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has anyone else noticed this trend?
caffeine37 said:has anyone else noticed this trend?
caffeine37 said:has anyone else noticed this trend?
caffeine37 said:has anyone else noticed this trend?
There's hard data on this, actually. Looking at this AAMC data, you can see that matriculating math majors had the best composite MCAT at 31.5, and the physics and chemistry majors the second at 30.8. Humanities came in third at 30.6.Brain said:I'm not so sure about this. The pre-health advisor at my undergrad said just the opposite, that it's very common for non-science majors to come in with fabulous GPAs but really low MCATs. It may depend on the school though and perhaps you're only hearing about the success stories.
probably same reason non science majors seem to fare better in med school admissions. since they dont default to premed like all science majors too, the ones who are premed tend to be smarter, whereas in science there are lots of people in the lower end of the bell curve who need to get weeded out to realize med is not for them.caffeine37 said:has anyone else noticed this trend?
Organic Chemistry, the great weed-whacker.Shredder said:probably same reason non science majors seem to fare better in med school admissions. since they dont default to premed like all science majors too, the ones who are premed tend to be smarter, whereas in science there are lots of people in the lower end of the bell curve who need to get weeded out to realize med is not for them.
liverotcod said:Because the science on the MCAT is really easy. Success on the MCAT depends mostly on rapid, accurate assimilation and regurgitation of difficult passage material, something non-science majors tend to get a lot of practice in.
Plus, we're just a heck of a lot smarter than the scientists.
MaDe in Cali said:Non-science majors read a lot and hence are well versed in the ability to get the jist of passages (science and verbal alike), dissect out important bits, understand the flow of the passage, and remember where to find small details. If you can do that, it helps tremendously on all the passages.
Note to non-science majors who are still early on in their pre-med career: READ A LOT!!! I know you might hate it, but you'll get used to it!
liverotcod said:Others have speculated endlessly on why bio and health science majors fare so poorly on the MCAT. I don't care to, but the facts are indisputable, it seems to me.
Exactly what I was going to post, but not so concisely.UCLAstudent said:It could be because biology is the "default" major for a lot of pre-meds and therefore the major contains a lot of the less qualified applicants, moreso than other majors. Perhaps these people weren't weeded out during undergrad and consequently weigh down the MCAT average for the major. Just a thought.
liverotcod said:Organic Chemistry, the great weed-whacker.
I think we're inventing a new science here on SDN:
Appliconomics, or perhaps Getinology - the scientific study of how to get in to medical school.