Step 1 vs MCAT

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Which exam is higher stakes (assuming you are not aiming for ENT/plastics/ortho)?

  • USMLE Step 1

    Votes: 129 74.6%

  • MCAT

    Votes: 44 25.4%
  • Total voters
    173
xffan624 said:
Well, at least you're not out 100k+ in useless debt at that point. Fail step 1 twice and that is what you are facing.
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That is true about the money. IBR would ensure you dont starve. Plus people getting Masters degrees can be in the same boat with a questionable degree, so doesnt really make for a unique hell. I bet if you ask anyone who has failed to gain acceptance to medical school in the US if they would take a gamble of 100k vs be a doctor ,a lot of people would jump on the gamble. Caribbean schools prey on the answer to this question.
 
libertyyne said:
That is true about the money. IBR would ensure you dont starve. Plus people getting Masters degrees can be in the same boat with a questionable degree, so doesnt really make for a unique hell. I bet if you ask anyone who has failed to gain acceptance to medical school in the US if they would take a gamble of 100k vs be a doctor ,a lot of people would jump on the gamble. Caribbean schools prey on the answer to this question.
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I think the fundamental conflict in this thread is premeds who think not getting into medical school is the worst thing that could happen, while you have medical students telling you that getting in and failing out or being pigeonholed into a career you don't want because your Step 1 is crap is much worse.

There are lots of things that one could do to be successful in life. I had a career after one halfhearted, unsuccessful attempt in getting in to medical school right out of UG (MCAT wasn't the factor that kept me out either). I survived and did some other things for a while until I decided that I wanted to give it another (better) shot. I got in, but honestly, I could have kept doing the same job if things hadn't worked out. Once I got in, the pressure to stay and be successful has been greater than any pressure I felt to initially get in. The stakes are higher, because I'm committed to this path. Before I got in, there was no specific commitment. I also say this as someone who never had ambitions for a competitive specialty. How much greater the pressure is for them I can only imagine.
 
xffan624 said:
I think the fundamental conflict in this thread is premeds who think not getting into medical school is the worst thing that could happen, while you have medical students telling you that getting in and failing out or being pigeonholed into a career you don't want because your Step 1 is crap is much worse.

There are lots of things that one could do to be successful in life. I had a career after one halfhearted, unsuccessful attempt in getting in to medical school right out of UG (MCAT wasn't the factor that kept me out either). I survived and did some other things for a while until I decided that I wanted to give it another (better) shot. I got in, but honestly, I could have kept doing the same job if things hadn't worked out. Once I got in, the pressure to stay and be successful has been greater than any pressure I felt to initially get in. The stakes are higher, because I'm committed to this path. Before I got in, there was no specific commitment. I also say this as someone who never had ambitions for a competitive specialty. How much greater the pressure is for them I can only imagine.
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I appreciate your perspective, and perspective of people changes as they go through the process. I do believe that mitigation / minimization of regret is a major factor in living life. I too am going to medical school after similar circumstances as you did after having a different career. I do believe the regret of not going / getting into medical school would have been a major life dissatisfaction for me therefore the reason of giving up a cush job and career to struggle again through school. Going and failing out would mean that I will not suffer from that regret ever again, since I had atleast made it to medical school. The olympic analogy is an apt one. Plus the fact that 90%+ students in medical school in the US atleast pass the step on the first or second try goes to show the risk of failing out is real but small compared to the risk of not being admitted to medical school in the first place.

