Perplexing MCAT Writing Score

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I know that this topic has almost been done to death, but I am seeking specific insight from those who have had experiences with this before.

I recently got my MCAT scores back and I was shocked to learn that I scored an L on the writing section. I consider myself an excellent writer. I am an editor for my school's newspaper, I have aced all of my English and humanities classes, and I have multiple publications.

I completed the writing section on all of my practice tests and the instructor for the MCAT review course I took said that my essays were among the best he had ever read.

I am left utterly perplexed, and with the following specific questions:

(1) Has anyone had positive experiences with having their essays re-scored?
(2) Will this hurt my chances at a top school?
(3) Should I be worried about this?
 
WiredEntropy said:
I know that this topic has almost been done to death, but I am seeking specific insight from those who have had experiences with this before.

I recently got my MCAT scores back and I was shocked to learn that I scored an L on the writing section. I consider myself an excellent writer. I am an editor for my school's newspaper, I have aced all of my English and humanities classes, and I have multiple publications.

I completed the writing section on all of my practice tests and the instructor for the MCAT review course I took said that my essays were among the best he had ever read.

I am left utterly perplexed, and with the following specific questions:

(1) Has anyone had positive experiences with having their essays re-scored?
(2) Will this hurt my chances at a top school?
(3) Should I be worried about this?
Click to expand...

Yes, an L may raise some eyebrows (esp. at top schools). That said, what was the rest of the score? Keep in mind that the MCAT WS is quite formulaic. If you wrote outside those lines, it might have ruined your score.

Honestly, though, if the rest of your score (esp. the VR) was high, I wouldn't worry too terribly much. The reality is that the WS has no correlation whatsoever to overall chances of acceptance per the AAMC's data.
 
music2doc said:
Yes, an L may raise some eyebrows (esp. at top schools). That said, what was the rest of the score? Keep in mind that the MCAT WS is quite formulaic. If you wrote outside those lines, it might have ruined your score.

Honestly, though, if the rest of your score (esp. the VR) was high, I wouldn't worry too terribly much. The reality is that the WS has no correlation whatsoever to overall chances of acceptance per the AAMC's data.
Click to expand...

I see.
 
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Are you sure you followed all of the directions? Nevertheless, if the rest of your score is really good, you'll probably still have plenty of good schools interested in you. I only got an N (I think it was because I was too concise - dang computer grader!), but it doesn't seem to be holding me back.
 
I got an L on the writing section but a 12 on VR, how does that happen?

No one mentioned the writing score at my interviews
 
Not gonna matter OP

I got an L, and I also aced all of my literature/composition classes in college. Just be sure to write your secondaries well and communicate clearly during the interview. If you can do those two things, then 👍:luck:
 
WiredEntropy said:
I know that this topic has almost been done to death, but I am seeking specific insight from those who have had experiences with this before.

I recently got my MCAT scores back and I was shocked to learn that I scored an L on the writing section. I consider myself an excellent writer. I am an editor for my school's newspaper, I have aced all of my English and humanities classes, and I have multiple publications.

I completed the writing section on all of my practice tests and the instructor for the MCAT review course I took said that my essays were among the best he had ever read.

I am left utterly perplexed, and with the following specific questions:

(1) Has anyone had positive experiences with having their essays re-scored?
(2) Will this hurt my chances at a top school?
(3) Should I be worried about this?
Click to expand...

1)no
2)yes - an l makes you look horrible.
3)yes - but depending on your mcat breakdown if its solid you'll still probably go to med school, saying the rest of your app is solid.

You got an L because you didn't follow the directions or your essays were not relevant. I got an R, but then again i memorized facts about the civil rights movement and other events that broadly apply to essays, and my essays were filled with cited examples.
 
I got a T on the writing, but my verbal wasn't similarly high (11), so I'm not sure there's any strong connection- and I believe adcoms care more about the verbal subscore than writing. (Still, an L is pretty low).
 
