Writing MCAT multiple times to achieve a 41R...

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ClaudioAbbado said:
Hello everyone,

Here is my situation with MCAT. I have written it a total of 5 times, 1st time in my junior year scoring a miserable 24O, 2nd time in my senior year scoring a semi-miserable 27O, and then I took a year off in which I did nothing but study my MCAT and got a score of 38P, 36P, and finally a 41R on my last and 5th attempt.

I thought this 41R is fine and dandy until I been hearing from people that med schools actually AVERAGE all your attempts instead of looking at the highest/most recent one?? I am so worried about this, as I scored a miserable 24 and 27 before. Can someone please CALM my nerves and tell me my this 41R was not in vain??

I'm instate for Nebraska, and UNMC's school of medicine only tells me that they 'consider' all scores. This has me worried!


-Claudio
Click to expand...

Different schools deal with multiple MCAT scores differently. Some take the best of all attempts, some average, some take the best of each section.

But regardless of how the schools consider your MCAT score, all schools will question your judgement. Although MCAT is a big part of your application, it is not the only thing on your application. You should have stopped at the 38 as others mentioned and spend the time doing something more useful. The three point increase is not going to open any additional doors. In fact it will close many doors that would have otherwise been open because of your lack of judgement.
 
Nothing that OP can do about the past.

OP, just know that each school treats the MCAT differently. Some take your most recent MCAT, some take your composite score (highest of each section, regardless of which test) and others will average all the scores. Specifically research what schools you are intrested in and find out how they treat the MCAT.

As others have noted, the MCAT is only one part of the application. Now that you have a good score in the bag, you need to make sure that you have an adequate or above average GPA. Find some time to volunteer and get clinical experience (you can do both those things at the same time). Shadow a few docs. If you can find some research to get involved in, great, but it not, focus on the clinical experience, volunteering and shadowing.

You will need to be crafty with your PS and secondaries.

As schrizto pointed out, it seems like you may have been victim of bad advising. Use SDN as a resource and seek out other professional services for advice in the future.

You want to go to med school and if you play it smart from here on out, you can. 👍
 
you've already spoken to the school you want to get into, and they told you "[we] 'consider' all scores", so what exactly are you here to ask? if their definition of "consider" is unclear to you (since you put it in quotations), i guess you could call them back to find out. sounds to me like they're going to look at everything and perhaps come to the same conclusions as some of the people on here. or maybe they'll like your dedication to achieving this (admittedly strange, far-fetched, and unnecessary) goal. you'll have to just apply to find out.
 
Can't believe how many posts this got despite how obvious of a troll this was. (No PM with "proof" after ~12 hours). Lots of loss here.
 
amine2086 said:
Different schools deal with multiple MCAT scores differently. Some take the best of all attempts, some average, some take the best of each section.

But regardless of how the schools consider your MCAT score, all schools will question your judgement. Although MCAT is a big part of your application, it is not the only thing on your application. You should have stopped at the 38 as others mentioned and spend the time doing something more useful. The three point increase is not going to open any additional doors. In fact it will close many doors that would have otherwise been open because of your lack of judgement.
Click to expand...


Go to the schools' websites, and do some research! It depends on the schools. Most will take the most recent one.
 
Cyradis said:
A 38 is 98.4-99.0th percentile. I got 38, I know what I'm talking about. If you want I can screen-shot the percentile ranking next to my score if you still think 38 is 99.9th.

And 38 was on the very low range of what I was expecting based on practices (yes first and only write), I was very disappointed in my score. Didn't come on SDN to make a post about it, but I can certainly understand wanting to rewrite a 38 - I came this close | | to rewriting it (this was 2 year ago). I still sometimes think in passing when people bring up MCAT rewrites whether maybe if I had rewritten and gotten the 40-42 I was expecting, maybe I'd be going to a different school in the fall than I am (not that I'm unhappy with where I'm going, but I fell in love with Yale's program when I interviewed there). At the very top-tier schools, a 38 only places you as somewhat above average academically - it's by no means an amazing score anymore. You need 40+ to have a "great" score when you're competing there. No I don't think that if I had that 40-42 I would have been assured acceptance, but you probably know as well as anyone how fine the differences can come down to when adcoms make decisions between otherwise similar applicants.

In the end I just didn't re-write because I didn't want to deal with the ridicule I'd probably get from friends who all have the same attitudes as most people on SDN with the "why would rewrite a 38????" attitude, and also a bit of laziness :laugh: (okay maybe a lot of it).

