Current MD schools that do not require MCAT? (non-early acceptance)

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UCDavispremed92

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Just a "what the heck" post, but after a cursory search, don't see any recent posts regarding MD schools (not talking about BS/MD early acceptance programs, already have my bachelor's) that do not require an MCAT score to apply. I am aware that schools 5 or so years ago that had this policy at the time offered the caveat that it was disadvantageous (ex. Dartmouth, their policy still in place?). What about the Canadian schools that don't, that still in play and/or do they consider Americans?

Background: I am a high GPA (3.88/3.94 s/cGPA) and high-quality ECs (extensive box-checking, viewable in post history) white Californian.
• in other words, MCAT is in all likelihood a net-neutral for my applicant profile at best-case, so yeah that's why I want to at least confirm not missing out of some innovative angle here
* yes, aware of many cons to actually acting on something like this, such as having reapp status from relatively short list of non-MCAT requiring schools, but genuinely curious and perhaps could help someone else, if not me

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Canadians that accept Americans? I would be a good edge case for this one because I may "look" like someone who would do well on the MCAT, but my standardized testing history is uniformly bad, but have a lot to go on as far as really everything else.
 
Canadians that accept Americans? I would be a good edge case for this one because I may "look" like someone who would do well on the MCAT, but my standardized testing history is uniformly bad, but have a lot to go on as far as really everything else.
If you want to practice medicine in the US then you should go to US medical school. MCAT is nothing comparing to boards.
 
If you want to practice medicine in the US then you should go to US medical school. MCAT is nothing comparing to boards.
Had a conversation with a doc who said same thing recently. Acknowledging my personal ignorance to the boards core subject matter (that is discussing the criteria for passage purely in the abstract), I don't believe you need an ~85th percentile on the boards to not be sunk, as is the case for the MCAT.

For me, it's more a matter of loss aversion than objective difficulty of material in question. Studying for clinical scenarios sounds a lot more tolerable than "pseudo-clinical" scenarios, where convolution in passage-making is put on some pedestal as a legitimate proxy for clinical practice. I would suggest willingness to engage in self-flagellation is the confounder in this scenario.
 
Had a conversation with a doc who said same thing recently. Acknowledging my personal ignorance to the boards core subject matter (that is discussing the criteria for passage purely in the abstract), I don't believe you need an ~85th percentile on the boards to not be sunk, as is the case for the MCAT.

For me, it's more a matter of loss aversion than objective difficulty of material in question. Studying for clinical scenarios sounds a lot more tolerable than "pseudo-clinical" scenarios, where convolution in passage-making is put on some pedestal as a legitimate proxy for clinical practice. I would suggest willingness to engage in self-flagellation is the confounder in this scenario.
This comes off as very ignorant and quite pretentious. Just take the damn MCAT.

The MCAT is an attempt at evaluating individuals in a semi-standardized format which allows schools to judge students within the context of their peers from across the country and across various educational and personal backgrounds. No USMD school has a "No MCAT" Policy as far as I am aware. If you plan ahead, it isn't even self flagellation as you describe it so much as reformulating what you already should have learned in class towards the intent of the question.
 
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This comes off as very ignorant and quite pretentious. Just take the damn MCAT.

The MCAT is an attempt at evaluating individuals in a semi-standardized format which allows schools to judge students within the context of their peers from across the country and across various educational and personal backgrounds. No USMD school has a "No MCAT" Policy as far as I am aware. If you plan ahead, it isn't even self flagellation as you describe it so much as reformulating what you already should have learned in class towards the intent of the question.
I agree the pre-2015 MCAT is as you describe here, based on the question banks. I'm not sitting for the exam until I'm above where I need to be with margin for error, but even in the event it says what it needs to say about me, I won't change my tune about the nature of this particular exam. Spade's a spade.
 
Had a conversation with a doc who said same thing recently. Acknowledging my personal ignorance to the boards core subject matter (that is discussing the criteria for passage purely in the abstract), I don't believe you need an ~85th percentile on the boards to not be sunk, as is the case for the MCAT.