Wow that is incredibly bizarre. I am actually leaning towards one of the prompts simply did not get submitted properly. I know this must be astronomically rare compared to the OP making a mistake, but it seems absurd to me that he would score this low with ANY above-average writing ability (indicated from his description of himself). After learning from other students and test prep companies I decided that memorizing specific examples such as dates and details of random events was useless and I never wrote a single prompt to prepare for this section. All I did was thesis-antithesis-conclusion with the clarity of any timed essay I would hand in for a class and the examples from my memory and got an S.

I would be interested to see what happens if you re-score it.

Oh and no schools care about writing, it doesn't even factor into their formula. But as one person said, you may be explaining it to an interviewer at a top tier school, and that will just be so he can mark it off his/her checklist he made in 5 min.
 
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Ha, I've done this. Scored an S with the first MCAT and an N with the second. Honestly, I was in shock, much as you seem to be now.

Remember, though, that adcoms, in addition to your quantified WS score, also read your essays. If you feel that you have effectively demonstrated your ability to write yourself out of a paper bag, they will most likely come to the conclusion that your MCAT writing score, however low, is not an accurate representation of your ability.
 
I wouldn't worry. If anything just reinforce you role as an editor at the paper in your essays to show that you have good writing skills, and also make sure your essays are well written.
 
I was also perplexed by my writing score (I got an O) as I was a social science/humanities major and have written dozens of essays--I never thought I was a poor writer. I think that for the MCAT WS, though, they are scoring you based on very specific criteria and not necessarily how good your flair for writing is. If you have a high verbal score and excellent PS/secondary essays, I cannot imagine that an L will hurt your chances. It certainly isn't worth a retake, IMO.
 
No one cares about the writing section on the MCAT. Two people in my class left it blank and still got in. They cited poor advice from a Kaplan tutor and luckily knew people on the adcom well enough to explain themselves, but there you go.
 
LossForWords said:
No one cares about the writing section on the MCAT. Two people in my class left it blank and still got in. They cited poor advice from a Kaplan tutor and luckily knew people on the adcom well enough to explain themselves, but there you go.
Click to expand...

Really? I was under the impression that leaving sections of the MCAT completely blank would void the test, but then again, I'm pulling that from nowhere. It seems kind of suspicious, though, that an adcom would overlook a complete lack of effort.

Like everyone else, I'm betting the OP botched answering the question. Unlike some other people here, I think that might actually hurt you more than if you had botched grammar and spelling. Grammar and spelling can get better or worked around, but if you failed to answer the question, then that either shows a reading comprehension problem (bad) or an inability to follow directions (also bad).

Of course, I'm not an adcom, but if I were the one looking at your application, that's a conclusion I would consider.

It might be worth retaking if you're really convinced that it doesn't accurately represent your skills. And make sure that you work on some practice prompts and have someone (like an English teacher) do a once-over and make sure you're actually responding in a way that makes sense.
 
Tin Man said:
Really? I was under the impression that leaving sections of the MCAT completely blank would void the test, but then again, I'm pulling that from nowhere. It seems kind of suspicious, though, that an adcom would overlook a complete lack of effort.
Click to expand...

It showed up as an "X" which means (in short) it was either blank, not in English, or didn't answer the question at all. These two were applying to their UGs medical school so they'd visited the adcom office before, part of the pre-med club leadership, etc. etc. They each got a phone call when the scores came in basically saying "WTF?" so they got a chance to explain it. My guess is it really hurt their chances at any outside school they applied to, but I didn't ask.

I was just pointing out that I don't think there's any other section of the MCAT you could just skip out of hand and still be considered anywhere.
 
LossForWords said:
No one cares about the writing section on the MCAT. Two people in my class left it blank and still got in. They cited poor advice from a Kaplan tutor and luckily knew people on the adcom well enough to explain themselves, but there you go.
Click to expand...


