MCAT: Fair/Unfair?

[barto123]

i've read a lot of posts about the results of the may 31st mcat, about people bombing the VR after averaging much higher scores on practice tests. this got me to thinking about how fair the MCAT really is. i have no problem with what the mcat tests, PS, VR, and BS, but is there a way to make the test more consistent and less based on luck? perhaps a penalty for guessing? whenever anyone asked me to predict my score on the MCAT i always gave about a 6 point range. if you think about it, missing a tough question or guessing one right in each section can swing your score 3 points.

the content tested on each MCAT also varies quite a bit. if you're strong in one topic but weak in another your score can vary widely if one topic is tested heavily on the MCAT, but another is completed skipped.

for the majority of people the score on the MCAT is a good reflection of problem solving skills, intelligence, and diligence, yet for a some, just by chance, the MCAT may not reflect this at all.

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[PreMD86]

Guys, enough being sensationalists.
The MCAT Will ALWAYS be curved the exact same way. The average will ALWAYS be a 24. Unfortunately that's just how the cookie crumbles...
If there is any luck involved in the MCAT, there is an equal chance it will work to your advantage.
The many posts you are seeing here about people "bombing" the VR is nothing more than the collective bitching of those that got the raw end of the deal. Infact if you go to the 30+ study habit thread you'll find an equal number of people that had a hard time believing that score was theirs.
I personally still believe the MCAT still a decent test of your abilities rather than luck, which will balance itself out over the 3 sections.

 

[RoadRunner17]

i've read a lot of posts about the results of the may 31st mcat, about people bombing the VR after averaging much higher scores on practice tests. this got me to thinking about how fair the MCAT really is. i have no problem with what the mcat tests, PS, VR, and BS, but is there a way to make the test more consistent and less based on luck? perhaps a penalty for guessing? whenever anyone asked me to predict my score on the MCAT i always gave about a 6 point range. if you think about it, missing a tough question or guessing one right in each section can swing your score 3 points.

the content tested on each MCAT also varies quite a bit. if you're strong in one topic but weak in another your score can vary widely if one topic is tested heavily on the MCAT, but another is completed skipped.

for the majority of people the score on the MCAT is a good reflection of problem solving skills, intelligence, and diligence, yet for a some, just by chance, the MCAT may not reflect this at all.

There are two different things that the MCAT can do:

1) Quantify your "problem solving skills, intelligence, and diligence"

2) Compare your "problem solving skills, intelligence, and diligence" to that of others taking the test with you.

The test, however, attempts to determine 1) by using 2). Fair? Unfair? You can spend some time to think about it if you like. It doesn't really change the reality of the test at all, so it's back to studying!

 

[ilikepaneer]

It is not a fair test, it needs to be changed. What is the basic point of the MCAT? Most people would say its a reasoning test that measures how well you'll do in med school and a predictor of how competent of a doctor you'll be.

But I ask AAMC this....what is the reason for reasoning (haha no pun there) in verbal? AAMC is already testing our reasoning skills in the science sections. Why make us do more; is 4 hrs of testing not enough? I'm not trying to be extreme...verbal skills are definitely needed for any US doctor. But why do they have to make the passages so hard? I can understand medical publications just fine, as will most ppl who take the MCAT. If someone has trouble with english and thinking logical, it could easily be seen in the writing section or in the results of the science sections.

In my opinion, you dont have to be a philosophy major to be a competent doctor. Verbal is a poor indicator of one's abilities because most ppl can only score like an 11 no matter how hard they work. The rest comes down to innate ability. Personally, I'd rather see a doctor that knows his stuff (stuff that doesnt require a heightened ability to verbally reason but instead requires memorizing like for the USMLE) than see a doctor who asks 40 philosophical questions before he cuts me up.

 

[sexyman]

maybe im a wuss but I think its too hard too ha

 

[RoadRunner17]

It is not a fair test, it needs to be changed. What is the basic point of the MCAT? Most people would say its a reasoning test that measures how well you'll do in med school and a predictor of how competent of a doctor you'll be.