For me, it's more a matter of loss aversion than objective difficulty of material in question. Studying for clinical scenarios sounds a lot more tolerable than "pseudo-clinical" scenarios, where convolution in passage-making is put on some pedestal as a legitimate proxy for clinical practice. I would suggest willingness to engage in self-flagellation is the confounder in this scenario.
Boards percentiles are not the same as the MCAT. The MCAT can be taken by anyone and is usually taken by junior year undergrad students. Step 1 is taken by people who were admitted to med schools PLUS made it through it. This is entirely different cohort of people. 85% on MCAT (~512, which is not exceptional at all) may be a lot easier than 30% on boards.
 
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The pre-2015 MCAT is just a content dump. The new MCAT actually asks you to critically think. Who do you want as a physician - someone who can think, or someone who can memorize?
Hah, in my home country the whole educational system is based on memorization (that's why I study in the US). Students have only finals, no midterms, no essays, and they get list of questions for final on the very first day of classes including pages in books where they need to get the answer from. After that they have few months to memorize it and pass exactly 1 random question during recitation (or whatever you call it in the US). Exactly the same for medical schools. No critical thinking at all. This applies to each and every class (even for gym classes, which are mandatory along with English throughout all 4 years of school).
 
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The pre-2015 MCAT is just a content dump. The new MCAT actually asks you to critically think. Who do you want as a physician - someone who can think, or someone who can memorize?
Memorization and comprehension are not mutually-exclusive, but mutually reinforcing. This is the kind of stuff classmates I was outworking in undergrad said to me about how I tend to be cerebral and gamify everything (spoiler: it worked).

If you were a current medical student, I wouldn't contest what you're saying really, if you said "the skills I acquired on the MCAT are really helping my Step 1 prep" you would hear nothing from me. I don't think anyone who isn't insufferable has ever said this and seriously meant it. But, you're the closest thing to my contemporary save that you've had an MCAT scored, smells like a load of confirmation bias to me.

To add a bit more "new MCAT" terminology, the "critical thinking" you're so keen on is little but a load of arbitrarily constructed/determined "hidden curriculum" grafted on to a respectable undergraduate core science curriculum and afforded equal weight to it.
 
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Memorization and comprehension are not mutually-exclusive, but mutually reinforcing.

If you were a current medical student, I wouldn't contest what you're saying really, if you said "the skills I acquired on the MCAT are really helping my Step 1 prep" you would hear nothing from me. I don't think anyone who isn't insufferable has ever said this and seriously meant it. But, you're the closest thing to my contemporary save that you've had an MCAT scored, smells like a load of confirmation bias to me.
I think it is a bit pointless to discuss why MCAT is a good predictor of something or not. You have to pass it to get into medical school, whether you like it or not. You can go to carib schools without MCAT, but this is extremely risky route.
 
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I think it is a bit pointless to discuss why MCAT is a good predictor of something or not. You have to pass it to get into medical school, whether you like it or not. You can go to carib schools without MCAT, but this is extremely risky route.
Yes, and I'll stop indulging in it. I just had to refute Mr. "defend the MCAT and my honor" in here, who is the truly pretentious one in this thread.
 
The pre-2015 MCAT is just a content dump. The new MCAT actually asks you to critically think. Who do you want as a physician - someone who can think, or someone who can memorize?


Did you take the pre-2015 MCAT?
 
Did you take the pre-2015 MCAT?
Took an FL on the AAMC official material WAAAY back in 2014 for S&G when I wanted to see if the premed route was for me. 19 year old me was silly.
 
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Hah, in my home country the whole educational system is based on memorization (that's why I study in the US). Students have only finals, no midterms, no essays, and they get list of questions for final on the very first day of classes including pages in books where they need to get the answer from. After that they have few month to memorize it and pass exactly 1 random question during recitation (or whatever you call it in the US). Exactly the same for medical schools. No critical thinking at all. This applies to each and every class (even for gym classes, which are mandatory along with English throughout all 4 years of school).
That sounds terribly inefficient at producing individuals who actually understand what they have memorized...is there something I am missing?
 