Canadian medical schools do. 🙁 Some schools even have a CUT-OFF at Q.
 
OP, Don't worry about it. Every med school adcom knows that the test graders just pull a random letter out of a hat and assign that as your grade. Your problem was most likely you just were not a specific on your examples as you thought or you read the directions incorrectly. After PS and VR, we do get a bit on the tired side, then we chug a red bull and finish the BS. Your fine, pay it no mind and if it ever comes up in interviews just say you honestly not know, not like you got feedback from the AAMC on your test or anything.
 
I was similarly shocked when my MCAT score came back as a 34K. The MCAT review course I took did not emphasize the writing section at all, they simply told us not to stress about it and to be concise. I think I may have been overly concise.

BTW, I scored an 11 on the verbal section. I'll be semi-super-but-not-really-pissed if this hurts my chances.
 
Cannon said:
I was similarly shocked when my MCAT score came back as a 34K. The MCAT review course I took did not emphasize the writing section at all, they simply told us not to stress about it and to be concise. I think I may have been overly concise.

BTW, I scored an 11 on the verbal section. I'll be semi-super-but-not-really-pissed if this hurts my chances.
Click to expand...

On the practice MCATs didn't you score your essays?
 
zwitterion34 said:
On the practice MCATs didn't you score your essays?
Click to expand...

Do you mean the practice exams available through the AMCS website? I don't recall them scoring the writing section. If they did, I wish I'd known about that.

As for my review course, the writing part didn't not get scored. They only had us write them a few times to get an idea of the timing and type of prompts.
 
Cannon said:
Do you mean the practice exams available through the AMCS website? I don't recall them scoring the writing section. If they did, I wish I'd known about that.

As for my review course, the writing part didn't not get scored. They only had us write them a few times to get an idea of the timing and type of prompts.
Click to expand...

I think at the Princeton Review you get to get your essays scored when you are taking the practice tests.
 
Cannon said:
I was similarly shocked when my MCAT score came back as a 34K. The MCAT review course I took did not emphasize the writing section at all, they simply told us not to stress about it and to be concise. I think I may have been overly concise.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure why an MCAT review course would say not to stress about any part of the MCAT. It's the MCAT. It's designed to test your abilities to do certain things it deems to be valuable medical students. If it has a writing section, then somebody, somewhere probably cares about it, and unless you're willing to bet that every single one of your adcoms ignores the standard, then your MCAT course kinda screwed you over.

That being said, it's not something that I worry too much about; I'm one of the lucky few who got an S without actually practicing the essay portion (like a boss). I suppose that makes me a bit of a hypocrite for telling people they should have practiced, but whatever.
 
Tin Man said:
That being said, it's not something that I worry too much about; I'm one of the lucky few who got an S without actually practicing the essay portion (like a boss). I suppose that makes me a bit of a hypocrite for telling people they should have practiced, but whatever.
Click to expand...

Well, if you're good at something, you generally need less practice. If you're not good at it, you need more practice. I don't think that's hypocritical at all.
 
Myuu said:
Well, if you're good at something, you generally need less practice. If you're not good at it, you need more practice. I don't think that's hypocritical at all.
Click to expand...

It is somewhat, because the point I'm trying to make is, like the OP, just because you think you're good at something doesn't necessarily mean you are, at least within the guidelines of the assignment. Pre-meds tend to think that because they're the educational "cream of the crop", then they automatically have an intellectual advantage over most other students. That unfortunately gets applied to other pre-med students, who are just as smart as every other pre-med student.

So when someone thinks they're good at writing, they may be the best of their English class. But they need to remember that they're competing against people with the same lofty aspirations, and who are going to have around the same skill level. So while I know that I'm good at writing due to my years of practice writing both for fun and professionally, I still probably should have done some actual practice.

