I'm not totally disagreeing with you here. It seems our experiences are what are shaping our viewpoints. But I do think if I respond, this will turn into a circle argument 🙂
Without actually going through one of the new AAMC FLs and breaking down the test by each type of question and using specific examples there's really not much more we can say so yeah you are right this can turn circular fast. I did it in the past when I was prepping for my MCAT: I don't have nearly the will to do it again.
I do agree with
@efle to a fair extent and am often on the side of "the work ethic/time spent studying between successful pre-meds and weedouts often isnt nearly as great a difference as people make it out to be" and that "the people who get the top MCAT scores are often the ones who study the least for it". Having said that people do need to realize what the bottom half of the MCAT testing pool looks like
a) there are always going to be people who clearly should have voided but who didn't. This is always going to include alot more people than it should
b) there will be people who did negligble prep who just took the test to see what it's like. Again, more people do this than SDN realizes.
c) there are people who prepare completely the wrong way.
d) people who's first language isnt english which affects all sections.
e) I've said in the past if I had to guess I would say less than 15% of people who prep for the MCAT actually took more than 1-2 AAMC FL's. SDN level of MCAT prep far differs from the generic pre-med who is half asleep throughout his Kaplan class, reads a bio book and does problems that test facts and memory only, relearns key terms and thinks that is all that it takes to prep for the MCAT.
Likewise, about twice as many people take the MCAT each year as do people who apply to MD schools. What does that tell you? Many people who take the MCAT never apply to medical school. There are ALOT of weeds who take the test and get weeded out who consist of the bottom half of the curve. I dont think this weeding out is necessairly because of the difficulty of hte test; I think people with all these sub 21 type scores are weeded out more because of themselves. If the average GPA of the person who takes the MCAT is somewhere around a 3.4(I remember reading this somewhere can't confirm it though at all) and the average GPA of the average person who applies to MD programs is about 3.55, that would mean the average GPA of a person who takes the MCAT but who doesn't apply to an MD school is about a 3.25. Again, 3.25, that's a relatively flawed applicant and if that is what constitutes half of the testing population, that can make the you need to beat out 80% of people to get a 31 alot more daunting than it seems. If we eliminate half of the testing population, suddenly you only need to beat out 60% of pre meds to get a 31. Still rather difficult, but much more feasible.