But I ask AAMC this....what is the reason for reasoning (haha no pun there) in verbal? AAMC is already testing our reasoning skills in the science sections. Why make us do more; is 4 hrs of testing not enough? I'm not trying to be extreme...verbal skills are definitely needed for any US doctor. But why do they have to make the passages so hard? I can understand medical publications just fine, as will most ppl who take the MCAT. If someone has trouble with english and thinking logical, it could easily be seen in the writing section or in the results of the science sections.

In my opinion, you dont have to be a philosophy major to be a competent doctor. Verbal is a poor indicator of one's abilities because most ppl can only score like an 11 no matter how hard they work. The rest comes down to innate ability. Personally, I'd rather see a doctor that knows his stuff (stuff that doesnt require a heightened ability to verbally reason but instead requires memorizing like for the USMLE) than see a doctor who asks 40 philosophical questions before he cuts me up.

Think about how competitive medical school admissions are. The MCAT fits the admissions committees' needs perfectly. Give us a number to separate the chaff from the wheat. Why would they take someone who did poorly on VR over someone who did well on the VR and obviously demonstrates whatever capacity the VR section is supposed to measure? They need more reasons to weed out the 95% of applicants that they don't have room for. That's the reality of the situation. If you think you can be a good doctor with a poor showing in VR, well, the Caribbean and its great weather beckons.

 

[shantster]

I think this poll needs to be ammended to have you answer the question and also say whether you did as well on the test as you wanted.

I have a feeling that how you did on the test will impact the answer greatly.

 

[quiksilver87]

MCAT verbal = IQ test!!!

 

[ilikepaneer]

Think about how competitive medical school admissions are. The MCAT fits the admissions committees' needs perfectly. Give us a number to separate the chaff from the wheat. Why would they take someone who did poorly on VR over someone who did well on the VR and obviously demonstrates whatever capacity the VR section is supposed to measure? They need more reasons to weed out the 95% of applicants that they don't have room for. That's the reality of the situation. If you think you can be a good doctor with a poor showing in VR, well, the Caribbean and its great weather beckons.

Sure, we definitely need to take a standardized test before med school. There's no doubt about that, we need some way for the admissions commitee to narrow down so many qualified applicants. But, again in my opinion, it simply isn't fair to be rejected because of one arbitrary VR number, which can so easily be affected by a couple wrong answers or one passage you didn't understand. I think VR should have less credibility and determanance in the viability of going to a US med school. Science scores as well as GPA and other things on an application seem to be a better testament to ppl's abilities. So many factors can greatly affect VR's reliability as seen on may 31st. I know alot of people that deserve to go to med school, but because of a bad score, had to settle for the carribbean. I also know alot of screw-ups who rightly ended up in the carribbean. If you truly are the "cream of the crop," I think PS, BS, and GPA are enough to prove that. If that means less time for admissions commitees to stand around shaking alumni hands and more time doing actual work, so be it.

 

[RoadRunner17]

Sure, we definitely need to take a standardized test before med school. There's no doubt about that, we need some way for the admissions commitee to narrow down so many qualified applicants. But, again in my opinion, it simply isn't fair to be rejected because of one arbitrary VR number, which can so easily be affected by a couple wrong answers or one passage you didn't understand. I think VR should have less credibility and determanance in the viability of going to a US med school. Science scores as well as GPA and other things on an application seem to be a better testament to ppl's abilities. So many factors can greatly affect VR's reliability as seen on may 31st. I know alot of people that deserve to go to med school, but because of a bad score, had to settle for the carribbean. I also know alot of screw-ups who rightly ended up in the carribbean. If you truly are the "cream of the crop," I think PS, BS, and GPA are enough to prove that. If that means less time for admissions commitees to stand around shaking alumni hands and more time doing actual work, so be it.

