English Requirement for Med School

You can contact the schools that you are interested in to verify their requirements. I think the stipulation about not taking AP credit is so that you don’t avoid taking English all together in college. I placed out of the freshman writing course also via AP and the only other English/writing course I had taken by the time I applied was a class very similar to the one you mentioned that was entitled “Technical Writing for Health Professions.” So I had credit for two semesters of college English but only one of those semesters was from coursework at the college. I had no problem with any of the 13 schools that I applied to with that coursework. The only other advanced writing courses that I had were in Spanish, so you may not actually need to take another English course. You should ask an advisor at your school that is familiar with the med school application process about whether or not you have satisfied their requirements.

The verbal sections have always been my bete noire. It’s not that I don’t do well on them, it’s that there are always two or three questions where, after reading the “correct” answers and their explanations I’m still in complete disagreement. I can usually even explain very easily why that answer shouldn’t be the “best” answer. Three questions could potentially be two full points on an MCAT score! Frustrating, eh?

I think the best way to prepare for the verbal is to take a few practice sections and get an idea of what the questions will focus on in the passages. That way as you take new sections and read new passages you hone in on the elements you’ll need for the questions. Some people say you should read the questions first, but I think that allows you to only give the passage a cursory read and miss some important things. Then you spend time reading the questions and the passage at least twice. That’s time you don’t have. Time magazine is good – but here’s another trick, pick a topic in medical science and research it on pubmed. If you read through those journal articles and get good at understanding them you should be able to understand anything. The MCAT passages are more like the Time magazine articles, but reading some scientific articles will definitely get you up and past that level and will help with the science section passages.

In terms of your three questions…

1. As far as course requirements, this differs from school to school. I applied to medical school in Texas, which has limited applicability as the state schools don’t participate in AMCAS. English credits from high school were fine there…you really have to ask the schools you’re interested in about what they’ll accept.

2. As I said on another board, the verbal sections include graduate level passages on subjects that most applicants will NOT have studied in depth. Time magazine is currently written on a 10th grade level (if that) and the passages in there will be far less sophisticated than those you will see on the test. The inner sections of the New York Times or The Economist might come closer to the real thing. In any case, prior practice with prepared passages will help if you’re uncomfortable with tests of reading comprehension.

3. Worry less–MUCH less–about the written section than the rest of the test. The written portion of the MCAT is rubbish and any admissions officer worth his or her salt knows that. The task is (as stated in more detail in an earlier post) to evaluate a mindless platitude such as “Advances in technology have progressed beyond humankind’s ability to use them wisely”. You are given forty minutes or so to produce an essay–anyone who has ever written anything halfway decent knows that it is impossible to produce good copy in forty minutes. The real goal is to prove that you are literate in the English language and capable of following directions. Many applicants, sadly, fall into difficulty on both grounds. Trying to write sophisticated prose here will do almost all applicants more harm than good–you will end up misusing words and your subjects will not agree with your verbs. Moreover, spending five minutes trying to flesh out a brilliant thought in your head is just a waste of time. These essays are being read by standardized graders who are looking for, simply, a coherent structure and a lack of grammatical errors. They read through these in less than five minutes…no deep thought is committed here.

Spend five minutes brainstorming–come up with a coherent system of thought, no matter how seemingly facile, and run with it…no doubts. No one expects earth-shattering writing on such drivel anyway. The best tip I have is that the MCAT people actually publish every possible question stem for the the test…I just picked several of these at random and set up the same timed conditions as on the actual exam as a form of practice. How much you should do of this is dependent upon your skill as an essay writer. In any case, the goal on this section of the test is NOT to hurt yourself. No admissions committee is going to discard your 37 score if you have an average score on the written portion, nor will a top score excuse a 25…if you bomb this section though, you give them a chance to have second thoughts about an otherwise worthy application.

Physician-resident