Push by adcoms for lower MCAT scores?

[cactusman]

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Stereotyping that a rural kid would be much less likely to do it is a bit harsh.
I just wanted to make sure he was aware that that's a bit crass.

If education quality were the same everywhere, then we'd have a lot more low-income, rural, and inner city URM students entering medicine and we wouldn't have nearly the same issues with health care disparities. Under-served regions/populations tend to have less access to education as well as healthcare because they are both heavily dependent on wealth.

 

[begoood95]

Lmao guys I didn't realize it was controversial to say education quality is usually lower/more limited in rural areas and weaker backgrounds predicts greater struggles in university level science work

SDN in a nutshell:

 

[AnatomyGrey12]

Lmao guys I didn't realize it was controversial to say education quality is usually lower/more limited in rural areas and weaker backgrounds predicts greater struggles in university level science work

It's not, facts are facts.

 

[mwsapphire]

It's not, facts are facts.

Okay, okay
I'm a little overly sensitive about stereotypes- people still ask me if every muslims has arranged marriages.

 

[efle]

Okay, okay
I'm a little overly sensitive about stereotypes- people still ask me if every muslims has arranged marriages.

Well, do they?

 

[Sardinia]

The SAT was intended to be an innate exam created to measure scholastic aptitude. Stanley Kaplan was revolutionary in his belief that he disagreed with this principle and pushed the strategy that a meticulous approach to solving core concepts meant the test was coachable. The notion that educators pushed this to be an unsolvable exam because they desired it to be a test that would serve as diagnostic reflection of an individual's innate cognitive IQ has now been understood to be a sick fetish. The fact that a contemporary undergraduate college course is either on par or more expensive than a full Kaplan training course should be an indicator that the costs of financial disparity aren't purely monetary. Rather, the fact that SES issues affect numerous dimensions that can't be properly valued by educators or be put on a @Med Ed 12 list means that the more trivial crap that administrators add in order to distinguish applicant 50 from applicant 51 benefits individuals coming from a higher income background because they have the resources and the time to play their game.

 

[mwsapphire]

The SAT was intended to be an innate exam created to measure scholastic aptitude. Stanley Kaplan was revolutionary in his belief that he disagreed with this principle and pushed the strategy that a meticulous approach to solving core concepts meant the test was coachable. The notion that educators pushed this to be an unsolvable exam because they desired it to be a test that would serve as diagnostic reflection of an individual's innate cognitive IQ has now been understood to be a sick fetish. The fact that a contemporary undergraduate college course is either on par or more expensive than a full Kaplan training course should be an indicator that the costs of financial disparity aren't purely monetary. Rather, the fact that SES issues affect numerous dimensions that can't be properly valued by educators or be put on a @Med Ed 12 list means that the more trivial crap that administrators add in order to distinguish applicant 50 from applicant 51 benefits individuals coming from a higher income and therefore have the resources and the time to play their game.

So are you saying the SAT is or Isn't coachable.
If you're saying, yeah, it's coachable and rich kids have better access to training, you are totally right. Here in my richie town I see it all the time.

 

[mwsapphire]

Well, do they?

I don't know Elfie , I'll let you know in a few years.

Spoiler

No, plenty of muslims marry for love, especially in the US. Arranged marriages actually started in India and spilled over into Pakistan, they don't really have an Islamic Basis. Plenty of US muslims marry for love, but the process involves your parents more than it typically does in the US.

 

[Sardinia]

So are you saying the SAT is or Isn't coachable. If you're saying, yeah, it's coachable and rich kids have better access to training, you are totally right. Here in my richie town I see it all the time.

