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If you had the money (or the borrowing power) what would or should you pay for an additional point on the MCAT? That depends on what it's worth to be a doctor, and how the incremental point affects your chances.
There's no way to estimate the intangible value of getting into medical school, but it is possible to estimate the financial value, and I've given it a shot. The answer, based on what I believe to be reasonable assumptions (which I detail below):
For a candidate whose MCAT score is in the marginal range, a single additional point is worth somewhat over $10,000.
It turns out the calculations are powerfully sensitive to some of the assumptions, so I will lay out them out in detail for those who doubt, or who want to play around with them. I'm also making the calculations available to everyone who wants to look at them: just click here for the google spreadsheet.
The toughest part of the calculation is estimating how a single point affects one's chances, but I solved that as follows: First, consider the lowest score you could reasonably imagine getting, and estimate your probability of getting in. That number will be near zero for many MCAT takers. Next, estimate the maximum score you can imagine getting, and again estimate the probability of acceptance. The calculation works well for strong candidates, i.e., those for whom a good enough MCAT score will get them interviews, and who will have a good chance at acceptance if they get interviews. Now, because it's probably not possible to estimate where you will fall in that range, use the average: the average incremental probability of acceptance is the difference between the probabilities, divided by the score range.
To illustrate, an example: Suppose the lowest score you can imagine getting is a 22, and the highest you can imagine getting is a 32. (conservative assumptions; a tighter range increases the value) Suppose that with a 22 there's some chance you'll still get in, call it 10%. With a 32 there's a good chance you'll get in somewhere, maybe 70%. There's a 60% difference between the chances, and a 10 point score range, so on average, an additional point increases your chances by 6%. (Some points will be worth more, some less, but by hypothesis you don't know where in the range you'll fall.)
Using my first set of assumptions I calculated a net present value per point of about $11,900, though this level of precision is silly. Really, the importance of the calculation is not to show what the number is, but to show its order of magnitude.
The assumptions I used are detailed in my next post.
There's no way to estimate the intangible value of getting into medical school, but it is possible to estimate the financial value, and I've given it a shot. The answer, based on what I believe to be reasonable assumptions (which I detail below):
For a candidate whose MCAT score is in the marginal range, a single additional point is worth somewhat over $10,000.
It turns out the calculations are powerfully sensitive to some of the assumptions, so I will lay out them out in detail for those who doubt, or who want to play around with them. I'm also making the calculations available to everyone who wants to look at them: just click here for the google spreadsheet.
The toughest part of the calculation is estimating how a single point affects one's chances, but I solved that as follows: First, consider the lowest score you could reasonably imagine getting, and estimate your probability of getting in. That number will be near zero for many MCAT takers. Next, estimate the maximum score you can imagine getting, and again estimate the probability of acceptance. The calculation works well for strong candidates, i.e., those for whom a good enough MCAT score will get them interviews, and who will have a good chance at acceptance if they get interviews. Now, because it's probably not possible to estimate where you will fall in that range, use the average: the average incremental probability of acceptance is the difference between the probabilities, divided by the score range.
To illustrate, an example: Suppose the lowest score you can imagine getting is a 22, and the highest you can imagine getting is a 32. (conservative assumptions; a tighter range increases the value) Suppose that with a 22 there's some chance you'll still get in, call it 10%. With a 32 there's a good chance you'll get in somewhere, maybe 70%. There's a 60% difference between the chances, and a 10 point score range, so on average, an additional point increases your chances by 6%. (Some points will be worth more, some less, but by hypothesis you don't know where in the range you'll fall.)
Using my first set of assumptions I calculated a net present value per point of about $11,900, though this level of precision is silly. Really, the importance of the calculation is not to show what the number is, but to show its order of magnitude.
The assumptions I used are detailed in my next post.