I can see your point of view....but I disagree. If you have a 4.0, you should know how to be prepared for an exam THIS BIG. Stuff happens (suppose a loved one died the night before or something) but I can't see a 4.0 student not being able to step up to take arguably the biggest exam of his/her life.
You have obviously not had many major things occur in your life. There are plenty of things that can cause you to lose your concentration. You have every right to disagree, but until
you are placed in a situation where this occurs to you,
you will obviously not understand how this can happen to someone. You can be a person who has retained all the info you learned in college, but it doesn't mena you can't run into situations where you cannot concentrate and cannot recall all info or you mix info up and start making errors due to second guessing yourself. What you view as the biggest exam in one's life turns ends up taking second place in one's mind because of the situation that person in dealing with.
examples:
-A close family member being diagnosed with cancer recently
-A spouse losing a job and you don't know how you are going to make put food on the table, pay the rent, etc.
-A recent death of a loved one/friend
-A major person health issue
-You could get sick (flu) the night before the exam
-A major break up with a spouse/fiance/BF/GF
You may think that people should be able to overcome these things for the exam, but every person is different. You may have a heart of stone and can turn your emotions on and off at any time. Not everyone is that way. The only exam I came close to failing in undergrad came 3 days after the loss of a good high school friend to drunk driving and 2 days after I had to deal with my mother having surgery for a rare for of cancer.
Almost two years ago, my very close friend here in d-school was
brutally murdered by her husband. I can tell you that had I had to take my boards then, I would have failed. I was NUMB for over a week. I couldn't concentrate. Eventually, it settled down and life got back to normal, but for a short time it was a very traumatic experience for our class - especially those of us who witnessed the murder.
On top of that, two months later I had a major life changing event happen. Over a 5 month period, I developed uncontrollable tremors which forced me to withdraw from medical school because I couldn't control my hands and legs. On the same day that I withdrew from school, we found out that my mother-in-law was found dead in her house. She had been in the house dead for 15 days (fom the evidence we found). There is no way in hell that if this had happened a week, two weeks a month before taking the DAT or NBDE that I would have done well. I had a 3.95 sGPA in undergrad. I still wouldn't have recalled all that info. You just don't know until you experience these life situations! For those who are interested, a treatment was found and I am back in school.
🙂
Disagree all you want. But until you have had to deal with a situation where it is next to impossible for YOU to devote your full concentration to, you cannot speak for the rest of us that have. I am fortunate that this has never happened to me during a major exam like the SAT, DAT or NBDE. But I do know based on exams that I have taken that I wouldn't have performed as well as I could during normal situations.