Hmm well I would suppose that the numbers themselves equate to some ability to recall information in specific scenarios and the ability to triage effectively. Which if the case I would then say yes.
Whoa Whoa Whoa... I said NOTHING about volunteering. I think it is VITAL to volunteer. (I wake up 4AM every Tuesday to Volunteer at a local hospital...) I am just saying that I gives you a VERY unique perspective on serving.
I would have to disagree with you. There are people, like my grandfather, who can tell you about the color of his third house he ever lived in as a child, but you know what... he can't read or write... Recall has nothing to do with brilliance. And good scores has nothing to do with being smart either. It just says how well you can take a test and think like they want you to. There is a mindset they need you to have before you can walk into Med school...
Remembering the color of a house isn't miraculous or brilliant by the way. Analyzing a scenario and applying knowledge or equations to it that you have learned without the passage telling you or put right asking you parallels making a diagnosis. Again triaging is a huge part of the mcat.
touche.
I know the feeling. Nothing against UM Med School it's a great place and really good school but...as soon as I got into medical school, some people who were not aware how hard it is to get into medical school automatically assumed it was UM Med School. Constantly being asked "Is it UM Med School" sometimes makes me want to explain to people just how hard it is to (1) get into any medical school and (2) get into that specific medical school
Same! I approached physics as a way to build my critical thinking and problem-solving skills.
If you have time, you could always just teach yourself. That's what I did with R.
Yes for physics (algebra based should be sufficient), but no for math. All students need to understand calculus at a fundamental level. It's just too ubiquitous to ignore. Additionally, students should be required to take a biostat class. Most research that physicians do will be primarily statistics based, so students should understand things like Bayesian likelihood ratios, Kaplan-Meier curves, wilcoxon and log-rank tests, and of course two sample t tests and chi squared. This will come up all the time in the literature.
He was being sarcastic.
Exactly, nothing I said would refute that.
Here's the issue: the game is not designed to identify hard-working, brilliant students and reward them, it's built to identify and reward high GPAs. These can be very different things, imo.
I didn't either. And most of my classmates are ok in small doses only. Some just really suck. All of that is fine because I've found some classmates that I really like. Most schools have class that are big enough where you'll find a few like minded people. The rest don't really matter. You'll be ok
I think that GPA is actually a more reasonable measurement of functional intelligence than any other potential measure. It controls for students who are incredibly intelligent and equally lazy, as well as students who work hard, but aren't smart enough to get the strong GPA. Everyone with high GPA either works hard enough and/or is smart enough to maintain the GPA. The MCAT then controls for variation in grade inflation and major. I think it's actually pretty elegant.
What if we then give them a standardized test to differentiate these traits? A high GPA + high score would indicate hardworking and/or brilliant. Low GPA + high score means brilliant. High GPA + Low score means grade inflation. It's not a perfect system, but I would be impressed if the premeds complaining about it could give an actual alternative.
Totally agree 100%. In the department I'm in (philosophy) there's one professor who's renown internationally as a leader in a certain area of epistemology. He's also notorious for never giving As, and sometimes Bs to very good students. Most get Cs. I was warned by another pre-med not to take him on account of the grading, despite the fact that he's an amazing lecturer. Well, I didn't listen and took him anyway, and it really opened my eyes. I'll probably end up paying with my grade (I'll see how I did in a couple weeks), but the fact I had to choose bugs me about the whole process.
It can be, but if you aren't "brilliant" or "hard working" enough to have the foresight to do well in your classes so that you can get a high gpa, then I would argue that you aren't truly that brilliant or hard working.
Yes, this is perhaps true in the technical sense of life-saving. However, what about the lives of the applicants? Don't we deserve to be valued slightly more than test scores?
I took a large number of classes in a hard science for a first major and soft science/humanities for a second major. The latter was so much easier it's hard to compare them. A system that favors a 3.8+ GPA the same in any major is inviting people to take a bunch of easy fluff requiring little brainpower and only moderate effort to memorize some stuff, imo.
You know, I always wondered why this is the case. Surely adcoms know the disparity in difficulty between different majors. Is it the ranking system? Because schools don't want to seem like they accept people with lower GPAs, thus affecting their image?
Great diagnosis doctor! Now how do we fix it?
For GPA, have the top end universities inflate the **** out of their grading distributions. Most are either already like this or have started down that path.
There are both true and false points to this discussion. First, what you study does matter. There's a reason why med schools evaluate a separate science GPA as opposed to just your cumulative GPA. All pre-meds, regardless of major, have to take the same pre-reqs. If you're a hard science major, these pre-reqs probably make up the majority of your major's courses anyways. So, by looking at science GPA, schools can evaluate the difference between a humanities major with a 3.7 cumulative and 3.2 science and a science major with a 3.7 cumulative and a 3.8 science.
They pry figure that the MCAT and the pre-med required courses will deflate those students in easier majors who can't hack it.
I like this line of thinking but I haven't seen in borne out irl. If anything the people with psych majors that are all about playing the game tend to build up the best ECs - more time for stuff outside academics and more likely to have that stuff be the things admissions looks for.
I think a good idea would be to have grades in the core classes for the major, and P/F option for electives - including those within the major. That way you have enough grades for some objective evaluation, but don't have to worry about your GPA with harder/interesting electives. My school is pretty strict with P/F - you can only take it if the credits don't apply for your degree, i.e. if you're taking credits above what's required to graduate.
Maybe, but I still think the required score is too high. If the median MCAT is a 500, shouldn't anything above the median be considered competitive, as opposed to a score 35% above the median? This is how most other grad school entrance exams are evaluated.
Maybe. I'm definitely biased because I've always prided myself on only chasing after things that I found interesting. The only game playing that I've ever done was to start volunteering when I decided on medicine, but I made sure to do what I loved in that. I suppose that I'll be a decent trail for my hypothesis about ECs, even if n only =1.
Supply and demand... too many competitive people want to be doctors. It inflates the matriculable MCAT way past the mean.
It's the portion admitted vs the portion that are capable according to longitudinal data that paints the real picture. A full half of people taking the test score well enough to predict success in med school, but yet the admits are going almost entirely to the top quarter or less. If you're from a state with a very competitive public system, or no public system, it gets downright absurd - the average matriculant score for some states is like 90th percentile.
If that was done for the MCAT the result would be Top 20 schools not be able to distinguish themselves through their higher stats. The same people would get into med school, just people towards the bottom end of the pack would have a better chance at a more prestigious school. Still a better idea I agree
But the people getting the higher percentile did BETTER, so if a school has the ability to accept better students, why not? Just because someone can succeed doesn't mean the should get equal consideration with somebody who did better than them.
I agree, which is why I think we need more med schools, which can then accept more people, who can then become doctors, which will then lower the doctor shortage we have. But....this is a whole other topic to get into.
You can't have this without increasing residency slots.