So for most people STEP is not a question of if they will go on to become a doctor, rather it is what type of doctor they can become vs not becoming a physician at all.
 
xffan624 said:
And how many times can you retake the MCAT vs retaking step 1? You probably have at least 3 chances to do well and still have a good chance to apply and be accepted. You can also retake a mediocre performance. With step 1, you don't have that chance. It's either pass or fail and with a step 1 fail, you get one chance to make it right. After that, you're pretty much done.
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I think you can take step 3 times
 
libertyyne said:
90%+ students in medical school in the US atleast pass the step
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It's waaaay higher than that. Unless you have stats in the extreme low end you have like a 98-99% chance of making it through. It makes no sense to find likelihood of failing out to be more stressful than likelihood of never getting in!
 
xffan624 said:
Yeah, try getting into a residency with that... Let me know how it works for you.
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pretty sure you could find some community FM residency in the middle of no where... All you have to do is pass the test... There have been multiple threads on here about people with step 1 failures who matched
 
efle said:
It's waaaay higher than that. Unless you have stats in the extreme low end you have like a 98-99% chance of making it through. It makes no sense to find likelihood of failing out to be more stressful than likelihood of never getting in!
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It the military we had a way of characterizing risk in a severity and probability matrix. I think it helps to think about things like that.

MCAT 25 or less (first time taking) - Severity: Marginal (you can retake and recover), Probability: Occasional
= Medium risk

Step 1 failure (first time taking) - Severity: Catastrophic (your residency chances are now limited and you must pass on retake for a decent chance at any. Also you will possibly have to delay starting 3rd year and maybe take a year off). Probability: Remote
= Serious risk

RiskAssessmentMatrix.png
 
Frogger27 said:
pretty sure you could find some community FM residency in the middle of no where... All you have to do is pass the test... There have been multiple threads on here about people with step 1 failures who matched
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Multiple failures? It happens, is it something to depend on? I wouldn't. Caribbean grads who never have to take the MCAT or get scores that are "failures" also match into residencies so neither are complete exclusions.
 
xffan624 said:
It the military we had a way of characterizing risk in a severity and probability matrix. I think it helps to think about things like that.

MCAT 25 or less (first time taking) - Severity: Marginal (you can retake and recover), Probability: Occasional
= Medium risk

Step 1 failure (first time taking) - Severity: Catastrophic (your residency chances are now limited and you must pass on retake for a decent chance at any. Also you will possibly have to delay starting 3rd year and maybe take a year off). Probability: Remote
= Serious risk

RiskAssessmentMatrix.png
Click to expand...
Not getting into medical school would be 1. C
 
I haven't taken the STEP 1 yet, so I can't say what's harder or easy, but not having a CARS section is a major plus
 
libertyyne said:
Not getting into medical school would be 1. C
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Why catastrophic severity? This is the premed mentality I'm talking about. Your life is not over if you don't get in to medical school. There are 50 million jobs out there. Some of them even don't have the high levels of depression and low job satisfaction that medicine does. Plus there is always next year. Also while getting a poor MCAT will certainly cause you to not get in to medical school, not getting in to medical school is not always caused by a poor MCAT (ie. the two are not equal) so let's compare apples to apples here, like I just did.
 
xffan624 said:
Why catastrophic severity? This is the premed mentality I'm talking about. Your life is not over if you don't get in to medical school. There are 50 million jobs out there. Some of them even don't have the high levels of depression and low job satisfaction that medicine does. Plus there is always next year. Also while getting a poor MCAT will certainly cause you to not get in to medical school, not getting in to medical school is not always caused by a poor MCAT (ie. the two are not equal) so let's compare apples to apples here, like I just did.
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Haha good luck getting SDN to agree that medicine is just another job and many other things would make us just as happy
 
libertyyne said:
Yeah but if you go to an MD school , even with a failed step one attempt you will still match to a FM residency. If you fail the MCAT that means no med school. Being a doctor is greater than not being a doctor.
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Both require a retake and with both you could still get into residency/Med school. Do you really think one failed mcat limits your choices more than a failed step? It's an interesting question
 
xffan624 said:
FTFY
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But the people disagreeing with you right now have work experience outside of MD ! If my accepts were rescinded tomorrow it would be catastrophic to me, not just "oh well guess I'll stick with this decent gap job forever"
 
efle said:
But the people disagreeing with you right now have work experience outside of MD ! If my accepts were rescinded tomorrow it would be catastrophic to me, not just "oh well guess I'll stick with this decent gap job forever"
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Calling it a "gap job" makes me question the legitimacy of your work experience. You're doing the job in between college and your application to medical school. My job was a "career" that I abandoned to attend medical school. Have you ever had a "career"?
 
