MCAT grade equivalence to percentage

futuredoc0307

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Okay so i know 500 on the MCAT is an average score, but if we were to equate that to a number of correct answers out of possible number of questions , what percentage is 500? is it a 70% accuracy for example? or am i misunderstanding how MCAT is graded, is it graded based on the performance of others? if i took 60 bio practice questions and got a 60%, 70%, etc.. what do those represent? good? bad? i hope you know what im asking

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Yes it is scaled, and it is scaled within the four sections of the exam. So a 125 on one section might be 60% correct, but a 125 on another section might be 50% correct. The best way for you to check this out is to take the AAMC FL exam and it will give you your percent correct plus a scaled score.
 
If you review your score report, “Percentile Rank” shows the percentage of scores that are either equal to or less than each score point. The percentile ranks are created and based on all MCAT results from one or more testing years. You can find more information about this on the AAMC website ;)
 
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The “percentage correct” is almost always going to be higher than “percentile rank”.

Just throwing that out there.
 
The “percentage correct” is almost always going to be higher than “percentile rank”.

Just throwing that out there.
higher? I think lower

EDIT: actually, I think it depends on where you stand on the percentile. so it varies
 
It's been a couple years, but iirc I was getting around 70% of my questions correct, which put me at >90th percentile on every section, or ~129+/-. There is, of course, some variation between the sections, and the number score correlating to a given percentile varies between them as well, but they are all relatively close to each other.

I'll leave it to the statisticians to try to extrapolate that out along the curve. As a ballpark guess, I'd say 50% = 500, 30% = 485
 
The MCAT is scaled. Each question is graded differently based on many variables. That's it takes a month to get your score. Even so they give you a confidence band.

Don't focus on percent correct. It's the percentile that matters because you're competing with others. You can get 50% right on the MCAT. That may look bad. But did 80% of test takers get 50% right in the MCAT? If so, your equivalent score is like a 509.
 
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