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I fully intend to hit 300. Trust me, I have a good reason to believe this will happen.
I fully intend to hit 300. Trust me, I have a good reason to believe this will happen.
If I were the OP I'd report back I hit a 37, and that I need to work a little bit to hit my eventual target. 😉I scored a 302...on my DIAGNOSTIC USMLE.
Maybe the OP WILL score a 38 and maybe he won't. You should take a diagnostic MCAT tonight and report back.
If I were the OP I'd report back I hit a 37, and that I need to work a little bit to hit my eventual target. 😉
As I said in my first post in this thread, before I knew about the beast, I would have claimed I would get a 99th percentile any day. I'd never gotten below that on a standardized test. (Still haven't, but the MCAT took a hell of a lot more work than I would have expected back in the day.)Heh, I guess so; I would, too, if I'd claimed a 38+.
HOWEVER, some people are bluntly honest without the slightest shred of common sense and I suspect the OP may be one of them. I bet he'd tell us the true score.
Why the hell would a med school DISFAVOR their premed undergrads?
If you break 20, I'd be very surprised. Why even bother worrying about the MCAT until you've taken all the classes it tests? 😕
I was part of both science and math olympiads, thanks. 😉Most people simply haven't heard of olympiads but, trust me, the people are good. If you don't believe this, look up IMO (International Mathematical Olympiad) and look up the questions. I guarantee you won't be able to solve a single one from any year and these are supposedly high school questions.
Olympiads are hardcore. Give original poster a break please.
Similar to OP, I projected a 35 on my real MCAT before I even entered freshmen year (and I based this on, once again, being just under that olympiad category of people). In something like 7 or 8 practice tests I have scored above 35 on all but one. Once again, some people are justified. Most people simply haven't heard of olympiads but, trust me, the people are good. If you don't believe this, look up IMO (International Mathematical Olympiad) and look up the questions. I guarantee you won't be able to solve a single one from any year and these are supposedly high school questions.
Olympiads are hardcore. Give original poster a break please.
^so because I don't want to make my name known on the internet (in fact, a sensible person would make it a priority), I'm faking? Someone sounds bitter.
I'm thinking of MD/PhD and I don't know where the immaturity and arrogance attacks are coming from. I made a claim and backed it up...please get over it. There are people who've scored higher on the real thing at a younger age, so obviously I KNOW I'm not the best.
Good diagnostic score. Thats pretty impressive if you did it straight out of high school, though the real MCAT will probably be quite different than the princeton review one. None of the practice tests compare to the later AAMC ones.I took organic chem at a college...most of the other courses I learned the material on my own and did lab work on my own as well. =/
Anyway, I took the PR diag and here are my (didn't do the essays + inflated curve?) results (name removed obv):
http://img378.imageshack.us/img378/4860/mcatscoremi0.jpg
I know I'm going to get crap either way, so I'll just say that I'll continue to work my hardest for the next 3 years 🙂
(common sense is overrated lolz, but I apologize for being bluntly honest...it's called real talk)
dude I was talking about the olympiads, not the mcat score. Get over yourself.Dude, this is the internet. You haven't "backed up" any claim
^I took the test on a macbook (well, VMfusion windows) and I can't print screen on a virtual machine on a mac, so I had to open up the score from my desktop.
dude I was talking about the olympiads, not the mcat score. Get over yourself.
nice photoshop, you should go into graphic design instead of medicine
Now that I'll call bull**** on. Most years, maybe one person in the entire country scores a 44. Some years, none.^OMG PHOTOSHOP SKILLZ
I guess I'm not being as prudent (i.e., thinking it's realistic to score above a 35) as I should because I know of someone who got your score as a senior in HS.
^OMG PHOTOSHOP SKILLZ
I guess I'm not being as prudent (i.e., thinking it's realistic to score above a 35) as I should because I know of someone who got your score as a senior in HS.
I actually got a 45 as a HS junior but I didn't realize that schools didn't consider MCAT scores that were more than 3 years old, so I had to retake. 😡
A couple of points for the OP while trying to stay civil, not quite sure why he's gotten so much flak, even if he's come off as a bit obnoxious:
1) I am suspicious of the diagnostic score you posted, mostly because I'm not familiar with that Princeton Review test. I don't even know if it's passage-based or just a set of freebie discrete questions. If you really took a 5 and a half hour full length test just to prove a point to anonymous people on an internet forum: a) congrats on your score b) you really have way, way, too much time on your hands. If the test you claim to have taken was anything less than a full-length MCAT, you're score means less than nothing.