xffan624 said:
Calling it a "gap job" makes me question the legitimacy of your work experience. You're doing the job in between college and your application to medical school. My job was a "career" that I abandoned to attend medical school. Have you ever had a "career"?
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I have. and i would consider it catastrophic failure.
 
libertyyne said:
I have. and i would consider it catastrophic failure.
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Not getting in to medical school would be one for you. Not matching into a residency would be one for me. Neither one of those are were we actually comparing in this thread. We're comparing the MCAT vs. Step 1. On a single sitting, I would argue that it's evident that Step 1 has the higher stakes.
 
xffan624 said:
Calling it a "gap job" makes me question the legitimacy of your work experience. You're doing the job in between college and your application to medical school. My job was a "career" that I abandoned to attend medical school. Have you ever had a "career"?
Click to expand...
How much more than a year would I need to work a job, before I would be allowed to say I'd be unhappy with this being the closest to MD I could get?
 
xffan624 said:
Not getting in to medical school would be one for you. Not matching into a residency would be one for me. Neither one of those are were we actually comparing in this thread. We're comparing the MCAT vs. Step 1. On a single sitting, I would argue that it's evident that Step 1 has the higher stakes.
Click to expand...
My comment was merely a response to you minimizing @efle 's work.
 
xffan624 said:
Neither one of those are were we actually comparing in this thread. We're comparing the MCAT vs. Step 1. On a single sitting, I would argue that it's evident that Step 1 has the higher stakes.
Click to expand...
That's actually the only comparison that supports you though, losing medical career now vs more catastrophically losing medical career + saddled with debt.

A reasonable comparison of doing somewhat poorly or mediocre on each totally changes the answer. Then it's no/unlikely MD vs limited specialty choice, and most of us would prefer the latter.
 
efle said:
How much more than a year would I need to work a job, before I would be allowed to say I'd be unhappy with this being the closest to MD I could get?
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Sorry, it's silly to make that determination on my part. But my point would be that you can't know that you would be completely unhappy doing anything but medicine as you have not really attempted to do anything besides prepare for medical school. I will withdraw that part of my argument, but I will also state that there's a reason why ADCOM ask questions like what would you do if you could not do medicine. I got asked it during residency interviews and I had the obvious answer of my previous career, but I also had another answer that was a little more quirky and conversational.
 
efle said:
That's actually the only comparison that supports you though, losing medical career now vs more catastrophically losing medical career + saddled with debt.

A reasonable comparison of doing somewhat poorly or mediocre on each totally changes the answer. Then it's no/unlikely MD vs limited specialty choice, and most of us would prefer the latter.
Click to expand...

If you do mediocre on the MCAT you can retake it and do better and get in to medical school and excel. You cannot do the same on Step 1. You are forever determined by your score. Your only redemption is doing better on Step 2, but still there are many doors/careers closed to you.
 
xffan624 said:
It the military we had a way of characterizing risk in a severity and probability matrix. I think it helps to think about things like that.

MCAT 25 or less (first time taking) - Severity: Marginal (you can retake and recover), Probability: Occasional
= Medium risk

Step 1 failure (first time taking) - Severity: Catastrophic (your residency chances are now limited and you must pass on retake for a decent chance at any. Also you will possibly have to delay starting 3rd year and maybe take a year off). Probability: Remote
= Serious risk

RiskAssessmentMatrix.png
Click to expand...
If we changed the question to importance of Step 1 vs MCAT (average of first 3 attempts--not any 1 single attempt). Would that change your MCAT severity rating? I'd put it at 2C-Serious.
 