This is a supposition that I do not have the information to prove (though it may be available or come to light at some later time), but I believe the MCAT 2015 likely is more strongly correlated to SE status than the pre-2015 MCAT, precisely because of its emphasis on hidden curriculum as opposed to general knowledge from semi-standardized bedrock science courses. This is very much in line with strong criticism levied at the methodology/wording of IQ tests that are constructed by a relatively homogenous subset of people.

Respectfully, what I think isn't taken into account with this emphasis on the "conceptual" as a nice-sounding catch-all for this sort of test design/emphasis is simply the amount of time required to not just learn "what it is" but to think through "all relevant interpolations of it given various prompt-styles." In the most traditional and "old-school" notions of test construction, and colloquially to this day, questions of this style are deemed "unfair." I mention this to point out how outside of awareness/experience this style is for students at undergraduate institutions that are middling at best, and deeply underfunded. I believe that the degree to which test questions deviate from base knowledge requirements to what would be characterized as critical thinking ( "of course you know A--->B.....but what if mediating variable C") is synonymous with the higher reaches of academia and high-SE circles more broadly. Can it be learned? Yes - and it's not about who you are and where you come from in any way that is inherent, that's not what I'm saying. What I am saying is that it's a heck of a lot less universal than the core sciences themselves, or meat-and-potatoes questions about their subject matter.

For low SE applicants from undergraduate institutions chosen for ease of access or financial considerations, shifting focus to the MCAT after success within such a setting could be analogized to a working-class kid at a standard elementary school whose 5th grade final exams that determine class rank are administered per Montessori-style criteria.
 
of course you know A--->B.....but what if mediating variable C
This is the core criteria utilized to determine the change in the exam. This is a required skill set as a physician. If you want to give patient drug X, but it interferes with their drug Y then what do you do? If a patient has symptoms A,B, and C that match diagnosis X but lab tests are inconsistent with X, what do you do? With the increasing hyper competitive nature of medical school admissions and the migration of medical school curricula to a self paced third party format, it is honestly just easier to test for and admit students who already have this skill as opposed to teaching them in their training.

As far as Low SES disadvantage, you are 100% correct - however there is disadvantage at all levels of medical school admissions. The new MCAT itself does not disadvantage low SES students, it emphasizes pre-existing disadvantages that the AAMC have no control over and need to be addressed via different channels.
 
Don't you think this construction is a bit facile? I mean, would you really feel comfortable drawing that connection in the presence of actual physicians? I wouldn't.....I get that the concept of a mediating variable is crucial for the actual exam and hypothetically clinical practice - I just used that for illustrative purposes of the style, which could also hinge on granular passage details etc.

Well everything disadvantages low SE population to the extent it disadvantages anyone...but I am saying this version of the exam is distinctly worse from that perspective because the tenets of its "logic" are less intelligible to the general population (emphasis on research paper style, lab/industrial-specific terminology) than the prior version, which erred closer to standard hard science fare offered to sufficient detail at any state university. That clearly reflects a decline in accessibility between the two versions.....it's really beyond me how this can be denied. They hem in a bit of compensatory lip-service in there with P/S section though.

Not everyone who wasn't taught this way is going to be able to sit around for 6 months like either of us, cracking it. When preexistent curriculum offered at any undergraduate institution itself qualifies as genuine prep for a standardized exam, that exam is inherently more accessible.....you're saying it's filtering doctors vs. non-doctors.....I'm saying it's filtering people on the basis of arbitrary/circumstantial factors to a greater extent than was deemed necessary 4 years ago.
 
Don't you think this construction is a bit facile? I mean, would you really feel comfortable drawing that connection in the presence of actual physicians? I wouldn't.....I get that the concept of a mediating variable is crucial for the actual exam and hypothetically clinical practice - I just used that for illustrative purposes of the style, which could also hinge on granular passage details etc.