Stanley Kaplan normalized the SAT. Rather, he provided the option for it to be normalized so that students couldn't be discriminated on what consequently was revealed to be non-IQ related issues and more with environmental factors. The fact that the argument we have today regarding SES issues is understood to be outside of innate cognition is in a large part thanks to his acceleration and belief in training anyone in order to pass any test. The fact that people insinuate that test taking materials cost too much material and hence are unfair is the equivalent of blaming your dixon ticonderogas while your classmates are using pentel mechanical pencils. Especially when it comes to the MCAT, a test that you can take at any time. Compared to an exam like Step 1 which residency directors have an expectation of you to take it within a desired time frame. Yes, income is an issue. But income is a systemic issue on so many goddamn levels that if you're pointing out test prep costs as being the major discrepancy then you need to reassess all the other disparities that come with being from low-SES.

 

[mwsapphire]

Stanley Kaplan normalized the SAT. Rather, he provided the option for it to be normalized so that students couldn't be discriminated on what consequently was revealed to be non-IQ related issues and more with environmental factors. The fact that the argument we have today regarding SES issues is understood to be outside of innate cognition is in a large part thanks to his acceleration and belief in training anyone in order to pass any test.

I do still believe it can be partially coached. Learning vocab and how to time your passages can be tought, I think.

 

[Sardinia]

I do still believe it can be partially coached. Learning vocab and how to time your passages can be tought, I think.

I'm sorry. Are you responding to me or are you showing that you know how to use a keyboard?

 

[mwsapphire]

You just said it was normalized so that non IQ issues...nvm.

 

[bonedoc5576]

TL;DR: I don't have a great comeback to those pointing out that my overly simple solution to a complex and nuanced situation is inadequate, so here's a laughable slippery slope straw man argument instead.

All I'm pointing out, which should be obvious, is that the stratification of physican candidates by nonacademic factors is inherently flawed; subjective, opaque, and inconsistent. If it were true that future admissions decisons were to place greater emphasis on nonacademic factors, I see that as a step in the wrong direction. I hope I am wrong, but there would appear to a bias (at least here) against high stat applicants and any program that values them as "number ******." Do I believe that context should be considered? Absolutely. Should URM's and economically disadvantaged students get a break? Sure. Ultimately, however, the responsibility of Adcoms ought to be to fill its seats with the best candidates. I know I would be pretty pissed off if I busted my ass for four to five years to get a top GPA, put the hours in to put up big numbers on the MCAT, demonstrate committment in my EC's all to have it negated by the black box of holistic review.

 

[mwsapphire]

All I'm pointing out, which should be obvious, is that the stratification of physican candidates by nonacademic factors is inherently flawed; subjective, opaque, and inconsistent. If it were true that future admissions decisons were to place greater emphasis on nonacademic factors, I see that as a step in the wrong direction. I hope I am wrong, but there would appear to a bias (at least here) against high stat applicants and any program that values them as "number ******." Do I believe that context should be considered? Absolutely. Should URM's and economically disadvantaged students get a break? Sure. Ultimately, however, the responsibility of Adcoms ought to be to fill its seats with the best candidates. I know I would be pretty pissed off if I busted my ass for four to five years to get a top GPA, put the hours in to put up big numbers on the MCAT, demonstrate committment in my EC's all to have it negated by the black box of holistic review.

Well in the case of holistic review, people with low stats can compensate with better EC's but people with higher stats would be competitive for higher tier schools with the same EC's, because of their stats.
I see holistic review more as " Ohh...your numbers are a little low? How about your EC's?"
There will still always be "number *****" schools out there , as well as people with incredibly high stats, and I don't think having very high stats will be seen as a bad thing anytime soon.

 

[mwsapphire]

As a person from X farm town...probably 50% of my HS graduating class went to college and most of those went to trade school or community college. I don't know of anyone from my town who ended up at an Ivy League or other highly prestigious institution (unless you count Ohio State...). I know of 2 people under age 30 from my hometown who are in medical school/physicians (I'm one of them). There is also a lot of discouragement in certain families for women to work outside the home...when I go home, I am asked WAY more often if I'm married yet than about how medical school is going. And my high school was definitely a bit of a joke if you're above average intelligence...my high school didn't have AP classes or many other options for advanced students, for instance. I was definitely not as well prepared for college as I could have been in some areas. Efle isn't making a comment on the ABILITIES of rural people, but a comment on the OPPORTUNITIES for rural people. So I'm not sure it's stereotyping because it's not about the people, it's about structural issues.

