frankrizzo18 said:
I really ate it on verbal this April. I called the AAMC and spoke to them for like twenty minutes, and requested to have someone call me back that had more experience with rescoring. Unfortunately, I was told that the AAMC has NEVER changed MCAT section scores (i.e. verbal, bio, or phys)! He claimed the reason for this is that any irregular patterns are picked up by the computer and dealth with immediately. For instance, if bubbles were not picked up by the scantron, then the computer would have record of the matter and a technician would make sure that this actually was accurate!! So, yes, there has been errors, but any strange reports are looked into so that the AAMC maintains their integrity. Personally, I think this is BS! I can't help but be pessimistic about the AAMC honoring a rescore if it actually was going to change because it reflects negatively. Plus, if one person found that there score changed there would have to be official documentation!! It sucks, but it certainly inspires me to @#%$ and pillage the MCAT when I take it again!!!!
Well, you gotta figure that with 2 months to evaluate/process the test, the AAMC would have a high degree of efficiency in their score manipulation. I find it sort of doubtful to think that machine error is the probable reason for poor performance.
They charge $200 to register for the test, and for 20,000+ test takers (in April), that means there is $4 million at stake. Combined with August (30,000+ test takers), the total comes up to something over $10 million each year for the MCAT alone. This is before we add on any additional revenue from AAMC practice tests, and this is assuming that they don't use any funds from the AMCAS - which undoubtedly has an astronomical price tag to it as well. Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is if you have $10 million to work out 50000 scores, you shouldn't really mess any of them up, and I'm thinking they probably have rigorous check/fail-safe mechanism to ensure the veracity of the final scores.
Of course, the only thing that is unsettling, in my opinion, is how last year (and years prior to this, I imagine) there were some database errors. As I understand it, a few SDN'ers experienced something strange as they logged in to view their scores: instead of seeing their information, they saw someone else's. That is extremely disturbing, in my opinion. Having a background in web-programming, I simply don't understand how that error could be made. If a mistake has been made with your score, perhaps it's not the machine at fault, but rather the database linking your account to your scores. Just to play devil's advocate, let's ask: is it possible that a database swap-up accidentally put your score in someone's else's lap and gave you the wrong scores?
Anyway, there's no reason to lose sleep over any of this.
If all else fails, just retake it and don't worry. Maybe next year it'll be $300 and they'll let you view your answer sheets / test booklet as an online pdf to satisfy all this neurotic paranoia.