Well everything disadvantages low SE population to the extent it disadvantages anyone...but I am saying this version of the exam is distinctly worse from that perspective because the tenets of its "logic" are less intelligible to the general population (emphasis on research paper style, lab/industrial-specific terminology) than the prior version, which erred closer to standard hard science fare offered to sufficient detail at any state university. That clearly reflects a decline in accessibility between the two versions.....it's really beyond me how this can be denied. They hem in a bit of compensatory lip-service in there with P/S section though.

Not everyone who wasn't taught this way is going to be able to sit around for 6 months like either of us, cracking it. When preexistent curriculum offered at any undergraduate institution itself qualifies as genuine prep for a standardized exam, that exam is inherently more accessible.....you're saying it's filtering doctors vs. non-doctors.....I'm saying it's filtering people on the basis of arbitrary/circumstantial factors to a greater extent than was deemed necessary 4 years ago.

Low SES at application. Received reduced fee for mcat. Had to buy the books off people and couldnt do a formal course.
 
in other words, MCAT is in all likelihood a net-neutral for my applicant profile at best-case, so yeah that's why I want to at least confirm not missing out of some innovative angle here

Just gotta take the MCAT man. Thousands of applicants take it annually. What happens when step 1 rolls around? Part of the path towards becoming a physician includes taking test after test and consistently proving that you belong there and that you know/can apply knowledge.
 
Don't you think this construction is a bit facile? I mean, would you really feel comfortable drawing that connection in the presence of actual physicians? I wouldn't.....I get that the concept of a mediating variable is crucial for the actual exam and hypothetically clinical practice - I just used that for illustrative purposes of the style, which could also hinge on granular passage details etc.

Well everything disadvantages low SE population to the extent it disadvantages anyone...but I am saying this version of the exam is distinctly worse from that perspective because the tenets of its "logic" are less intelligible to the general population (emphasis on research paper style, lab/industrial-specific terminology) than the prior version, which erred closer to standard hard science fare offered to sufficient detail at any state university. That clearly reflects a decline in accessibility between the two versions.....it's really beyond me how this can be denied. They hem in a bit of compensatory lip-service in there with P/S section though.

Not everyone who wasn't taught this way is going to be able to sit around for 6 months like either of us, cracking it. When preexistent curriculum offered at any undergraduate institution itself qualifies as genuine prep for a standardized exam, that exam is inherently more accessible.....you're saying it's filtering doctors vs. non-doctors.....I'm saying it's filtering people on the basis of arbitrary/circumstantial factors to a greater extent than was deemed necessary 4 years ago.

What other careers have you considered?
 
My MCAT was not a content dump at all.
Maybe I just don’t remember it as well as I thought I did! I do know, however, it was A LOT different than my real deal a few months ago.

Although, I’m hindsight, I recognize that there was likely a large non-content dump section as I got like a 27 on the practice without Ochem, physics, or intro bio...
 
Memorization and comprehension are not mutually-exclusive, but mutually reinforcing. This is the kind of stuff classmates I was outworking in undergrad said to me about how I tend to be cerebral and gamify everything (spoiler: it worked).

If you were a current medical student, I wouldn't contest what you're saying really, if you said "the skills I acquired on the MCAT are really helping my Step 1 prep" you would hear nothing from me. I don't think anyone who isn't insufferable has ever said this and seriously meant it. But, you're the closest thing to my contemporary save that you've had an MCAT scored, smells like a load of confirmation bias to me.

To add a bit more "new MCAT" terminology, the "critical thinking" you're so keen on is little but a load of arbitrarily constructed/determined "hidden curriculum" grafted on to a respectable undergraduate core science curriculum and afforded equal weight to it.

This sounds like me trying to reach the word count in essays tbh
 
I will take it. Several of you are engaging in a straw man characterization of what I've said here. I expressed from original post this was highly unlikely to solve my "problem" and made no assertion that later postings would in any way do this.