...and the olympiads at their most fundamental levels are critical thinking tests. This is the ultimate reward of competing in them: a holistic approach to the problem (leave no stone unturned). Worked well enough here. Although if the PR diag isn't reliable then that might be affecting the score.2) I am suspicious of the score you posted because of your insistence on comparing the science olympiad material to the MCAT even after claiming to have taken a diagnostic. The MCAT is at its most fundamental level critical reading test, not a knowledge-based one, and having a strong high school background will not help you perform better than other students.
duly noted.Now some actual advice:
3) Being a varsity athlete will not compensate for poor(er) grades. If you are aiming for highly-ranked medical schools (which I assume you are given your presumption of a 38 and desire to go MD-PhD), you need to have everything - high grades, high MCAT (the mean at the top may well be near a 38 by the time you apply), great ECs, great research, great clinical experience, etc. Unless you have a truly unique set of experiences (and being a varsity athlete does not count for these purposes), you will be rejected in favor of an applicant who has a more complete application.
duly noted as well. Is it a problem that my two previous projects (both of which were in separate fields themselves) will more than likely not be in the same field as my next haul?4) If you are seriously considering applying MD-PhD, then I do not think you have time to be both a varsity athlete and a competitive applicant at the more well-regarded programs. You need to have an EXTENSIVE research background, relying on what you did in high school and working during the summers in college is simply not sufficient to develop the requisite resume. You numbers will need to be even higher for the top programs (it is not unusual at all to see 3.9/39 among accepted MD-PhD applicants to Harvard/Hopkins/WashU/Penn/etc.). Also consider that you will be trained to be a scientist, not a clinician, in most cases, and decide if that's your cup of tea.
Ahh I see. Thanks for the info.5) Regarding your second question: yes, many schools actively discriminate against their own undergrads in graduate school admissions, or are at the very least indifferent to your coming from their undergrad. HMS in particular has a rep for discriminating against its own undergrads, as does Hopkins. A few schools favor their own undergrads, such as WashU and to a lesser extent Duke. Penn used to give a fair amount of preference to its own, but the administration has reversed course in recent years with a new administration that favors having students 'branch out' for their graduate education (this is the main rationale behind schools discriminating against their own undergrads).
If he said a 38 was his goal it would be one thing, but he obviously believes that he will definitely get a 38 or greater. I too would like to know the reasons behind such confidence. Especially since he is asking about balancing classwork and playing basketball which makes me assume that he is a freshman. If he isn't a freshman, he should already know what the time commitment for classwork is.Sorry if it sounded like I was trying to call you out, but it seems that anytime someone sets a high goal, even a goal not as high as 38, people make those comments. It's just something that I've never seen outside of SDN.
Well mainly because I don't know too many high schools that offer organic chemistry, but your confidence will definitely make for an interesting interview experience if you ever get that far.@gators: to see how what I've learned in the past 2 years stacks up to the test.
@milkman: how do you know I haven't done so already?
Is it a problem that my two previous projects (both of which were in separate fields themselves) will more than likely not be in the same field as my next haul?
5) Regarding your second question: yes, many schools actively discriminate against their own undergrads in graduate school admissions, or are at the very least indifferent to your coming from their undergrad. HMS in particular has a rep for discriminating against its own undergrads, as does Hopkins. A few schools favor their own undergrads, such as WashU and to a lesser extent Duke. Penn used to give a fair amount of preference to its own, but the administration has reversed course in recent years with a new administration that favors having students 'branch out' for their graduate education (this is the main rationale behind schools discriminating against their own undergrads).
Ehh, I think this is more SDN Urban Myth than factual...med school is extremely competitive, and the classes they are filling are quite small...with 10,000 apps and 100 to 200 seats to fill, I think it is pretty hard to make the case that applicants who don't get in at the UG affiliated med school have been "discriminated" against...in fact, if you look at the incoming med class rosters at schools like Yale, more of the incoming class comes from Yale UG than any other school - this data is not always readily available, but I suspect the same is very true for most med schools...I seriously doubt that there is any discrimination against these applicants at any of these schools.
I really think it is more a case of sour grapes from those applicants who got rejected...
So OP, what makes you so sure you can play D1 sports?
Little league footballish-basketball?
and for all interested...
It's real, I swearz on my mothers' graves.
Congrats to the OP, but I truly feel sorry for you!
Well considering orgo was my only class as a senior and I just took a diagnostic after HS, I don't know what you're talking about. +5 for good strawman/defense mechanism though.In HS I hung out with my friends every night and had a great time. Didn't do any homework and I ended up at a school where a lot of my classmates (who had very high GPAs) also attend.
We didn't have the opportunity to do college courses (no colleges nearby) or the olympiads (sounds like something I would be interested in, though), but I am much happier that I didn't sacrifice social aptitude so that I could take orgo and the MCAT in HS.
talking about olympiads = talking about how awesome I am? lol...Good luck, but it is clear you are missing a lot of qualities that attract human beings and fun times (ie talking about how awesome you are).
So OP, what makes you so sure you can play D1 sports?
Little league footballish-basketball?
If the 5's weren't ****ed up I'd be all "zomgwtfbbq hax"and for all interested...
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It's real, I swearz on my mothers' graves.
Congrats to the OP, but I truly feel sorry for you!
In HS I hung out with my friends every night and had a great time. Didn't do any homework and I ended up at a school where a lot of my classmates (who had very high GPAs) also attend.
We didn't have the opportunity to do college courses (no colleges nearby) or the olympiads (sounds like something I would be interested in, though), but I am much happier that I didn't sacrifice social aptitude so that I could take orgo and the MCAT in HS.
Good luck, but it is clear you are missing a lot of qualities that attract human beings and fun times (ie talking about how awesome you are).
Have fun, I have no doubt that youll get into medical school.