Anyway my story really doesn't relate that closely to the OP with 5 rewrites =/, but more so to all the people who can't understand why you'd want to rewrite a 38.

OP: I think your original question's been answered? It depends on where you want to go - some (most) schools take most recent, some take highest, and there's probably some that average (although I can't name any of the top of my head).
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You're almost as crazy as the OP in theory. You just didn't act on it.
 
142y5if.gif
 
Cyradis said:
You absolutely can get into a top school without that MCAT. Doesn't mean that it wouldn't make a difference.

You're missing the point: I'm not saying that such a score is critical to getting in, but simply that it could have helped and when things are close, it could make a difference (and certain other areas of my application were weak out of a failure on my part to do research ahead of time). I think it'd be pretty disingenuous to suggest that an adcom wouldn't care about the difference between a 38 and a 42.
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One of the two of us has sat on an admissions committee and is in a position to comment on how adcoms evaluate applications.

(Hint: it's not you.)
 
drizzt3117 said:
One of the two of us has sat on an admissions committee and is in a position to comment on how adcoms evaluate applications.

(Hint: it's not you.)
Click to expand...

Alright well I don't think continuing to debate this will get me very far. I still think in the back of my head it could have made a difference, but I'll let it drop now. You are indeed in a better position to know than me.

P.S. to whoever said all the people they knew with 40s went to smaller, less well-known schools, it's the opposite experience with my friends/acquaintances. The 40-43 ranges I know/met over half went to top 10 schools. Personal anecdote doesn't mean much though as we all know haha.
 
Cyradis said:
Alright well I don't think continuing to debate this will get me very far. I still think in the back of my head it could have made a difference, but I'll let it drop now. You are indeed in a better position to know than me.

P.S. to whoever said all the people they knew with 40s went to smaller, less well-known schools, it's the opposite experience with my friends/acquaintances. The 40-43 ranges I know/met over half went to top 10 schools. Personal anecdote doesn't mean much though as we all know haha.
Click to expand...

Let me put things in a little bit of perspective. Adcoms are aware that the top of the curve, the MCAT, step, and similar standardized tests are very steep. Therefore the difference between 12-12-12 (36) and 13-13-13 (39) is immense compared to the difference between a 39 and 42. This also plays slightly (although not as much) into how unbalanced sections were evaluated. It wasn't too many years ago that the top
score on a section was "13-15" indicating that for all intents and purposes, a section score of 13 and 15 were equivalent.

Therefore, the difference between a student with a 39 and 42 could well be 3-4 questions total on the test, while the difference between a 36 and 39 is more like 8-10 questions. What probably happened in the last scenario is that the students went through the test, knew 85%+ of the answers, marked 8-10 questions per section that they could eliminate to two answer choices, and used reasoning/guessing/luck to put answers for them. This is drastically different from the 12-12-12 because they are probably choosing from between 10-15 questions that they've marked. Also, there's a decent amount of subjectivity when it comes to verbal answers as well.
 
Writing MCAT multiple times to achieve a 41R...
Click to expand...

Writing the MCAT = What the American Association of Medical Colleges does when they make up the questions.

Taking/Sitting for/Completing/Finishing the MCAT=what students do when they pay $240 and answer questions.

Biggest pet peeve, right up there with taking your MCATS!!!!!
 
ClaudioAbbado said:
Hello everyone,

Here is my situation with MCAT. I have written it a total of 5 times, 1st time in my junior year scoring a miserable 24O, 2nd time in my senior year scoring a semi-miserable 27O, and then I took a year off in which I did nothing but study my MCAT and got a score of 38P, 36P, and finally a 41R on my last and 5th attempt.

I thought this 41R is fine and dandy until I been hearing from people that med schools actually AVERAGE all your attempts instead of looking at the highest/most recent one?? I am so worried about this, as I scored a miserable 24 and 27 before. Can someone please CALM my nerves and tell me my this 41R was not in vain??

I'm instate for Nebraska, and UNMC's school of medicine only tells me that they 'consider' all scores. This has me worried!


-Claudio
Click to expand...
they should reject you for being an idiot
 
DirtyJustice said:
For some reason, I found this really funny.

My two cents, its over with. Maybe you shouldn't have taken it that many times. Maybe this is real, or maybe this isn't. Either way, it is done.

With a score of a 41 and an average of your past 3 being around a 38, many people will be impressed and regardless of what other people are saying I think you will end up in a good program. Hell, I did with only a 34 and a 3.6
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i6wi7p.jpg
 
rafflecopter said:
Writing the MCAT = What the American Association of Medical Colleges does when they make up the questions.