Skipping ahead to my medical school class, there are 4 of us who are from rural areas and 3 of us are strongly considering rural practice in much needed fields (primary care and EM). I don't know what the 4th's plans are. I also agree that one of the best solutions to the rural physician shortage is to make medical school more accessible for rural students.

Also, I legit do not understand why everybody thinks it's so boring to live in rural areas. It's really not that bad, especially if you're into the outdoors. There is plenty of stuff to do - 100x better hiking, fishing, kayaking/canoeing, and literally any other outdoor activity than the cities. There are restaurants around, but they're all locally owned instead of Chilis. Plenty of cool skill workshops and historical lectures and stuff at the local library or town hall. And it's not that bad culturally either - you'd be surprised how many cultural festivals (to be fair, mostly European cultures), concerts, art/craft shows and stuff there are. And if I wanted to do a day/weekend trip I can drive a couple hours to get to some major regional cities with more stuff that you "city folk" tend to enjoy 😉 But I'm just as happy to head down to the river and try to catch some bass if it's nice out.

But yes, not very diverse, mediocre education, etc. is all accurate.

****. No AP's? That sucks.

 

[jcorpsmanMD]

****. No AP's? That sucks.

Yup, no AP's, no coming out of high school with 2 years of college under your belt. You just have to wait for 4 frustratingly easy years of high school and building catapults in physics class.. AND if you're lucky you go to college after you graduate or you join the finest Navy in the entire world; the U.S. Navy 😉

 

[efle]

^ and so as you might imagine mw, survival rates are lower when those students get tossed into a curved class against the kids who had a bunch of AP sciences / challenging highschool background. I first learned about this a while back from some papers about affirmative action, that talked about how the demographics that come in with lower preparedness disproportionately tend to switch out of hard science majors. Like, once you've gotten past the admissions hurdle for under-repped groups, theres a whole new issue of being able to compete

 

[mwsapphire]

^ and so as you might imagine mw, survival rates are lower when those students get tossed into a curved class against the kids who had a bunch of AP sciences / challenging highschool background. I first learned about this a while back from some papers about affirmative action, that talked about how the demographics that come in with lower preparedness disproportionately tend to switch out of hard science majors. Like, once you've gotten past the admissions hurdle for under-repped groups, theres a whole new issue of being able to compete

This made me sad ._.

 

[mwsapphire]

Also, a lot of incredibly smart kids who were constantly bored in class then ended up hating school and having all kinds of behavioral (and eventually legal) issues. I was lucky that my parents were very involved and relatively well off, and did everything they could to keep me challenged through extracurricular activities. Some of the other people who were 10x smarter than me but had crappy home lives or less financial means ended up getting into some bad stuff.

You're gonna make me cry....

 

[jcorpsmanMD]

Also, a lot of incredibly smart kids who were constantly bored in class then ended up hating school and having all kinds of behavioral (and eventually legal) issues. I was lucky that my parents were very involved and relatively well off, and did everything they could to keep me challenged through extracurricular activities. Some of the other people who were 10x smarter than me but had crappy home lives or less financial means ended up getting into some bad stuff.

I couldn't have said this better myself. Sadly it is very true.

 

[JoaoMoutinho]

We had dual enrollment that we could take at our high school through the local community college, or on campus at a state university nearby. Which in my opinion is better than APs if you can handle the coursework. So it's not like there was nothing there...but you had to have a car to get to the state university, and tbh my classes at the state university were ridiculously easy as well (though granted it was mostly intro humanities courses).

