Can people with low stats really succeed in med school?

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CTtarheel said:
UG GPA and MCAT scores really don't correlate well with who does well in med school. It truly is a whole different ball game where you're not asked to think terribly hard about anything but are asked to memorize LOTS OF DETAILS. Howe well you do in the first two years is determined by how well you are able to synthesize, prioritize and memorize lots of information. No undergrad major is like this, the ones that do ask you to memorize don't ask you to memorize nearly as much and in general undergrad classes tend to be more thinking/problem based rather than fact based. In year 3/4 memorizing remains important but grades are also based on your a** kissing ability.

However, I'm really skeptical of the kid who "just slacked off" in UG, mostly because doing well in med school is all about maintaining your focus, having the discipline to study, pushing yourself to do as well as you can. Some people can turn the corner and start to actually work, but a lot of them can't.
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The real med student gives a good response!

Can you elaborate further on the bolded statement? I hate a** kissing and will never stoop to it, or at least I hope not.
 
Legato said:
The real med student gives a good response!

Can you elaborate further on the bolded statement? I hate a** kissing and will never stoop to it, or at least I hope not.
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to preface this I'm just finishing up year 1 and can only relay what I've heard from upper level students.

So, year 3/4 grades are based on subjective evaluations plus a shelf exam (standard for everyone in the country) which may make up a large part of your grade or almost none of it. With any subjective evaluation seeming competent/hard working is always rewarded more than being those things and these evals make up your deans letter (basically a master LOR for all residency programs) while the 3rd year grades are the #2 most important objective factor in residency selection.

So, yes, sometimes a** kissing is rewarded depending on the person writing the evaluation. Spending the extra time doing scut and SEEMING helpful and available might be more likely to get you a good grade than knowing all the answers on rounds and acing the shelf exam.
 
I had a good GPA but an MCAT score probably in the lower quarter of my med school class. My USMLE step 1 board score is top 10% nationwide and I am planning on matching in neurosurgery next year. Suggests MCAT doesn’t always correlate with med school performance.
 
kenmc3 said:
I had a good GPA but an MCAT score probably in the lower quarter of my med school class. My USMLE step 1 board score is top 10% nationwide and I am planning on matching in neurosurgery next year. Suggests MCAT doesn’t always correlate with med school performance.
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i don't know if someone mentioned this previously, but i would imagine MCAT scores vs. med school performance correlates probably as much as SAT scores vs. ugrad performance.

congrats on your USMLE step 1 score, and good luck with matching into neurosurgery.
 
kenmc3 said:
Suggests MCAT doesn't always correlate with med school performance.
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I've been told by a few different people (including a couple adcoms) that the only section of the MCAT that correlates fairly well with med school success is the verbal reasoning section. That would make sense.
 
BioMedPS said:
Hey, try being original next time, ok? Apply first and then talk, otherwise shut your mouth. When you get rejected/waitlisted with high stats while others with low stats get in, we'll see how much you buy into the med school process.
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Wow, a little bitter, aren't we? We all knew what we were getting into when we decided to play the medical admissions game - not giving them an excuse to reject you is what pre-med has to be about.
 
WrightMD said:
I've been told by a few different people (including a couple adcoms) that the only section of the MCAT that correlates fairly well with med school success is the verbal reasoning section. That would make sense.
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Actually, this is incorrect. Verbal MCAT correlates with USMLE step I.

Who knew? Taking standardized tests measures the ability to take standardized tests.
 
Anyone trying to imply that a 28 won't cut it for doing well in med school is crazy. However, for actually getting in is a very different question (simply because higher stats mean they might do better, but that doesn't mean the other person will just flat out fail).
 
It all depends on what you define as success. Can you pass with low admission stats? Yes. Can you do better than pass? Yes. BUT, there is a lot of research that shows that GPA and MCAT scores correlate to academic and clinical success in medical school. The people with the better stats tend to do better.
 
Trojanation said:
I have a friend who got into med school with pretty low stats and he's struggling big time now, almost failing.
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Doing well in medical school is not about stats. Stats just help you know how you're doing and what you should improve. He'll do better if he'll find a way to organize his time properly and to study in the way that works best for him. Though how fast you learn or how smart you are helps, attitude is still a big part of doing well. 🙂 Good luck to your friend! 👍
 
nu2004 said:
yeah, i mean, god forbid that there be a test of, you know, the ability to critically analyze information. not like a physician has to do much of that.
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but you can test the ability to critically analyze information with subjects that are actually relevant to medicine/what you will be doing/learning as a physiican and med student.

should the fact that person X has trouble figuring out the ml of NaOH necessary for a titration of HCl disqualify them from becoming a physician??
 
ryserr21 said:
but you can test the ability to critically analyze information with subjects that are actually relevant to medicine/what you will be doing/learning as a physiican and med student.

should the fact that person X has trouble figuring out the ml of NaOH necessary for a titration of HCl disqualify them from becoming a physician??
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Yes, but you don't know the information that you are going to learn in medical school.