Taking/Sitting for/Completing/Finishing the MCAT=what students do when they pay $240 and answer questions.

Biggest pet peeve, right up there with taking your MCATS!!!!!
Click to expand...

and for what i believe is the second time, in other places, the correct vernacular is "writing" the mcat. for some reason, people say they "take" a lot of things when they actually don't. when you take the mcat, are you leaving the center with the mcat physically in your hands? when you take a crap, aren't you really leaving it in the toilet instead? so let people say what they say, even if it doesn't make sense to you. some of the stuff you say may not make much sense to them, either.
 
The Poet Sings said:
and for what i believe is the second time, in other places, the correct vernacular is "writing" the mcat. for some reason, people say they "take" a lot of things when they actually don't. when you take the mcat, are you leaving the center with the mcat physically in your hands? when you take a crap, aren't you really leaving it in the toilet instead? so let people say what they say, even if it doesn't make sense to you. some of the stuff you say may not make much sense to them, either.
Click to expand...

'Writing the MCAT' was a phrase used when it was a written test. Now that it is a computer based test you can't write it anymore. Also, you sound like a rube when you say that you 'wrote' the MCAT, so at least you got that going for you.
 
Midwestern Blot said:
'Writing the MCAT' was a phrase used when it was a written test. Now that it is a computer based test you can't write it anymore. Also, you sound like a rube when you say that you 'wrote' the MCAT, so at least you got that going for you.
Click to expand...
did you not read that post at all? writing the mcat is an idiomatic phrase used in other english speaking countries. get over it.
 
I agree that it is an idiotic phrase and people should get over using it.
 
bleargh said:
i would hope so. good thing my english dept stocks dictionaries so i can look up words like "idiomatic"
Click to expand...

i commend you for your valiance, but just let it go. some people are just too 😕 but then they get all 😡. so you and i should just stay 🙄.

:meanie:
 
Im sorry, but everything past your 38 effort was a complete waste of time, and proof that you may be a bit neurotic.
You could have gotten away with the 24 by saying that you did not feel good that day, and with the 27 by citing that you had family troubles or something like that.
And by the way, why do you call yourself Claudio Abbado? Like the conductor, is that actually your name?
 
what you should be more worried about is the fact that before, the limit to take the MCAT was 3 times. even though they changed the rule, I don't think attitudes have changed that fast.

also, you need to do a little research before you start things. getting a 45 is freaking impossible. why make that your goal?
 
OP-

I'm going to say this in the nicest way possible. If you are indeed not a troll, as you insist, then you are simply being an unreasonable idiot.

I am very familiar with UNMC, lived in NE 4 years as a premed and would be going there if not for my husband's job being moved. For an instate NE applicant, you have like a 50 percent chance of getting in, which is far higher than almost anywhere else I have seen. It's almost like you have to TRY to not get in there.

They recommend at least a 30, but their minimum accepted for IS applicants is 24. You should have stopped after the second time, or at the very most the third.

Is your goal being a doctor or being perfect at everything in life? Cause you sort of blew your shot with the first by taking the test 5 times and the second is unachievable. Seriously, you will have to explain the 5 MCATs so much more than you even would have had to explain applying with a 27 after the second attempt. Good luck with THAT.
 
I'm sorry OP. Despite the fact that you got a 41 on the MCAT you are really, really stupid.
 
ClaudioAbbado said:
Hello everyone,

Here is my situation with MCAT. I have written it a total of 5 times, 1st time in my junior year scoring a miserable 24O, 2nd time in my senior year scoring a semi-miserable 27O, and then I took a year off in which I did nothing but study my MCAT and got a score of 38P, 36P, and finally a 41R on my last and 5th attempt.

I thought this 41R is fine and dandy until I been hearing from people that med schools actually AVERAGE all your attempts instead of looking at the highest/most recent one?? I am so worried about this, as I scored a miserable 24 and 27 before. Can someone please CALM my nerves and tell me my this 41R was not in vain??

I'm instate for Nebraska, and UNMC's school of medicine only tells me that they 'consider' all scores. This has me worried!


-Claudio
Click to expand...
successful_troll.jpg
 
drizzt3117 said:
I'm not doing admissions anymore but if I read your file I'd throw it in the trash because what you did was straight idiotic and doesn't represent the type of judgment we'd like to see in our incoming students.
Click to expand...

