first language.
2. Those who are in 6 or 7 year programs that require you to take the MCAT, but don't require you to obtain any specific score.
3. Sometimes, URMs.
Although, all the URMs I've seen on SDN have gotten decent scores like 27+. There is one or two who I know here in Tampa with slightly low scores in a given subsection, but it is due to belonging to the first category listed above.