What would be the point if the MCAT was based on material in medical school (the material that would relate to being a physician). In essence, you'd have to teach yourself all the courses in medical school, then take the MCAT, then go to medical school. Obviously, this makes no practical sense and the USMLE tests you on this stuff anyways (which connect to your residency admissions).

1) Take the pre-reqs to get into medical school (and learn the fundamental science concepts of things in medical school)

2) Take the test that is based on the pre-req material (this affects your admission to medical school)

3) In medical school, you learn the concepts integral to becoming a physician.

4) You take the USMLE which is based on said integral information of medicine (this affects admission to residency)

5) You go to residency and finish up your medical education (obviously you continue to learn after residency).

It makes good sense, you can't replace step 4 with step 2!
 
Some of you are treating MCAT scores as a fact regarding people's abilities and intelligence. Has no one taken college statistics? These MCAT scores merely approximate a snapshot in time.

They are statistics around the true parameter. Considering how few questions are on the test (especially these days) I bet the error bars are HUGE.
 
Your undergrad stats go out of the window the second you step into med school, MCAT included. I can't emphasize this enough. Everyone's on the same playing field.
 
TheProwler said:
A fair number of people have to take five years to graduate though, and not because of family reasons or what have you. Plenty of people have to repeat a year in school. Besides, most schools don't accept people with low stats, so they won't even be there to fail out anyways.
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See! Point proven :laugh:

Your undergrad stats go out of the window the second you step into med school, MCAT included. I can't emphasize this enough. Everyone's on the same playing field.
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I have DEFINITELY heard that one too many times. Is it this sudden realization that sets in that causes the depression in medical schools?

and honestly, I only quoted you to say 👍 on the avatar and the quote in your sig.


Sallie


stickwell.
 
Seriously I read through half this post and forgot what the topic was, what is the point of fighting over the internet anyway lol.
 
Interesting thread.

So someone with a 3.0 GPA would struggle in med school.. what if that person was an engineering major from MIT? What if they go to a school that's well known for grade deflation, like Johns Hopkins? Are those students going to struggle in med school because they're too stupid to muster a 3.7? Or is GPA just an arbitrary number that has so many factors that go into it other than intelligence and work ethic and therefore isn't a good predictor of future performance?

How do you reconcile someone with a 4.0 GPA and 27 MCAT? Is that person a ***** or a genius? Are they going to do well or not?

Obviously there's more to it than a couple of numbers. There may be some cases where people with really low stats will struggle, but I guarantee you there are cases where people with high GPA/MCAT combos also struggle in med school.
 
noskill said:
It's old, but I doubt much has changed in the past decade in terms of the material and types of questions asked in each section.

http://www.aamc.org/students/mcat/research/bibliography/swans001.htm

But in the end, I think this whole debate is garbage. The simple fact is that if you work hard enough, you can score high on the boards regardless of your MCAT score.
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That's interesting. I've always heard that verbal was the best predictor, but a quick search comes back as you say, BS being the best predictor of Step 1 scores.

You'd think that VR, being about critical thinking, would be the better predictor.
 
armybound said:
That's interesting. I've always heard that verbal was the best predictor, but a quick search comes back as you say, BS being the best predictor of Step 1 scores.

You'd think that VR, being about critical thinking, would be the better predictor.
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I "think" that VR correlates with med school success, but not necessarily with Step 1 scores...

Regardless, it has to be more about test taking skills than content to score well on either, although knowledge of the content on Step 1 is obviously pretty darn important...
 
armybound said:
Obviously there's more to it than a couple of numbers. There may be some cases where people with really low stats will struggle, but I guarantee you there are cases where people with high GPA/MCAT combos also struggle in med school.
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Yes, there are some cases. You aren't guaranteed to do poorly if you have low stats. However, both GPA and MCAT scores do correlate to success in medical school. As others have said, it is a level playing field, and if you work hard you can do well in school and on step 1. The fact remains, the higher stat matriculants end up performing the best.
 
ryserr21 said:
should the fact that person X has trouble figuring out the ml of NaOH necessary for a titration of HCl disqualify them from becoming a physician??
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That same type of knowledge is going to be necessary when you're trying learn metabolic/respiratory acidosis/alkalosis and anion gaps. Back to acid-base chemistry.
 
armybound said:
You'd think that VR, being about critical thinking, would be the better predictor.
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That's the thing, I've always found verbal reasoning to be more the understanding of logical subtleties than critical thinking, whereas the science sections clearly test analytical and cognitive abilities.

