lowest gpa possible

[purepixyy]

found out it was a 3.6

[megboo]

http://www.studentdoc.com/medfind.html

This website lets you find out what you are asking. Also, there hasn’t been a “perfect” MCAT score in a few years – good luck with that.

[yokelridesagain]

The reason that there haven’t been any “45” scores on the MCAT in several recent administrations is that the statisticians haven’t considered the verbal reasoning test sensitive enough to make valid conclusions at the higher end of the score range. Basically, too many people miss zero or one question, and they don’t feel it’s statistically valid to give the people who miss zero a 15, one a 13, and two a 12. (Don’t interpret these as actual numbers, just an example). So, if you do really, really well on the verbal section they give you a score of “13 to 15”. Ergo, no 45.

There’s no exact answer to the question you’re asking. There is no cutoff. People get accepted to medical school every year with GPAs that would usually get the application tossed in the trash without a second thought. How? Particular circumstances. If you have a 2.9 GPA from Generic State University, a 38 on the MCAT, and no extracurriculars, forget about it. If you have a 2.9 GPA from MIT, a PhD in biomedical engineering, and dedicate every waking hour of your spare time to medically related extracurriculars, you might be in.

So, it depends on your school and the rest of your application.

The MCAT has been found to be a better predictor of success in medical school than college grades–this is partly due to grade inflation and partly due to the fact that the grades of accepted applicants all tend to be very high. So, a good performance will help out a lot.

However–you cannot study your way to a perfect, or even a good score on the MCAT. It is NOT a test of knowledge. You can utterly sabotage any chance of a good score by NOT studying as the biology and physics sections require you to have some underlying knowledge. It is fundamentally a test of your ability to read and comprehend long, complex passages in a limited amount of time: i.e., the goal of medical school. To do exceptionally well, you need knowledge AND underlying aptitude. You can game the system a little with test-taking strategies and prep courses, but none of those things are going to raise your score by 10 or 20 points. People who make 40s on the MCAT mastered the prerequisite courses, but also have exceptional reading speed and comprehension, and are good at taking standardized tests.

You may well have reason to believe that you will do very will in this kind of environment…although very imperfect, the verbal scores on the ACT or SAT can give you some sense of how good you are at this. If you made an 800, you may well be able to perform smashingly on the MCAT. If you’re bad at these kind of things, don’t think that any amount of studying is going to make you able to get a 38+ score. Your grades are your first priority because they are much more under your personal control. Aim for a 3.6+ in science and overall, know that you are less competitive with a 3.4 or lower in either of these domains, and expect a 2% or less chance of success with GPA lower than 3.

[Bonkers]

“However–you cannot study your way to a perfect, or even a good score on the MCAT. It is NOT a test of knowledge”

Yokel, that’s the biggest bunch of horsesh*t I’ve seen on these admissions boards yet. I’m going to guess that you’ve scored well on the MCAT, and want to confirm in your mind some sort of perceived intellectual superiority to those who scored less than you.

If what you say about the MCAT were true, Kaplan, Princeton Review, and any other MCAT prep company would have been out of business long ago. I can assure you that these companies employ people much smarter than you to assess the value of the services they provide to their students.

I don’t consider myself to be an extraordinarily intelligent person, yet I studied by myself from a Kaplan book I purchased from Barnes & Noble for merely one month without ever having taken a single practice test, and scored a 27R. That was the first and only time I took the MCAT. I haven’t the slightest doubt that a couple extra months of preparation would have earned me a score well above 30.

[yokelridesagain]

The data shows that most people who retake the MCAT multiple times do not demonstrate large changes in scores. My personal experience is irrelevant, as is yours, particularly as neither one of us has taken this test more than once. n equals one.

As I stated in my original post, it is possible to DECREASE your score on the MCAT by not studying. No one would dispute that. You state that this is what happened to you, and I believe it. My point, which you have not refuted, is that beyond a certain point each individual will not be able to improve his/her score by more studying. For most people, that “certain point” is not 39. Ergo, I suggested that the original poster attempt to control her grades now while she is still a freshman.

It would be reasonable to assume that most people applying to medical school consider the MCAT to be very important and spend a considerable amount of time attempting to prepare for it.

If studying more really improved the scores of the majority of applicants, the data would be different. One would assume that people who retake the test spend more time trying to prepare for it. If that preparation made a significant difference, one would expect the data regarding individual variation in scores to be significantly different.

(If what you said was true) “Kaplan, Princeton Review, and any other MCAT prep company would have been out of business long ago. I can assure you that these companies employ people much smarter than you to assess the value of the services they provide to their students.”

No, they employ people to figure out how to make money for their companies. They make money by having people write checks for their services. They only care about the value of their services insofar as it keeps the checks coming. I certainly won’t suggest that their services do not benefit people: a few probably aren’t helped at all, a few benefit greatly, and most do a few points better than they would have otherwise. Medical school applicants are, in general, a compulsive, driven bunch, and are willing to pay for a few points.

Finally, as you chose to include personal assumptions and vulgarity in your post, I would hope that you would not be too offended by the following interpretation: if I was displeased with my performance, I would much rather feel that said performance was reflective of inadequate preparation than underlying intellectual ability.

Actually, your score is better than the mean. Take it again and prove me wrong, if necessary. Regardless, my advice remains the same: don’t stake your fortunes on a standardized test, as you might be unpleasantly surprised at the results.

[purepixyy]

i don’t know what i caused here, seems to be some sort of war, so i guess i’m sorry lol.

at any rate, I am a veryyyyyyyyyy fast reader, that has always been a benifit to me during tests, i am always the first one finished, it took me about 5 minutes to finish each section of the SATS

anyway, i guess i might not get a perfect score on the mcats [xx(] if i dont i shall kill myself lol. but somehow i think i might get a high score. i’m working extra hard in my chemistry, physics and biology courses (not so hard in my computer and geology courses lol) and i’m in this college called ‘brooklyn college cuny’ so it’s not an ivy league top of the line college but its ‘the best bang for your buck’ as princton review says. its very very demanding and hard, i took my physics, chem, and computer midterms and i did rather well on them, in the high 90’s, but i still have geology and bio left, and i am so scared of the bio, soooo sooooo soooo scared. i need to get an A in that class, anything less is a death sentence. and chemistry is starting to get hard with all those mole thinys (maybe cuz i missed 4 lecture hall classes?) blah. anyway thanks for your help. and if anyone can help on the subject of moles, i would so like that []

quote:

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Originally posted by Bonkers

“However–you cannot study your way to a perfect, or even a good score on the MCAT. It is NOT a test of knowledge”

Yokel, that’s the biggest bunch of horsesh*t I’ve seen on these admissions boards yet. I’m going to guess that you’ve scored well on the MCAT, and want to confirm in your mind some sort of perceived intellectual superiority to those who scored less than you.

If what you say about the MCAT were true, Kaplan, Princeton Review, and any other MCAT prep company would have been out of business long ago. I can assure you that these companies employ people much smarter than you to assess the value of the services they provide to their students.

I don’t consider myself to be an extraordinarily intelligent person, yet I studied by myself from a Kaplan book I purchased from Barnes & Noble for merely one month without ever having taken a single practice test, and scored a 27R. That was the first and only time I took the MCAT. I haven’t the slightest doubt that a couple extra months of preparation would have earned me a score well above 30.

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pure perfection

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