mcats

[canadagirl]

Hey all,

Sorry for another "what's good enough" post - I know how much everyone hates these

Would you rewrite the MCATs if your goal was a good US MD-PhD program and you had 32R the first time? (10V, 11B, 11P)

Is this score so weak that it'll penalize me in the process? I figure that for a regular MD program pretty much anywhere it would be a "neutral" score, neither helping nor hurting my application significantly. But for MD/PhD would this not apply?

If I could get a really incredible score with a rewrite would that make a signficant difference? Do they care that much?

(Here in Canada standardized tests are way less important - don't need SATs for high school, don't need GREs for grad school, and once you get "triple-10's" on your MCATs they don't care what the actual score is. And some schools don't need MCATs at all. So I don't have any sense of how important they are.)

Thanks for any thoughts!!

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[DarkChild]

honestly i think your at a disadvantage for the top tier MD/PhD programs. now if you're not worried about getting in to harvard or hopkins, then I dont think it rules you out.
I'm not sure if it'll help for you to take it again. I mean it would be a significant boost if you could raise your MCAT score, but if you scored lower, I think you could hurt you.
I think with a lower MCAT score, you really need to have excellent research, outstanding LORs and off the hook grades.
A lot of it revolves around the other parts of your application, even though I still think a lot of schools have MCAT/GPA calculations as a first screen.
check out the MCAT site and look for the retakers data. I posted the link in a post about a month ago. it shows how retesters score.
I would just look at the info and figure out if more people improved than worsened at your particular score. if >50% improved, take it again. if not. dont.
gotta love binary decisions.

 

[canadagirl]

Thanks for your honest comments. Not what I _wanted_ to hear, given that the MCAT is horribly, horribly painful...

Anyone else have any insights?

DarkChild, are you implying that you think a top school, like Harvard or Hopkins, would reject my application on a first screening simply based on the 32 MCAT?

Hey, the stats on those retake tables are pretty interesting. I hadn't looked at them in a while. Basically they say that very, very few people improve by two points or more in a section once they hit a 10 or so. I guess it's not suprising, objectively, but it isn't encouraging either.

What is a competitive score for a top MD/PhD program? Not, what score would blow their socks off, but what score would a solid, average, successful applicant have? 35? 37? 39?