xffan624 said:
Sorry, it's silly to make that determination on my part. But my point would be that you can't know that you would be completely unhappy doing anything but medicine as you have not really attempted to do anything besides prepare for medical school. I will withdraw that part of my argument, but I will also state that there's a reason why ADCOM ask questions like what would you do if you could not do medicine. I got asked it during residency interviews and I had the obvious answer of my previous career, but I also had another answer that was a little more quirky and conversational.
Click to expand...
Oh I agree with this, it's not like I'd jump off a building if I had to work in science or engineering or something.


xffan624 said:
If you do mediocre on the MCAT you can retake it and do better and get in to medical school and excel. You cannot do the same on Step 1. You are forever determined by your score. Your only redemption is doing better on Step 2, but still there are many doors/careers closed to you.
Click to expand...
I should rephrase then. There's a great deal of data (in AAMC publications) that significant improvement from, say, 24 up to highly competitive ranges is exceedingly rare.

So it's finding out you are very unlikely to ever get the MD, vs finding out you are even more unlikely to match competitive specialties. I'd still much prefer the latter.

Think of it this way - if you could offer someone a guaranteed medical school spot as long as they signed away their ability to match to the most competitive specialties, do you think you'd struggle to find takers?
 
efle said:
Oh I agree with this, it's not like I'd jump off a building if I had to work in science or engineering or something.



I should rephrase then. There's a great deal of data (in AAMC publications) that significant improvement from, say, 24 up to highly competitive ranges is exceedingly rare.

So it's finding out you are very unlikely to ever get the MD, vs finding out you are even more unlikely to match competitive specialties. I'd still much prefer the latter.

Think of it this way - if you could offer someone a guaranteed medical school spot as long as they signed away their ability to match to the most competitive specialties, do you think you'd struggle to find takers?
Click to expand...

You keep comparing oranges to apples. Compare the MCAT to Step 1, not the medical school admissions process as a whole to Step 1.
 
It's not at all, it's a very straightforward comparison of consequences for a weak MCAT vs a weak Step 1. No MD vs gotta aim at accessible specialties. Many, many people would love to accept the latter to jump over the former.

Which honestly you never even disagreed with above, your whole bit was about which is worse to do catastrophically, horribly bad on to a degree only a few percent of the barely admitted people do.
 
efle said:
It's not at all, it's a very straightforward comparison of consequences for a weak MCAT vs a weak Step 1. No MD vs gotta aim at accessible specialties. Many, many people would love to accept the latter to jump over the former.

Which honestly you never even disagreed with above, your whole bit was about which is worse to do catastrophically, horribly bad on to a degree only a few percent of the barely admitted people do.
Click to expand...

A weak MCAT, you retake and do better. A weak Step 1, you change the course of your career potentially. You also can forget any of the nice academic residencies in the desirable cities even in a non competitive residency. I just applied with a Step 1 comfortably above the average for an noncompetitive specialty. I didn't even get interviews as an MD at any of the top tier residencies where I applied. Just because most people are successful doesn't mean that it's as easy as you think.

Anyway, I think we've hit our point where neither is going convince the other. Come back after you've taken Step 1 and seen what it means for your future and let me know where your perspective is then.
 
efle said:
It's not at all, it's a very straightforward comparison of consequences for a weak MCAT vs a weak Step 1. No MD vs gotta aim at accessible specialties. Many, many people would love to accept the latter to jump over the former.

Which honestly you never even disagreed with above, your whole bit was about which is worse to do catastrophically, horribly bad on to a degree only a few percent of the barely admitted people do.
Click to expand...
xffan624 said:
A weak MCAT, you retake and do better. A weak Step 1, you change the course of your career potentially. You also can forget any of the nice academic residencies in the desirable cities even in a non competitive residency. I just applied with a Step 1 comfortably above the average for an noncompetitive specialty. I didn't even get interviews as an MD at any of the top tier residencies where I applied. Just because most people are successful doesn't mean that it's as easy as you think.