When you have to choose 100 people from an applicant pool of 5000+ people, you need any reason you can get. It helps that the MCAT is a curved test in that manner. Higher scores means they did better compared to others. Of course, the MCAT isn't the most important score as people get in all the time with 8's and 9's on the VR.. but lets face it, they're not exactly going out of their way to see how good a doctor you are outside of your numbers. Please note that I am not defending the system. I am just saying this is how it is, and there's nothing we can really do about it except to work our asses off.

 

[barto123]

Sure, we definitely need to take a standardized test before med school. There's no doubt about that, we need some way for the admissions commitee to narrow down so many qualified applicants. But, again in my opinion, it simply isn't fair to be rejected because of one arbitrary VR number, which can so easily be affected by a couple wrong answers or one passage you didn't understand. I think VR should have less credibility and determanance in the viability of going to a US med school. Science scores as well as GPA and other things on an application seem to be a better testament to ppl's abilities. So many factors can greatly affect VR's reliability as seen on may 31st. I know alot of people that deserve to go to med school, but because of a bad score, had to settle for the carribbean. I also know alot of screw-ups who rightly ended up in the carribbean. If you truly are the "cream of the crop," I think PS, BS, and GPA are enough to prove that. If that means less time for admissions commitees to stand around shaking alumni hands and more time doing actual work, so be it.

ive said before in another thread, but the purpose of the VR is to prevent foreigners or recent immigrants from taking away med school spots from Americans who were raised in the system. imagine if the VR was taken out, applications would be flooding in from korea and china.

 

[MamadP]

MCAT verbal = IQ test!!!

I completely disagree...

My brother scored a "9" on his MCAT VR but got a 250 on his step one (which is very good i believe), with just a week of light studying. I think he's one of the smartest ppl i know, breezing through med school with great grades...

Maybe im just bitter b/c i scored a "6" in VR and i refuse to believe that it is a measure of my IQ. If anything, i think PS is a better measure of IQ, it tests ur cognitive abilities and problem solving skills. And i think BS is a measure of how hard you work, because it is mainly memorization...

Just my opinion...

 

[wryandwatchful]

It is not a fair test, it needs to be changed. What is the basic point of the MCAT? Most people would say its a reasoning test that measures how well you'll do in med school and a predictor of how competent of a doctor you'll be.

But I ask AAMC this....what is the reason for reasoning (haha no pun there) in verbal? AAMC is already testing our reasoning skills in the science sections. Why make us do more; is 4 hrs of testing not enough? I'm not trying to be extreme...verbal skills are definitely needed for any US doctor. But why do they have to make the passages so hard? I can understand medical publications just fine, as will most ppl who take the MCAT. If someone has trouble with english and thinking logical, it could easily be seen in the writing section or in the results of the science sections.

In my opinion, you dont have to be a philosophy major to be a competent doctor. Verbal is a poor indicator of one's abilities because most ppl can only score like an 11 no matter how hard they work. The rest comes down to innate ability. Personally, I'd rather see a doctor that knows his stuff (stuff that doesnt require a heightened ability to verbally reason but instead requires memorizing like for the USMLE) than see a doctor who asks 40 philosophical questions before he cuts me up.

Check this study out. A little outdated but interesting:

Prediction of students' USMLE step 2 performances based on premedical credentials related to verbal skills.
Roth KS; Riley WT; Brandt RB; Seibel HR
Department of Pediatrics, Virginia Commonwealth University Medical College at Virginia School of Medicine, Richmond 23298, USA.
Acad Med 1996 Feb;71(2):176-80
PURPOSE. To examine the relationship between the objective premedical credentials and performances on Step 2 on the United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) of 480 students in three classes at the Virginia Commonwealth University Medical College of Virginia School of Medicine. The purpose of the study was to seek those selection criteria that might best predict performance on an examination designed to assess problem-solving skills, the essence of clinical medicine. METHOD. Premedical data from two classes (1993, 1994) were analyzed, and a regression equation was used to calculate theoretical USMLE Step 2 scores for the students in the class of 1995, who had not yet taken this examination. The premedical variables were scores on the verbal and math section on the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), scores on the six sections of the pre-1991 Medical College Admission Test (MCAT), grade-point average (GPA) in science courses required of premedical students, and undergraduate major. Once the class of 1995 had taken the USMLE Step 2, the equation was cross validated, and the theoretical and actual scores of the class of 1995 were correlated. RESULTS. The correlation between theoretical and actual scores was r = .443. The single variables most highly predictive of USMLE Step 2 performance were scores on the verbal section of the SAT (r = .317) and the Skills Analysis: Reading section of the MCAT (r = .331) suggesting that high verbal aptitude serves one well, even when coping with complex scientific concepts.