This.

This thread reminds me of an old sketch from SNL called "What were you thinking?". The host interviews "Shelley Long" and asks her about leaving Cheers, one of the most successful TV shows of all time, for a movie career that crashed and burned. The title "Troop Beverly Hills" then flashes on the bottom of the screen and the host asks, "Shelley, WHAT were you thinking?". (Shelley stares off and starts crying...)
 
well uve taken it 5 times already... I say take it a 6th and go for that 45! After 5, whose counting anyways? 🙄 lol jk

what's done is done...just apply broadly and come up with a good explanation for your actions (and never say you didnt volunteer because you had "too much" experience already, as Im sure that would look pretty bad)
 
OP, your problem is not that schools will average your scores, it is that they will see you took the test 5 times. This shows that you have an obsessive personality, and schools will wonder what will happen when you sit for your first exam and score a 95%. Will you drop for a year to retake that exam? Will you go off the handle and drop out? Will you go really out there and kill yourself (YES this is a serious concern to schools, don't kid yourself and think that it isn't).

The real issue here is that you probably should have realized that it is nearly impossible to score a 45T on the MCAT, no matter how many times you take the test. Because the test is scored based on a bell curve of all the other takers scores, you need other people to score extremely well for the curve to even reach 45. Because this is incredibly rare, you really have absolutely no chance to get the 45T. The other thing you should have realized is that when you get beyond 33, you start to see increasing diminishing returns. Your odds of increasing your score significantly goes down - as evidenced by your drop from 38 to 36.

Apply to schools now. Your 36 was beyond good enough to get you into your state school. Cut your losses and apply already. Perfection is a good goal, but realization of your limits is something that you will value more later in life.
 
AerobixChica said:
well uve taken it 5 times already... I say take it a 6th and go for that 45! After 5, whose counting anyways? 🙄 lol jk

what's done is done...just apply broadly and come up with a good explanation for your actions (and never say you didnt volunteer because you had "too much" experience already, as Im sure that would look pretty bad)
Click to expand...

This is correct. I mean, it can't hurt anymore to retake it more times right? Why give up on your goals and settle for less ... doesn't bode well for your medical education.
 
drizzt3117 said:
I'm not doing admissions anymore but if I read your file I'd throw it in the trash because what you did was straight idiotic and doesn't represent the type of judgment we'd like to see in our incoming students.
Click to expand...

Agree with this. A 3.6 is not a horrible GPA, and the fact that you re-took the MCAT after getting a 38 tells me one of three things:

1. You have gotten horrible advice/counseling and didn't bother to do your homework and validate that advice. Unlikely, since if you had half a brain, you would realize that the difference between a 38 and a 41 is minimal.

2. You have horrible judgement. I don't think this needs any explanation.

3. You have emotional/mental instability. Your story reeks of someone who probably wouldn't be able to handle the stress of medical school. I have had classmates who couldn't cut it because of similar "obsessions." One guy in our class refused to take step 1 because he was absolutely convinced that he had to score a 270+. He ended up taking a year off, and still didn't up taking the exam. The school threatened him with dismissal, but he still didn't take the exam, because he was only getting in the 250's on his diagnostic exams. He ended up getting dismissed and never actually took step 1.

No matter which of the three it is, you need to really focus on convincing an admission committee that you aren't insane. I would start by finding something to do besides studying for the MCAT and maybe something unrelated to academics but still service related. Teach for America comes to mind....if you can handle being a teacher in the areas they serve, it would at least show you can handle the stress of medical school. Second, I would definitely address why you took the MCAT so many times somewhere on your application. I would go with bad advice, since you seem to be so convinced that you needed to re-take after scoring a 38.

Anyway, you're either horribly misguided or need some psychiatric help. Either way, good luck.
 
cubssox2000 said:
Will you go really out there and kill yourself (YES this is a serious concern to schools, don't kid yourself and think that it isn't).
Click to expand...

This is absolutely true. It's a growing concern among medical schools, and it's been a real topic of discussion among faculty. During my time in medical school, 2 people have committed suicide and our school has been hypervigilant about this during the screening process. If we saw OP's application, it wouldn't get a second look.
 
