MCAT statistics from last year

This forum made possible through the generous support of SDN members, donors, and sponsors. Thank you.

Amy B

I miss my son so much
Moderator Emeritus
Lifetime Donor
10+ Year Member
15+ Year Member
20+ Year Member
Joined
Aug 7, 2000
Messages
4,303
Reaction score
3
Here was some very interesting information that tells the final MCAT statistics from last year. It is really interesting how they broke it down by age, race, major,retesters.

Go to this site and click on the SUMMARY DATA for last year.

<a href="http://www.aamc.org/students/mcat/examineedata/pubs.htm" target="_blank">http://www.aamc.org/students/mcat/examineedata/pubs.htm</a>

Members don't see this ad.
 
Members don't see this ad :)
Amy Beth,

I looked at it and the thing that's got me stumped is the fact that retesters score lower than the first-time takers. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Can anyone show me the light??
 
The retesters did bad the first time as well I'm sure. They are just low scorers on the MCAT. If you do well, you typically do not retest.
 
What about the peeps who take it for the first time and do poorly. Also, I know that many improve significantly the second time around.....anyways, I guess I just don't want to "swallow" your explanation just cuz.

:)
 
That didn't make sense to me either. My friend and I both improved the second time we took the test. I improved by 5 points.
 
5 points, me too.
 
Look at the statistics for <a href="http://www.aamc.org/students/mcat/examineedata/tables.htm" target="_blank">improvements</a>. It is nice to think that many people improve signficantly upon a retest but about 80 percent of retesters show a 1 point improvement in each section or less. Very few retesters improve by more than 3 points overall.
 
For the PS section alone, more than half of retesters show no improvement or a lower score.
 
Maybe it's just the statistician in me talking, but I would like to see ranges and frequencies in addition to means and standard deviations.
 
Well my PS score remained the same just like the statistics.

The thing that alarmed me the most was the fact that the scores got lower as the testers got older.
 
Two things surprised me: 1) that more women than men took the MCAT this year, and 2) that the men did a whole lot better. Geez! I hate it when that happens! :)
 
My hypothesis for the age thing is years out of college. If it has been 10 years since physics class it might make the test a bit more difficult.
 
I retook the test, and went up 6-8 points. Mind you, I didn't study at all for the first one. Went in completely blind... :D

Anyway, I was surprised at the discrepency based on majors. Bio/life sci majors have the worst MCAT averages? I was proud of my fellow math majors for having one of the highest averages. Any theories as to why social science and humanities majors do so well on the MCAT, science sections included?
 
My friend has a theory about the humanities doing better than the sciences. She said maybe it has to do with the fact that there is more reading during a humanities major.

Which makes sense cause science is lots of memorization and problem solving and humanities is a lot of reading and making interpretions about what you have read.
 
Isn't it also interesting that Math & Stat, Physical Sci and Humanities majors all did better on the BS than Bio Sci majors. Of course, that might be because bio sci is by far the most common major so it gets watered down. It's also interesting that Math & Stat majors did better on PS than Phyical Sci majors. Now that's the math major in me taking.
 
ok, I am getting confused with this whole English as a Second Language thing. AAMC considers those people that have learned English at the age of 11 and after as "Native Foreign language speakers" (regardless of the language, of course). I learned it when I was quite young, yet, have considered english as my second language simply b/c I speak another language at home. By the time I was ten, I was taught and had fluency in 5 languages, english being one of them. (Was brought up in another country) My university allowed me to skip the foreign language requirement, because of that fact. It even says so that I am a native speaker of another language on my college transcript. Yet I will be considered differently on the AMCAS and AAMC?

I don't mean to harp on about this, but it just concerns me. i don't want to end up sounding like a "fraud" when I actually apply and they question me on this issue.
Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks.
Tweetie
 
Top