My family got into more than one discussion with my school administration about providing coursework that was even on par with the grade level, let alone at the pace that the more academically inclined kids could handle. We didn't have APs or any of that fancy stuff either, and when I tried to do dual enrollment my senior year because I had already taken all of the senior-level math/science/foreign language classes as a junior, they told me that I would get to stay on the high school campus the whole day. Because that didn't leave me with enough classes to take, they told me I could have 2 hours of study hall, 2 hours of gym, and then welding during my senior year. Then they were like "LOL, JK you can't take welding because you didn't take freshman woodshop. You can take that instead." So, I took my 3.6 GPA (top 10 in a class of >200--that is a testament to the lack of people who took academics seriously, not my own abilities) and dropped out so that I could go to college and actually get an education.

But yeah, overall it was a joke. Some of the teachers really tried but there just weren't enough resources to create an environment that genuinely challenged the more advanced kids.

In my school, there were a handful of teachers who were seriously invested in making the school a real learning environment for us. I can think of 3 or 4. I went to go visit last summer and found out that all except for one had left to teach at a private school in another town because they were so sick of the school administration actively preventing them from doing their jobs.

Also, a lot of incredibly smart kids who were constantly bored in class then ended up hating school and having all kinds of behavioral (and eventually legal) issues. I was lucky that my parents were very involved and relatively well off, and did everything they could to keep me challenged through extracurricular activities. Some of the other people who were 10x smarter than me but had crappy home lives or less financial means ended up getting into some bad stuff.

This. It was one of the biggest reasons that I chose to drop out of high school rather than stay another year where I was. I honestly am scared to think of how I would have turned out if I hadn't left. And, like you, I was lucky that my parents cared as much as they did and that I was somebody who had been exposed to as much of the world as I had been by that point.

It is so easy to lose sight of your potential when you never even had the opportunity to see it in the first place. That to me is one of the main reasons that people get stuck in crappy situations in rural areas. So many kids talk about getting out of town, but hardly anybody actually knows what they need to do to rise above the circumstances.

 

[jcorpsmanMD]

Dang, sounds familiar. This could have been my story if the administration hadn't been okay with me taking college classes. I was also taking classes with the grade ahead of me (yet still not feeling challenged at all) and literally ran out of classes to take my senior year. And now that I think of it, all the other people in my med school class who are rural have a doctor parent. I have one parent with a different doctorate in the healthcare professions, but same idea. So just anecdotally, I do think the parent encouragement/advocacy/role model makes a huge difference.

And your last bit is on point.

Not sure where you're at in the med school journey, but wishing you luck with whatever is next!

I had URM parents that just told me to do well in school so I never thought of doing what you both did through the university etc, during my senior year. All I did was coast through high sxhool and it wasn't until I joined the military that I saw what my potential could be. It's also how I truly discovered medicine and decided that's what I wanted to do with my life. Good on your parents for actually pushing you both to challenge yourselves academically. To this day my father still asks me why I want to be a doctor since I won't be "working" until my 30s haha. Oh well. Kudos to all us rural kids that managed to actually LEAVE our hometowns bc like you mentioned above, many never do.

 

[JoaoMoutinho]

I had URM parents that just told me to do well in school so I never thought of doing what you both did through the university etc, during my senior year. All I did was coast through high sxhool and it wasn't until I joined the military that I saw what my potential could be. It's also how I truly discovered medicine and decided that's what I wanted to do with my life. Good on your parents for actually pushing you both to challenge yourselves academically. To this day my father still asks me why I want to be a doctor since I won't be "working" until my 30s haha. Oh well. Kudos to all us rural kids that managed to actually LEAVE our hometowns bc like you mentioned above, many never do.

@cj_cregg Thanks!

Neither of my parents has any connection to healthcare, but my dad had to help support his family through high school and college and always made sure that we knew that the reason he was able to succeed was because he worked his tail off to get to college and get a scholarship. My family has since moved very far away and I doubt that I'll ever really have a reason to go back to that town, but thinking back on my time there makes me grateful for having parents like mine who taught me how to learn and work hard when I would never have had a reason to do so otherwise.