Please help

Convince her to study harder and take it again. The national average is around 24 — that means that anything 24+ SHOULD get you into A med school (doesn’t say anything about how good that med school may be) and anything under 24 is kind of tricky to say. If your girlfriend has good extracurriculars, rec’s, or other experiences to boost her app, then an 18 MIGHT stand a chance at some schools (probably state schools–and we’re not talking selective ones like UCSF or UNC). Her GPA is average, but because undergrad institutions differ as to how GPA is earned (ie. some are easier than others), adcoms usually use the MCAT to sort of level the field. That is, a 3.3 at Harvard with a 40 MCAT shows that that person is probably more able to handle the med school curriculum than a 3.7 at Rural Univ with a 20 MCAT. Also, it doesn’t help that she has taken it 3 times already — after that, she needs special permission (which is easy to get, actually) to take it again and some adcoms might average all her MCAT scores together to get one MCAT score — actually, many of the slightly more selective schools may do this. Therefore, she should aim considerably high.

I thought the average applicant had a 1/3 chance of getting in to any med school. Wouldn’t that mean a 24 would not give you a can’t miss shot?

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Originally posted by Seona

Right, which is why I said *a* med school. Statistically, if the average 24 candidate has a 1/3 shot, then if she applied to say, 9 schools, then 3 of those 9 should accept her. Of course, they could all accept or all reject her — who knows?

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What I meant to say was that I heard only 1 out of 3 applicants get into any US MD programs. The rest either give up on medicine, go for the DO or go abroad.

The average applicant probably applies to 20-30 schools.

With a GPA close to (really, lower than) the average mark for accpted medical school applicants, one would need an MCAT close to or better than the average mark for accepted candidates (~27)) to be a reasonable candidate from a numbers standpoint alone. Getting into any American medical school (MD or DO) with the profile you describe is very unlikely.

With a better score on the MCAT (say, a rise of 10 points), who knows? The question any applicant with a low score needs to ask him/herself is WHY that happened. The MCAT, by the way, is far less a test of knowledge than it is a test of reading comprehension. You need to take the prerequisite courses to “speak the language”, but it’s a misconception to think that “studying more” is going to significantly raise your score unless you tried to take the test with wholly inadequate preparation (didn’t take the classes, didn’t review at all).

Is your girlfriend coming from a non-traditional learning environment (i.e., another country, home-schooling) where she has had minimal exposure to standardized testing? Is English not her first language? Does she have an undiagnosed learning deficiency (i.e., dyslexia) that could compromise her performance? I’ve known people with all of these issues who have done poorly on the MCAT but done fine in medical school.

All of the above circumstances also have remedies that can improve scores significantly (take practice courses, work on English language skills, get proper accomodations in the case of a learning disability). If, on the other hand, the score is a reflection of intrinsic ability to read long, highly complex passages and understand them in a brief period of time, one has a major problem. That ability is essentially what defines a medical school curriculum. Putting aside all issues of intrinsic fairness in the admissions process, it has been my experience that MOST students who managed to get into med school with MCATs in the low 20s or below have tremendous difficulty with the curriculum and eventually with being able to pass the medical licensure exams.

Physician-resident