Also, what it seems everyone fails to notice is the fact that while there appears to be a correlation, it is by no means a strong one. Jumping to so many wild conclusions about performance in medical school based on a correlation coefficient of about 0.5 is just foolish.
 
flip26 said:
I "think" that VR correlates with med school success, but not necessarily with Step 1 scores...
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oh come on...being a doctor doesn't require that much brainwork. You need a good memory to memorize tons of information and a little bit of reasoning skills to understand and apply it. It's not like we are becoming mathematicians who need pure abstract reasoning skills. I'm sure that if you can do well on any section, you can do well in medical school.

What is all this nonsense about predicting success. If I had a low mcat/gpa and you told me that I'm not going to do well in med school, I'd say screw you and prove you wrong.
 
Legato said:
oh come on...being a doctor doesn't require that much brainwork. You need a good memory to memorize tons of information and a little bit of reasoning skills to understand and apply it. It's not like we are becoming mathematicians who need pure abstract reasoning skills. I'm sure that if you can do well on any section, you can do well in medical school.

What is all this nonsense about predicting success. If I had a low mcat/gpa and you told me that I'm not going to do well in med school, I'd say screw you and prove you wrong.
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Good luck in podiatry school!
 
Legato said:
??
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You need to develop some of these VR skills you think are so unnecessary to being a physician...

I said nothing about VR "predicting" success. I used the word "correlate." Know the diff?

And when n=1, correlation is a useless or meaningless predictor of anything...

I hope for your sake you like feet.
 
flip26 said:
You need to develop some of these VR skills you think are so unnecessary to being a physician...

I said nothing about VR "predicting" success. I used the word "correlate." Know the diff?

And when n=1, correlation is a useless or meaningless predictor of anything...

I hope for your sake you like feet.
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I didn't really do badly on VR or on other sections.

I said that reasoning skills are necessary, but they are not all you need. You clearly need a good memory to remember massive amounts of information, and you need to be able to look at symptoms and figure out what disease may be causing them by accessing that large memory bank. Doctors do not have to have awesome reasoning skills.

Do these annoying premeds stay annoying premeds forever, or do they mature somewhat as they grow older?
 
Legato said:
I didn't really do badly on VR or on other sections.

I said that reasoning skills are necessary, but they are not all you need. You clearly need a good memory to remember massive amounts of information, and you need to be able to look at symptoms and figure out what disease may be causing them by accessing that large memory bank. Doctors do not have to have awesome abstract reasoning skills. Mathematicians and the like do.

Do these annoying premeds stay annoying premeds forever, or do they mature somewhat as they grow older?
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I disagree with this conclusion.

And I do not think that VR measures abstract reasoning - verbal reasoning is pretty much the opposite of, or is at the other end of the reasoning spectrum, from abstract reasoning.
 
flip26 said:
I disagree with this conclusion.

And I do not think that VR measures abstract reasoning - verbal reasoning is pretty much the opposite of, or is at the other end of the reasoning spectrum, from abstract reasoning.
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My mistake using the word "abstract reasoning". I really don't know about reasoning and the different types, so I just meant to use "reasoning" instead.
 
flip26 said:
I disagree with this conclusion.

And I do not think that VR measures abstract reasoning - verbal reasoning is pretty much the opposite of, or is at the other end of the reasoning spectrum, from abstract reasoning.
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Verbal reasoning test is essentially a reading comprehension test. In medical school you will have to read HUGE amounts of text (which like the VR passages may be dense and/or boring) and quickly and abstract both main ideas and important specific details from it. The worry with people who cannot score reasonably well (at least 8 or 9) on the verbal reasoning test is that they may not be able to keep up with the pace of reading that is necessary in medical school, whether it be due to language difficulties or just being a slow reader. Like it or not if you are a slow reader you will struggle in medical school because you will have to spend much more time going through the material and will thus get fewer repetitions than your more quickly reading classmates. Success=memorization and memorization=repetition.
 
Trojanation said:
I have a friend who got into med school with pretty low stats and he's struggling big time now, almost failing.
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Here's the scenario that I see most commonly in medical school. Person with uGPA greater than 3.7 and MCAT greater than 34 struggling in medical school. In general, there are so few people with "low stats" that they are not the majority of people who get into trouble.

Anyone at any time can have problems with medical school. The reasons for this may be something interferes with their ability to get the work done. This may be an illness (personal or spouse), financial difficulties or any number of reasons that have nothing to do with incoming stats.

I have a very close friend who was the last person to make it into his medical school off the waitlist the year that he applied. He went on to graduate first in his class and now is head of his specialty department at a very highly ranked academic program.

If you looked at him just based on "stats", you would see why he ended up on the waitlist but once he started school, he excelled. To answer your question, yes, people with low stats can do well in medical school and most of them do; go on to graduate and practice medicine.
 