Considering this, it probably has the highest predictive quality out of the three MCAT sections today. That's why med schools like to look at it.

 

[quiksilver87]

I completely disagree...

My brother scored a "9" on his MCAT VR but got a 250 on his step one (which is very good i believe), with just a week of light studying. I think he's one of the smartest ppl i know, breezing through med school with great grades...

Maybe im just bitter b/c i scored a "6" in VR and i refuse to believe that it is a measure of my IQ. If anything, i think PS is a better measure of IQ, it tests ur cognitive abilities and problem solving skills. And i think BS is a measure of how hard you work, because it is mainly memorization...

Just my opinion...

well, on the average...I think there is a REAL strong relation between verbal and IQ...Im talking about the average of your verbal scores...

 

[ilikepaneer]

Check this study out. A little outdated but interesting:

Prediction of students' USMLE step 2 performances based on premedical credentials related to verbal skills.
Roth KS; Riley WT; Brandt RB; Seibel HR
Department of Pediatrics, Virginia Commonwealth University Medical College at Virginia School of Medicine, Richmond 23298, USA.
Acad Med 1996 Feb;71(2):176-80
PURPOSE. To examine the relationship between the objective premedical credentials and performances on Step 2 on the United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) of 480 students in three classes at the Virginia Commonwealth University Medical College of Virginia School of Medicine. The purpose of the study was to seek those selection criteria that might best predict performance on an examination designed to assess problem-solving skills, the essence of clinical medicine. METHOD. Premedical data from two classes (1993, 1994) were analyzed, and a regression equation was used to calculate theoretical USMLE Step 2 scores for the students in the class of 1995, who had not yet taken this examination. The premedical variables were scores on the verbal and math section on the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), scores on the six sections of the pre-1991 Medical College Admission Test (MCAT), grade-point average (GPA) in science courses required of premedical students, and undergraduate major. Once the class of 1995 had taken the USMLE Step 2, the equation was cross validated, and the theoretical and actual scores of the class of 1995 were correlated. RESULTS. The correlation between theoretical and actual scores was r = .443. The single variables most highly predictive of USMLE Step 2 performance were scores on the verbal section of the SAT (r = .317) and the Skills Analysis: Reading section of the MCAT (r = .331) suggesting that high verbal aptitude serves one well, even when coping with complex scientific concepts.


Considering this, it probably has the highest predictive quality out of the three MCAT sections today. That's why med schools like to look at it.

That article actually is really interesting. But as you said, it is probably outdated. I would think that most people have found out rudely today and on earlier CBTs that the mcat was in fact alot harder than the practice tests aamc gave (based on their previous paper tests). And I'm sure you'll find much more bitter posts to come about VR by ppl like me who got the raw end of the deal when scores come out.

Perhaps AAMC does make the test fair; perhaps VCU coincidentally just picked the right ones. How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop? The world may never know.

 

[BrokenGlass]

ive said before in another thread, but the purpose of the VR is to prevent foreigners or recent immigrants from taking away med school spots from Americans who were raised in the system. imagine if the VR was taken out, applications would be flooding in from korea and china.

Are you saying that applicants from korea and china will be able to do well on the science sections of the MCAT even though their English is not good enough to get a decent score in VR? I highly doubt it. If the test is in English, you have already eliminated foreign applicants who have no English proficiency.

If they can do well on the science sections of the MCAT, then their English is good enogh for getting a descent VR score.

