Got an L!!!!

[Chemguync]

Hey all.. Just curious.. just how "insignificant" are the essays? I ended up w/ a 31 L.. I still don't quite know how I'm ranked in the bottom 10th percentile.. but oh well.. Anyway.. Does the essay really matter, or is it mainly to help pull up the other scores?
Thanks
-Chem

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[lola]

i got an M and don't know how!
i'm having it rescored just for peace of mind. if i get an M again so be it. at least i won't have to always wonder if a mistake was made.

 

[nero]

got an L......dont know how either


nero

 

[aarn20]

I am in the same boat as you guys. I got a S on the test in April and a miserable M on the test in August. I know that my writing did not change that much in the course of 3 months. I just hope that the schools I applied to does not place that much emphasis on the writing score.

 

[ermonty]

9V, 11P, 10B, L

Writing and english/compostition are my worst subjects, so I didn't have high expectations. Hopefully schools will see the 30 and look past the fact that I'll never be an editor. Anyways, it could have been worse, I could've made a J or K!

 

[dpark74]

I've read in a website article about the MCAT WS that scores between L and R will have no effect on an adcoms decision. They will look at your personal statement and essays to see if you can write.

A score of a J or K is considered somewhat detrimental. An S or T will be considered a positive.

The moral of the story is that WS is not as important as the other sections and THAT is why it is on a different grading scale.

 

[Mudd]

A thread full of Ls and Ms that write articulate, clear messages. Hmmmm, yeah, the MCAT essay grade is an accurate reflection of one's writing ability.

I can't believe they give that grade any credibility at all. Going from an S to an M just goes to show you how biased and full of cxxp that essay is. Hopefully stories like this will lead to the dismissal of the essay section. Getting out at 4 instead of 5:30 might be nice.

 

[Resident Alien]

I got an L on the WS.

I survived

 

[HamOnWholeWheat]

Hey guys,

Before the MCAT, I never once practiced for the writing section. I figured that it wasn't worth practicing for, since most schools take it with a grain of salt anyway.

For the two writing sections, I wrote 5 sentences each! Each section got a whopping 1/2 page. I guess it was my way of protesting the PS section which I had just bombed. Anyway, 5 sentences got me a "P". Does that make sense to anyone? Me neither. So don't sweat a bad score on the writing section, because it really is a bunch of crap.

HamOn

 

[Nefertari]

Originally posted by HamOnWholeWheat
Hey guys,

Before the MCAT, I never once practiced for the writing section. I figured that it wasn't worth practicing for, since most schools take it with a grain of salt anyway.

For the two writing sections, I wrote 5 sentences each! Each section got a whopping 1/2 page. I guess it was my way of protesting the PS section which I had just bombed. Anyway, 5 sentences got me a "P". Does that make sense to anyone? Me neither. So don't sweat a bad score on the writing section, because it really is a bunch of crap.

HamOn

Mr. Ham,

What a trip!!! You must've said a lot in 5 sentences. They probably appreciated 1 paragraph of BS versus 3!!! I admire your boldness.

 

[HamOnWholeWheat]

Here's what I put for the second essay:

Q: Explain how competition can both hurt and help a business.

HamOn:

"Bill Gates competed with Steve Jobs to establish a standard OS, which helped the customer receive a superior product as the competition yielded higher quality results. Once the standard was established, the customer base grew to be homogenized to that standard. Once the OS standard was established, the entire software industry was better served by cooperating to fit the set standard, and developing from within. Competition with that standard would've put any software development house at a disadvantage, as they would be targeting a non-existant customer base."

1/2 page, kind of redundant and obvious, all BS. "P"
Go figure. I can't remember what I put for the first essay, but it was almost identical to this one.

 

[CaNEM]

Originally posted by dpark74
The moral of the story is that WS is not as important as the other sections and THAT is why it is on a different grading scale.

I agree with you that schools pay much less attention to the writing sample school, so it ends up being much less important. However, I don't think the fact that it's less important is the REASON that it is graded on a difference scale. The reason it's on a difference scale is simply because it is scored differently - while the other sections are graded objectively, scoring of the essays is very subjective. Therefore, the AAMC gives it a non-numerical score, so that schools won't simply "add it on" to the sum of the other three sections. It's a result of the grading procedure, not relative importance.

 

[lola]

Originally posted by HamOnWholeWheat
Hey guys,

Before the MCAT, I never once practiced for the writing section. I figured that it wasn't worth practicing for, since most schools take it with a grain of salt anyway.

For the two writing sections, I wrote 5 sentences each! Each section got a whopping 1/2 page. I guess it was my way of protesting the PS section which I had just bombed. Anyway, 5 sentences got me a "P". Does that make sense to anyone? Me neither. So don't sweat a bad score on the writing section, because it really is a bunch of crap.

HamOn

what?? i wrote a 4 paragraph essay with no grammatical or spelling errors (read it over twice) and got an M! you've got to be kidding me! my kaplan instructor always gave me 5.5/6 on my practice essays, so i thought i had nothing to worry about. not that he really knows how to grade them, but i don't think he could have been that off! are you saying this just to make others angry? geesh! i can't believe how subjective the whole thing is.

 

[batman123]

I think it's too subjective... When I took the exam last year, I got an S with no practice whatsoever before the exam. On each essay, I spent about ten minutes.

This year's exam was much different. I practiced WR a lot just because this was built into my Princeton Review course; on this MCAT, I spent almost all of the alloted time writing and revising. I thought the end product was much better than anything I had written previously for WR practice... I ended up with a Q, much lower than my half-a$$ effort on last year's WR.

It goes to show that the WR is really a crock; if your personal statement and secondary essays are well-written, then adcoms will not value the WR much.

 

[lisalisa]

It was and is laughable. I haven't gotten too upset about it. It's ironic, really. Me, the Elements of Style pusher, getting a J, the lowest possible score! I imagined all the other J's -- the lowest 2% (!) -- and their doltish compositions. I reread the qualities of a J-worthy essay. "Shows significant problems in basic writing construction; presents confusing or disjointed ideas; & may disregard or ignore the given assignment." Just think of the confused pile of tripe I would have had to produce to fail this miserably! It was an absurd assessment of my writing and reasoning abilities.

(I scored an M on the August exam. Ridiculous.)