Anyway, I think we've hit our point where neither is going convince the other. Come back after you've taken Step 1 and seen what it means for your future and let me know where your perspective is then.
Click to expand...

i wouldn't be surprised if @efle handily demolishes Step 1 and still maintains his opinions.
 
xffan624 said:
A weak MCAT, you retake and do better. A weak Step 1, you change the course of your career potentially. You also can forget any of the nice academic residencies in the desirable cities even in a non competitive residency. I just applied with a Step 1 comfortably above the average for an noncompetitive specialty. I didn't even get interviews as an MD at any of the top tier residencies where I applied. Just because most people are successful doesn't mean that it's as easy as you think.

Anyway, I think we've hit our point where neither is going convince the other. Come back after you've taken Step 1 and seen what it means for your future and let me know where your perspective is then.
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Again, that's not reality according to the AAMC dataset. Just because you imagine it easy for most people to jump a bunch of points on a retake doesn't mean it is!

Anyways I think there's an easy way to put it that is pretty objective: The consequences for being at the middle of the curve are worse for MCAT. The consequences for being way at the far left failing tail are worse for Step.

Lawper said:
i wouldn't be surprised if @efle handily demolishes Step 1 and still maintains his opinions.
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Me either, because how I did on the MCAT has nothing to do with my opinion of the consequences for a mediocre or weak score.
 
Shams al Deen said:
DO schools accept 25s? No wonder there's still a stigma lmao. I thought they bumped those averages up to 30 while MDs was 33.
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What kind of BS assessment is this? Just b/c someone doesn't excel on a particular test doesn't mean they can't become a good physician. There are multitude of factors involved. This sort of arrogance and lack of insight is an embarrassment to the medical community.
 
Beezlebub said:
What kind of BS assessment is this? Just b/c someone doesn't excel on a particular test doesn't mean they can't become a good physician. There are multitude of factors involved. This sort of arrogance and lack of insight is an embarrassment to the medical community.
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you are arguing against something else that's irrelevant to the topic at hand
 
Lawper said:
not really. and even if it is, there is no reason to derail it by arguing on something else entirely.
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"For example, if one wants to go into IM, which exam is higher stakes? I would argue that it is the MCAT."

Case closed.
 
Beezlebub said:
What kind of BS assessment is this? Just b/c someone doesn't excel on a particular test doesn't mean they can't become a good physician. There are multitude of factors involved. This sort of arrogance and lack of insight is an embarrassment to the medical community.
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Someone can't take a joke.
 
Beezlebub said:
It's okay. I still love you. All the best with STEP 1 result, I'm sure you did fine. Many people feel nervous afterwards, but a lot of them usually rock it.
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Shams al Deen said:
36 and 257. So I think that is pretty in-line with what you'd expect from percentiles and the different pool of test takers. I think 36 is ~ 97%tile while 257 is ~ 93%tile. A bit lower percentile on step1 because the pool of test takers is different. Neither of these scores are elite on SDN, but I am grateful and happy with them.
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he crushed both Step 1 and MCAT.

i still feel the Step 1 test taker pool is smarter and more prepared than the MCAT test taker pool
 
Lawper said:
he crushed both Step 1 and MCAT.

i still feel the Step 1 test taker pool is smarter and more prepared than the MCAT test taker pool
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Yea, I thought this was a recent thread and he didn't update his post No. 1. Congrats to him. Smarter is indeterminate, but more hardworking is definitive b/c med school naturally conditions students to have better work ethics and time management, which ultimately improves academic performance.
 
Beezlebub said:
Yea, I thought this was a recent thread and he didn't update his post No. 1. Congrats to him. Smarter is indeterminate, but more hardworking is definitive b/c med school naturally conditions students to have better work ethics and time management, which ultimately improves academic performance.
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Why is smarter indeterminate?
 
walloobi said:
Why is smarter indeterminate?
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Some guy with crazy hair that changed the world said it best: "Everybody is a Genius. But If You Judge a Fish by Its Ability to Climb a Tree, It Will Live Its Whole Life Believing that It is Stupid"

 
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