 

[AppleseedCast]

OMGORZ teh Mc4t is sooooooo unfairrrrrrrrr it is teh sux0rz

in all seriousness lets be real now. The MCAT is a standardized test. These will never be completely fair in the same way that the SAT and IQ tests will never be completely fair. You all chose to pursue medicine, and you will have to jump through certain hoops to this end. Just do the best that you can. what else can you really ask of yourself? For those bashing the relevance of VR, I feel you pain as my lowest score was in VR. This doesn't change the fact that it is testing a skill essential to the practice of medicine.

 

[jochi1543]

Not perfect, but as fair as it can be


My only real concern is that science majors are shown to do slightly higher on science sections (about 1 extra point on average, if I remember correctly) than non-science, but non-science (humanities, in particular) majors score about 1 point higher in VR on average. So there's obviously some sort of dependancy on your educational background.

 

[RoadRunner17]

Are you saying that applicants from korea and china will be able to do well on the science sections of the MCAT even though their English is not good enough to get a decent score in VR? I highly doubt it. If the test is in English, you have already eliminated foreign applicants who have no English proficiency.

If they can do well on the science sections of the MCAT, then their English is good enogh for getting a descent VR score.

Very true.

Imagine for a minute that English wasn't your primary language. If you've taken a foreign language in high school, that's exactly the level of comprehension of English you should have in this hypothetical construct. Do you think you could still do well on the Physical and Biological Sciences portions of the MCAT? Before you say yes, think about how these sections are organized... the majority of them are organized in passages very much like Verbal Reasoning. No matter what strategy you use (even skipping the passage), it puts you at a disadvantage. Just because you know Physics doesn't mean you know the language that Physics is written in terms of English. Kudos to you if you can overcome the language barrier as a ESL test-taker. To sum up, it is just not that easy to do well on the MCAT if you don't know English.

Fair? Not fair? MCAT stands for Medical Colleges Admissions Test. And these Medical Colleges are in North American countries that are predominantly English-speaking countries. If you want to go to medical school in North America, you should have at least a decent proficiency in English in addition to the sciences.

As a side note, pulling up these studies comparing performances on the MCAT to performances on the USMLE is somewhat fallacious. In the end, all you'd be doing is comparing the veracity of one standardized test to another. The whole point of the argument at hand is that the MCAT, as a standardized test, is inherently unfair to those who may possess the faculty, intelligence and passion to be medical practitioners. We can't quantify how well verbal reasoning on the MCAT correlates to some sort of hypothetical "rating" on how good a doctor that person turns out to be. So all of this is roundabout, and my conclusion is that everyone should stop bitching about the fairness/unfairness of the MCAT and just DO YOUR BEST to realize your dream of becoming a doctor.

 

[DoctorPhud]

Are you saying that applicants from korea and china will be able to do well on the science sections of the MCAT even though their English is not good enough to get a decent score in VR? I highly doubt it. If the test is in English, you have already eliminated foreign applicants who have no English proficiency.

If they can do well on the science sections of the MCAT, then their English is good enogh for getting a descent VR score.

I'm sorry BrokenGlass - I'm going to use your post to illustrate a point. I don't mean to offend

You wrote 'descent' (Dictionary: a step downward in a scale of gradation) where you meant 'decent'. It's a small fault, but it can cause confusion when someone is rushed or tired. A medical intern reading a chart at the end of a 30-hour call shouldn't be forced to guess whether the person who wrote a note a few years ago meant that a patient has good or declining blood pressure. It's an extreme example, and misconstruing what you wrote just a little

But my point to everyone who thinks that VR is unfair:

Medicine involves an incredible amount of reading and writing. Patient charts, protocols, regulations, insurance details, interaction with others via letter and e-mail, and many more immediate requirements. Beyond that, however, medical school is not a place where someone spoon-feeds you the material... You can't just turn up to lectures and learn all you need to know, without extensive reading on your own.