Should all things I do be directed toward an MD acceptance, because that's what I've been doing all these years, thanks for the tip. There is no mutual exclusivity with the thoughts/questions presented in this thread, or perspective that would cause me to suggest them, and my overarching goals - this is being implied repeatedly to dismiss me rather than assess content of what I've said at face-value.
 
I will take it. Several of you are engaging in a straw man characterization of what I've said here. I expressed from original post this was highly unlikely to solve my "problem" and made no assertion that later postings would in any way do this.

Should all things I do be directed toward an MD acceptance, because that's what I've been doing all these years, thanks for the tip. There is no mutual exclusivity with the thoughts/questions presented in this thread, or perspective that would cause me to suggest them, and my overarching goals - this is being implied repeatedly to dismiss me rather than assess content of what I've said at face-value.
You are being dismissed because you are talking like someone presenting a talk at the national convention of modern social issues of 1894. It isn’t that your points are not valid, it is that you talk funny.
 
This has all devolved to a trolling pile-on. I'm just being genuine, not trying to be cool guy.

What's truly pointless is several of you making the same comment over and over to neg me. If you truly can't comprehend that, maybe you require more CARS passages.

About how I write, I actually write things. I at no point learned how to "internet write."
 
What's truly pointless is several of you making the same comment over and over to neg me. If you truly can't comprehend that, maybe you require more CARS passages.

Nobody here made the same comment over and over. And that's a nice dig, but I actually took the MCAT and did very well, especially in CARS.

The point is that you should take the MCAT if you want to be a doctor, not try to find a way to weasel your way out of it. This is one of many hoops you'll have to jump through if this is what you want. If it isn't, fine.
 
About how I write, I actually write things. I at no point learned how to "internet write."
Just relax and type as though you were in person having a conversation. Unless, that is, your daily speech patterns come off with the same tone. If so, I would def work on that pre-application as this is the pretentiousness I was referencing in the beginning.

Also, this is not internet writing. This is a conversational platform. If this were internet writing then the entire preceding post would simply read

“LAWL Newb.”
 
This has all devolved to a trolling pile-on. I'm just being genuine, not trying to be cool guy.

What's truly pointless is several of you making the same comment over and over to neg me. If you truly can't comprehend that, maybe you require more CARS passages.

About how I write, I actually write things. I at no point learned how to "internet write."

To answer your OP, your first mistake was assuming that the MCAT was a net-neutral for your app merely because you have a high GPA. It is overwhelmingly in your benefit to take it as not having it will disqualify you from basically every medical school in the country. In fact, your GPA is almost entirely meaningless without an MCAT score to go with it. There are no programs to my knowledge beyond those already mentioned which will let you skip the MCAT, other than some BS/MD programs.

To the rest of the thread: lol.
 
new MCAT requires less quantitative reasoning. Physics was tough on old one. New one is more verbal heavy test. Verbal intellect is known to be more trainable. New one is less thinking based, if anything. Even then, due to the dumbing down of quant component, it is at the absolute least, less well rounded of an exam.
 
new MCAT requires less quantitative reasoning. Physics was tough on old one. New one is more verbal heavy test. Verbal intellect is known to be more trainable. New one is less thinking based, if anything. Even then, due to the dumbing down of quant component, it is at the absolute least, less well rounded of an exam.
IDK, I still had a question on my MCAT where we had to yield Joules from moles of electrons transferred and voltage of the circuit...That might just be a rarity, but computations are still present.
 
IDK, I still had a question on my MCAT where we had to yield Joules from moles of electrons transferred and voltage of the circuit...That might just be a rarity, but computations are still present.

My MCAT physics was plug-and-chug. They even gave us the formula.
 
