Ok, I'll take a stab at it.
First of all, I want to clarify the fact that I am going to Ponce this year (after being on waitlist last year from turning in my app in Oct, doh!). I have also had the neat experience of learning a couple of other languages during my stay in Asia, so I can try to answer the MCAT question, I hope...
Btw, I scored a 9V on the MCAT, NOT great at all, but close enough. I think that's the part that they liked the most on my app, I think, since someone who was raised on the island and has Spanish as their first language can achieve that score is something important to them to some degree.
It is also a well-known fact that a big part of being a successful student doctor is a fairly high level of of reading comprehension, and since Ponce is LCME accredited and has been in good standing since its initial accreditation years ago, it has to maintain the same standards as the other accredited mainland schools, therefore, the curriculum has to be up to the standards of the accreditaton commitee AND in English, since the other students at the LCME schools use English as their primary languange. It might appear as a disadvantage to Puerto Rican and other med school candidates that use English as a second language, but it evens out in the end, I believe. As the fairly competitive board scores and match results show from Ponce and the other PR schools, they compensate for the low MCAT's in their entering students and educate their student doctors to become good physicians, and in the long run, the Spanish helps them relate to a whole segment of the American population that needs bilungual practitioners.
Hope that helps 🙂