CTtarheel said:
Verbal reasoning test is essentially a reading comprehension test. In medical school you will have to read HUGE amounts of text (which like the VR passages may be dense and/or boring) and quickly and abstract both main ideas and important specific details from it. The worry with people who cannot score reasonably well (at least 8 or 9) on the verbal reasoning test is that they may not be able to keep up with the pace of reading that is necessary in medical school, whether it be due to language difficulties or just being a slow reader. Like it or not if you are a slow reader you will struggle in medical school because you will have to spend much more time going through the material and will thus get fewer repetitions than your more quickly reading classmates. Success=memorization and memorization=repetition.
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CTtarheel will probably do well as a doctor. You can tell he is smart because every post he makes makes sense.

One thing though...isn't there a difference between science-related passages and, for example, art or philosophy passages? I can read science-related passages pretty quickly and understand them pretty easily. However, I am not that great at other types of passages, even though I somehow managed to do above average on VR.

lol...since yesterday I've been on this forum for so long. Just trying to avoid writing my PS.
 
Legato said:
One thing though...isn't there a difference between science-related passages and, for example, art or philosophy passages? I can read science-related passages pretty quickly and understand them pretty easily. However, I am not that great at other types of passages, even though I somehow managed to do above average on VR.
.
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This is a very common and legitimate (in my opinion) criticism of the test. Maybe more of that fluffy "well roundedness" that schools are going for these days?
 
CTtarheel said:
This is a very common and legitimate (in my opinion) criticism of the test. Maybe more of that fluffy "well roundedness" that schools are going for these days?
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well, medicine isn't always science, I guess. Maybe it is about being well-rounded.. maybe it's about being able to critically think about foreign material, since you're going to be reading a lot of topics that you have no prior experience with.
 
All of these anecdotes are pretty silly. It's like if offered you evidence that smoking is not deadly by telling you that my pack-a-day grandfather lived to be 95 and died in a car accident. Check the research. Stats correlate to med school success.
 
cpants said:
All of these anecdotes are pretty silly. It's like if offered you evidence that smoking is not deadly by telling you that my pack-a-day grandfather lived to be 95 and died in a car accident. Check the research. Stats correlate to med school success.
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If the name of the thread was, "Do studies show that there is a correlation between low stats and poor performance in med school," then I'd agree with you. However, the name of the thread is "Can people with low stats really succeed in med school?" Anecdotes are a perfectly valid way of answering this question.
 
Med schools make it very hard for you to fail. Think of how bad it would be for them to have people failing out of school. They invest a lot in you and they're not about to let it slip away.
 
Legato said:
If the name of the thread was, "Do studies show that there is a correlation between low stats and poor performance in med school," then I'd agree with you. However, the name of the thread is "Can people with low stats really succeed in med school?" Anecdotes are a perfectly valid way of answering this question.
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however, the discussion has meandered towards "do stats predict med student performance and why?" nothing wrong with anecdotes, but it'd add greatly if someone busted out the literature. werd.
 
Legato said:
If the name of the thread was, "Do studies show that there is a correlation between low stats and poor performance in med school," then I'd agree with you. However, the name of the thread is "Can people with low stats really succeed in med school?" Anecdotes are a perfectly valid way of answering this question.
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Then basically you agree with me and what I said earlier in the thread?

Cuz you sure had a funny way of expressing it...
 
Higher stats and performance in med school might have a correlation, but who knows the causality of it all? It's not like if you bust nuts studying for the MCAT then you can relax in med school knowing that you'll be fine, you still got to hall @ss. So it's conceivable that many people who didn't have good stats before can still rock med school.
 
flip26 said:
Then basically you agree with me and what I said earlier in the thread?

Cuz you sure had a funny way of expressing it...
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I guess so. You said something about VR scores being the best predictors of med school success, and if the studies show a higher correlation between high VR scores and "med school success" (which hopefully translates to "doctor success") than other sections like BS and PS, then I can't really argue with that sadly. Null and void my previous statements? Maybe. I don't know the number of studies that were done on this, and according to the other guy, different studies show different things. At least the point still stands that your reasoning ability doesn't have to be awesome to be a doctor.

I have a funny way of expressing everything 🙂. No idea what's going on most of the time.
 
nu2004 said:
yeah, i mean, god forbid that there be a test of, you know, the ability to critically analyze information. not like a physician has to do much of that.
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Hmmm...so a 65 year old surgeon who became a doc before the mcat isn't as competent as someone who took the mcat then graduated med school?
 
ayushman80 said:
Hmmm...so a 65 year old surgeon who became a doc before the mcat isn't as competent as someone who took the mcat then graduated med school?
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probably not, but you might be able to get away saying that there are more 65 year old surgeons who became doctors before the mcat that aren't as competent, compared to the newer surgeons when they become 65 years old.
 
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