You’re operating from the premise that a high MCAT wouldn’t help your application because you have a good GPA and good ECs. This is actually a flawed assumption - downright incorrect. I don’t mean this in an insulting way, because your GPA is great, but 3.8-3.9s are a dime a dozen. Plenty of people with them score poorly on the MCAT despite trying very hard. You really don’t think a 520+ would boost your app? It’s only “in all likelihood” neutral if you don’t believe that you could do well.

Come on. You’re a smart guy, you use big words n stuff. You’ll be fine.
 
My school kind of has this backdoor entry, meaning they'll grant you an interview without an mcat or even having to apply through AMCAS if you attended either Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo college, or Grand Valley State (basically the local affiliated schools), have at least a cGPA of 3.7 and 3.5 sGPA, I think you need to have scored a 30 or better on your ACT and/or 1350 on the SAT. This is super specific and wont really apply to you but it makes me wonder what other schools have this sort of backdoor entry.
 
You’re operating from the premise that a high MCAT wouldn’t help your application because you have a good GPA and good ECs. This is actually a flawed assumption - downright incorrect. I don’t mean this in an insulting way, because your GPA is great, but 3.8-3.9s are a dime a dozen. Plenty of people with them score poorly on the MCAT despite trying very hard. You really don’t think a 520+ would boost your app? It’s only “in all likelihood” neutral if you don’t believe that you could do well.

Come on. You’re a smart guy, you use big words n stuff. You’ll be fine.

Interesting. Define "poorly" in terms of MCAT scores.
 
Just a "what the heck" post, but after a cursory search, don't see any recent posts regarding MD schools (not talking about BS/MD early acceptance programs, already have my bachelor's) that do not require an MCAT score to apply. I am aware that schools 5 or so years ago that had this policy at the time offered the caveat that it was disadvantageous (ex. Dartmouth, their policy still in place?). What about the Canadian schools that don't, that still in play and/or do they consider Americans?

Background: I am a high GPA (3.88/3.94 s/cGPA) and high-quality ECs (extensive box-checking, viewable in post history) white Californian.
• in other words, MCAT is in all likelihood a net-neutral for my applicant profile at best-case, so yeah that's why I want to at least confirm not missing out of some innovative angle here
* yes, aware of many cons to actually acting on something like this, such as having reapp status from relatively short list of non-MCAT requiring schools, but genuinely curious and perhaps could help someone else, if not me

The OP has a point that the new MCAT is less accessible to those who lack access to research opportunities and/or coursework that exposes students to critical reading of scientific literature as part of the research project and coursework. The heavy emphasis on passages and movement toward making the passages include the dense language and specialized vocabulary of science articles means that students who get an old style memorization driven science education and/or procedure robot research experience are at a big disadvantage going into MCAT prep.

It's probably a lot easier for students at T20 undergrad powerhouses and honors programs at flagship universities to get access to these opportunities. Everybody knows that students who get into these programs skew heavily toward students from higher SES.
 
Just a "what the heck" post, but after a cursory search, don't see any recent posts regarding MD schools (not talking about BS/MD early acceptance programs, already have my bachelor's) that do not require an MCAT score to apply. I am aware that schools 5 or so years ago that had this policy at the time offered the caveat that it was disadvantageous (ex. Dartmouth, their policy still in place?). What about the Canadian schools that don't, that still in play and/or do they consider Americans?

Background: I am a high GPA (3.88/3.94 s/cGPA) and high-quality ECs (extensive box-checking, viewable in post history) white Californian.
• in other words, MCAT is in all likelihood a net-neutral for my applicant profile at best-case, so yeah that's why I want to at least confirm not missing out of some innovative angle here
* yes, aware of many cons to actually acting on something like this, such as having reapp status from relatively short list of non-MCAT requiring schools, but genuinely curious and perhaps could help someone else, if not me

LOL.. MCAT is just a hurdle to jump through. Just do it.
 
coursework that exposes students to critical reading of scientific literature as part of the research project and coursework
One can purchase an annual subscription to the NEJM for $50. This is what I did. Did not have a research based class until the quarter I was taking the MCAT, but I was already scientifically literate by then for a low low price
 
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