Aside: The comparison with Step 1 and 2 is revealing, because it indicates that those who are able to read well are better able to learn by combining that with their taught experience. These people do better, because they have more chance to learn in an effective way. /Aside

The same is true of residency, fellowship and the process of career-long learning that medicine requires. To be an effective physician, you will have to keep reading books, papers and journals for the rest of your days (this is even if you choose not to do any research of your own). You need to have good comprehension skills similar to those in the VR section if you intend to get by.

The MCAT is an entrance exam. In the VR section, it is testing skills that you absolutely need in order to survive medical school and be an effective doctor.
If you can't do VR, then you need to recognise that you have a real problem in your skill set that *will* disadvantage you, unless you remedy it.

Is it hard on candidates with English as a second or third language? Absolutely! But that doesn't mean that the bar should be lowered to let them in, just for medical school to beat them to a bloody pulp and then endanger their patients. For what it is worth, most of the ESL people I've ever known have understood that and worked really, really hard to boost their VR performance. Moreover, after that, they did do very well in VR, and beat a large number of native English speakers that I also know.

Moral of this story:

VR - You need it, work at it.

 

[RoadRunner17]

I'm sorry BrokenGlass - I'm going to use your post to illustrate a point. I don't mean to offend

You wrote 'descent' (Dictionary: a step downward in a scale of gradation) where you meant 'decent'. It's a small fault, but it can cause confusion when someone is rushed or tired. A medical intern reading a chart at the end of a 30-hour call shouldn't be forced to guess whether the person who wrote a note a few years ago meant that a patient has good or declining blood pressure. It's an extreme example, and misconstruing what you wrote just a little

But my point to everyone who thinks that VR is unfair:

Medicine involves an incredible amount of reading and writing. Patient charts, protocols, regulations, insurance details, interaction with others via letter and e-mail, and many more immediate requirements. Beyond that, however, medical school is not a place where someone spoon-feeds you the material... You can't just turn up to lectures and learn all you need to know, without extensive reading on your own.

Aside: The comparison with Step 1 and 2 is revealing, because it indicates that those who are able to read well are better able to learn by combining that with their taught experience. These people do better, because they have more chance to learn in an effective way. /Aside

The same is true of residency, fellowship and the process of career-long learning that medicine requires. To be an effective physician, you will have to keep reading books, papers and journals for the rest of your days (this is even if you choose not to do any research of your own). You need to have good comprehension skills similar to those in the VR section if you intend to get by.

The MCAT is an entrance exam. In the VR section, it is testing skills that you absolutely need in order to survive medical school and be an effective doctor.
If you can't do VR, then you need to recognise that you have a real problem in your skill set that *will* disadvantage you, unless you remedy it.

Is it hard on candidates with English as a second or third language? Absolutely! But that doesn't mean that the bar should be lowered to let them in, just for medical school to beat them to a bloody pulp and then endanger their patients. For what it is worth, most of the ESL people I've ever known have understood that and worked really, really hard to boost their VR performance. Moreover, after that, they did do very well in VR, and beat a large number of native English speakers that I also know.

Moral of this story:

VR - You need it, work at it.

 

[wryandwatchful]

I'm sorry BrokenGlass - I'm going to use your post to illustrate a point. I don't mean to offend

You wrote 'descent' (Dictionary: a step downward in a scale of gradation) where you meant 'decent'. It's a small fault, but it can cause confusion when someone is rushed or tired. A medical intern reading a chart at the end of a 30-hour call shouldn't be forced to guess whether the person who wrote a note a few years ago meant that a patient has good or declining blood pressure. It's an extreme example, and misconstruing what you wrote just a little

But my point to everyone who thinks that VR is unfair:

Medicine involves an incredible amount of reading and writing. Patient charts, protocols, regulations, insurance details, interaction with others via letter and e-mail, and many more immediate requirements. Beyond that, however, medical school is not a place where someone spoon-feeds you the material... You can't just turn up to lectures and learn all you need to know, without extensive reading on your own.

