MCAT retake, how many points do you need to improve?

[seek_advice1]

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A friend of mine got 503 the first time she tried. Now she is retaking it, what's the min number of points she should improve?

Her other stats are pretty average and her GPA is 3.5. She'd like to get admitted to schools like Dartmouth.

 

[lumya]

Given how Dartmouth’s average GPA of acceptance was a 3.78, she’d probably have to get over a 520 to have a good shot of getting in (Darthmouth’s average was 515). Not saying that it’s impossible to make that big of a jump, but she took practice tests before and they were similar to her actual score, it’s unrealistic to expect that without some drastic studying changes.

 

[Osminog]

My friend recommends that your friend broaden his horizons when it comes to school options. My friend tells me that it's not worth becoming obsessed with an ultra-competitive school that has ~4% acceptance rate, especially when one has a 60th percentile MCAT score. Best of luck!

 

[seek_advice1]

I see, it won't be easy.

More in general, how many points should someone improve their MCAT when they retake?

 

[Osminog]

More in general, how many points should someone improve their MCAT when they retake?

It depends on what your goal is. If you're a non-URM and your goal is to get into an MD program, then you should ideally improve by at least 9 or 10 points.

 

[Fall_of_Dorian_Gray]

She'd like to get admitted to schools like Dartmouth.

Don't make the mistake of applying with a top-heavy school list like I did the first time I applied.

Some schools average your MCATs, some take the highest subscores, others look at your most recent but consider past scores. Looks like Geisel is the latter.

Remember, any medical school will make her a physician in the end and I never seen a patient ask "where you graduated." That said, this might be a helpful chart of GPAs and MCATs of students that applied and matriculated published by AAMC (https://www.aamc.org/download/321508/data/factstablea23.pdf)