DarknightX said:
3. You have emotional/mental instability. Your story reeks of someone who probably wouldn't be able to handle the stress of medical school. I have had classmates who couldn't cut it because of similar "obsessions." One guy in our class refused to take step 1 because he was absolutely convinced that he had to score a 270+. He ended up taking a year off, and still didn't up taking the exam. The school threatened him with dismissal, but he still didn't take the exam, because he was only getting in the 250's on his diagnostic exams. He ended up getting dismissed and never actually took step 1.
Click to expand...

i wonder where that guy is now. that is just sad, to get that far and then screw it all up by not taking the freaking test. it's one thing to fail, but a whole other to be so afraid of failure you don't even try.

DarknightX said:
This is absolutely true. It's a growing concern among medical schools, and it's been a real topic of discussion among faculty. During my time in medical school, 2 people have committed suicide and our school has been hypervigilant about this during the screening process. If we saw OP's application, it wouldn't get a second look.
Click to expand...

quite unfortunate 🙁
 
ClaudioAbbado said:
Hello everyone,

Here is my situation with MCAT. I have written it a total of 5 times, 1st time in my junior year scoring a miserable 24O, 2nd time in my senior year scoring a semi-miserable 27O, and then I took a year off in which I did nothing but study my MCAT and got a score of 38P, 36P, and finally a 41R on my last and 5th attempt.

I thought this 41R is fine and dandy until I been hearing from people that med schools actually AVERAGE all your attempts instead of looking at the highest/most recent one?? I am so worried about this, as I scored a miserable 24 and 27 before. Can someone please CALM my nerves and tell me my this 41R was not in vain??

I'm instate for Nebraska, and UNMC's school of medicine only tells me that they 'consider' all scores. This has me worried!


-Claudio
Click to expand...

Who retakes a 38P anyway?
 
ClaudioAbbado said:
I actually made the goal of scoring a 45T...and I'm not joking as I dedicated a whole year to achieve this. I didn't do any ECs or had any jobs during that year where all I did from morning to night was to do practice tests and study from EK, PR, BR, and Kaplan.
Click to expand...

I don't think taking the MCAT 5 times will sink you. I think the above will.
 
Cyradis said:
Am I the only one who seriously doesn't find retaking a 38 to be ridiculous?
Click to expand...

Yes.

Sort of an aside - not so much to the OP since he took it 5 times (Which I think is a bit much).... but seriously, to someone who believes he/she can get, say, a 42 and pulls a 38, that's as personally disappointing as getting a 28 when you thought you could pull off a 32.
Click to expand...

There's a world of difference between a 28 and a 32. It can be the difference between acceptance and rejection in many cases.

I think the problem isn't so much that he rewrote the 38, but more that he's a little psychotic to expect a 45 just by rewriting a bunch of times.
Click to expand...

So it's okay to re-write if you think you can get a 41 instead of a 38, but not okay to think you can get a 45? WTF?
 
The sad thing is that coming out of hms a 250 would get him in pretty much anywhere anyways...

DarknightX said:
Agree with this. A 3.6 is not a horrible GPA, and the fact that you re-took the MCAT after getting a 38 tells me one of three things:

1. You have gotten horrible advice/counseling and didn't bother to do your homework and validate that advice. Unlikely, since if you had half a brain, you would realize that the difference between a 38 and a 41 is minimal.

2. You have horrible judgement. I don't think this needs any explanation.

3. You have emotional/mental instability. Your story reeks of someone who probably wouldn't be able to handle the stress of medical school. I have had classmates who couldn't cut it because of similar "obsessions." One guy in our class refused to take step 1 because he was absolutely convinced that he had to score a 270+. He ended up taking a year off, and still didn't up taking the exam. The school threatened him with dismissal, but he still didn't take the exam, because he was only getting in the 250's on his diagnostic exams. He ended up getting dismissed and never actually took step 1.

No matter which of the three it is, you need to really focus on convincing an admission committee that you aren't insane. I would start by finding something to do besides studying for the MCAT and maybe something unrelated to academics but still service related. Teach for America comes to mind....if you can handle being a teacher in the areas they serve, it would at least show you can handle the stress of medical school. Second, I would definitely address why you took the MCAT so many times somewhere on your application. I would go with bad advice, since you seem to be so convinced that you needed to re-take after scoring a 38.

Anyway, you're either horribly misguided or need some psychiatric help. Either way, good luck.
Click to expand...
 
Guys give OP a brake. He had a goal and worked very hard to achieve it and ended up being very close to his goal. I really respect the fact that he was so dedicated to get admitted to medical school.

And now to answer OP’s question, I think you should just contact all the school you want to apply to and ask your question to them.

Good job on getting such a great MCAT score and I hope you get into your first choice school. 👍👍
 
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