Although, in my defense against myself, I did look over numerous prompts so that I could get a feel for what kinds of questions they liked to ask, as well as some example responses to see what sort of answers they liked to get (in terms of detail, brevity, etc).
 
In a similar situation as you. I got a pretty high score on the MCAT but a crappy writing score.
1st time : 34M ; I appealed my score and nothing changed.
2nd time : 36M ; * this time I was certain there was significant improvement but sill got the same score, I did not even bother appealing
( but maybe you still should )

My verbal was 11 and 10 with other scores pretty balanced too.

An important fact to consider is that this is standardized testing so people who grade mark on rubric with clear guidelines. You could be an excellent writer and not do well if what you do cannot be tangibly measured through the guidelines.
 
That sucks OP. Sometimes the dice don't land how they should. Like everyone else said, if your numbers are high enough only a few eyebrows will raise. Honestly, how much 'evaluation' can take place with a half hour essay. I think that part of the test is really silly.

I didn't even finish an essay and I got a P. I was in the middle of the conclusion when I saw that I had 5 seconds left so I just left a 'note'. It went something like:

"The most important factor in determining when to.....whoops. 🙂"
 
PJ meowerton said:
I got an L on the writing section but a 12 on VR, how does that happen?

No one mentioned the writing score at my interviews
Click to expand...

The first time I took the MCAT I got a T in Writing but a 07 in VR. Now how does THAT happen?
 
Tin Man said:
I'm not sure why an MCAT review course would say not to stress about any part of the MCAT. It's the MCAT. It's designed to test your abilities to do certain things it deems to be valuable medical students. If it has a writing section, then somebody, somewhere probably cares about it, and unless you're willing to bet that every single one of your adcoms ignores the standard, then your MCAT course kinda screwed you over.

That being said, it's not something that I worry too much about; I'm one of the lucky few who got an S without actually practicing the essay portion (like a boss). I suppose that makes me a bit of a hypocrite for telling people they should have practiced, but whatever.
Click to expand...

They told us not to stress about any part of the test because most people who "can't take tests" have problems with anxiety. They did not tell us to blow it off.
 
It is quite odd how broad the score are in writing. I wonder what the average is and if it stay the same year after year. I don't think I have ever met anyone that got the same or similar writing scores after retaking.
 
canadanon said:
In a similar situation as you. I got a pretty high score on the MCAT but a crappy writing score.
1st time : 34M ; I appealed my score and nothing changed.
2nd time : 36M ; * this time I was certain there was significant improvement but sill got the same score, I did not even bother appealing
( but maybe you still should )

My verbal was 11 and 10 with other scores pretty balanced too.

An important fact to consider is that this is standardized testing so people who grade mark on rubric with clear guidelines. You could be an excellent writer and not do well if what you do cannot be tangibly measured through the guidelines.
Click to expand...

You retook a 34 because of your writing score?
 
I am Canadian applicant and that's why I had to retake with a 34M. When I took the Kaplan MCAT prep classes, they made the essay section sound super easy. I believed them and then I got owned .... twice....
 
canadanon said:
I am Canadian applicant and that's why I had to retake with a 34M. When I took the Kaplan MCAT prep classes, they made the essay section sound super easy. I believed them and then I got owned .... twice....
Click to expand...

The essay section IS easy, though. I had TPR grade a few of my essays - my first was an R and that was the lowest score I got.

It isn't really that complicated - you just use the T/A/S format, make sure you write a decent amount, vary your sentence structure and use real world examples. With a 36 you're clearly intellectually capable. Did you use a different format or something?

Like Etorphine said, just sticking to the formula and not writing like a ***** will get you above-mean scores every time.
 
canadanon said:
I am Canadian applicant and that's why I had to retake with a 34M. When I took the Kaplan MCAT prep classes, they made the essay section sound super easy. I believed them and then I got owned .... twice....
Click to expand...

At least u increased ur scoar the 2nd tyme 😀 An increese frum 34 2 36 isnt bad.
 
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