Aside: The comparison with Step 1 and 2 is revealing, because it indicates that those who are able to read well are better able to learn by combining that with their taught experience. These people do better, because they have more chance to learn in an effective way. /Aside

The same is true of residency, fellowship and the process of career-long learning that medicine requires. To be an effective physician, you will have to keep reading books, papers and journals for the rest of your days (this is even if you choose not to do any research of your own). You need to have good comprehension skills similar to those in the VR section if you intend to get by.

The MCAT is an entrance exam. In the VR section, it is testing skills that you absolutely need in order to survive medical school and be an effective doctor.
If you can't do VR, then you need to recognise that you have a real problem in your skill set that *will* disadvantage you, unless you remedy it.

Is it hard on candidates with English as a second or third language? Absolutely! But that doesn't mean that the bar should be lowered to let them in, just for medical school to beat them to a bloody pulp and then endanger their patients. For what it is worth, most of the ESL people I've ever known have understood that and worked really, really hard to boost their VR performance. Moreover, after that, they did do very well in VR, and beat a large number of native English speakers that I also know.

Moral of this story:

VR - You need it, work at it.

You make a great point. It always amazes me how doctors can go through a patient's file so quickly and extract all the info they need. It seems pretty hard to juggle the histories of several patients at once, keeping the details straight, or at least knowing where you can find the info in their chart... ahhhh, sounds like the verbal section, eh?!

 

[ssquared]

The MCAT is hard. By its very nature, people will think it is unfair: any standardized test has to have a baseline level of difficulty, and it must change each time so that the questions are new for each test taker. Hence, the MCAT I took was very different than the one people just took yesterday. Does that really make it unfair, though? Not necessarily. The test is curved so that the same number of people will always get a 8, 9, 10 per section, and the average will be a 24. I think that scoring above a 13 in any given section is somewhat based on luck, but every other score is reflective of hard work. It's ok to be disappointed in your score, but to blame it on the test is not ok. You can't live your life crying about being victimized by a test. Much of being a doctor is about being tested; you certainly can't go to an M&M conference and whine that your patient didn't present textbook symptoms so it was unfair to expect that you should diagnose their disease properly.

 

[PreMedMommy]

OMGORZ teh Mc4t is sooooooo unfairrrrrrrrr it is teh sux0rz

in all seriousness lets be real now. The MCAT is a standardized test. These will never be completely fair in the same way that the SAT and IQ tests will never be completely fair. You all chose to pursue medicine, and you will have to jump through certain hoops to this end. Just do the best that you can. what else can you really ask of yourself? For those bashing the relevance of VR, I feel you pain as my lowest score was in VR. This doesn't change the fact that it is testing a skill essential to the practice of medicine.

 

[rahulkghosh]

I'd say, eliminating the VR section would make the test a **** load better.

 

[barto123]

The MCAT is hard. By its very nature, people will think it is unfair: any standardized test has to have a baseline level of difficulty, and it must change each time so that the questions are new for each test taker. Hence, the MCAT I took was very different than the one people just took yesterday. Does that really make it unfair, though? Not necessarily. The test is curved so that the same number of people will always get a 8, 9, 10 per section, and the average will be a 24. I think that scoring above a 13 in any given section is somewhat based on luck, but every other score is reflective of hard work. It's ok to be disappointed in your score, but to blame it on the test is not ok. You can't live your life crying about being victimized by a test. Much of being a doctor is about being tested; you certainly can't go to an M&M conference and whine that your patient didn't present textbook symptoms so it was unfair to expect that you should diagnose their disease properly.

what you say is true, but it made me recall a post on SDN that went something like this:

Since there are now so many available dates to take the MCAT, is it not likely that the quality of students taking the test varies considerably with each administration? i mean, hypothetically speaking, what if more qualified testtakers are all taking the test in may, while all the less qualified testers/retesters are taking the test in august. this might mean that the may MCAT would have a much harsher curve than the august MCAT simply because of the stiffer competition. so simply based on which date you take the test, regardless of your aptitude, your score could vary substantially. if this conjecture actually turns out to be even marginally true and data comes out, you might see people starting scheduling around the most advantageous test date.