<p>Has anybody other then Kumar (Harold and Kumar) gotten a 45 on the MCAT.</p>
<p>Nobody got it! Do not worry about it! Nobody will. 35 and few points lower is just fine.</p>
<p>Actually, I believe someone got a 45 several years back and ended up going to Stanford. That’s a post I vaguely remember hearing from a forum (SDN?) and it was attributed to a dean there, so perhaps. Rest assured that it doesn’t happen more than once or twice a decade.</p>
<p>I guess anybody with 41+ could possibly “auction” him/herself off to some medical schools which are willing to “buy” it :)</p>
<p>Many schools are not willing to buy it though as you still see at SDN (if it is believable) that an applicant with 41-42 was still wailisted or rejected left and right. (We can understand why a lower-tiered school may reject this kind of student due to the yield management issue, so I ignore these cases here. But an applicant with such a high score is kind of “cornered” as many of the schools are actually out of his/her reach due to “mismatch” and if those matched schools require something he did not have, e.g., he studied all the time in college and therefore had nothing else to show, he might fall through the crack.)</p>
<p>We for sure know a case where a 40 got into a single medical school very late in the application cycle. So the stats is not everything in this game.</p>
<p>I know of 40/3.9 who was only accepted to a single school (the first time he applied)–and he did his apps in mid- July. So not particularly late in the cycle.</p>
<p>Exactly, mcat.</p>
<p>I know of a 3.9+ from top 10 Uni, & 43, who was WL’ed at H, but was able to sit back and take offers from those ranked 10+. It became $ negotiation by e-mail, with each college matching the other and then raising the ante.</p>
<p>Wildly conjecturing here, but I wouldn’t be surprised if a higher proportion of people with 40+ scores had something wrong with them socially compared to those in the 33-36 range. If I were an admissions committee member, I might think “Well, the 34 MCAT kid and the 43 MCAT kid are probably both going to handle our curriculum just fine. So which one has the potential to be the better clinician?” If it’s the 43 kid, great, if not, I wouldn’t feel too bad about passing a kid up who might make the school’s average MCAT score go up by 0.1 points.</p>
<p>I know a kid who got a 40. Went to a pretty good school for undergrad and had a decent GPA. The rest of his application was strong too. Currently goes to a top-tier med school. Very bright!</p>
<p>Great guy. Fun to hang out with, easy to talk to. Normal hobbies. Certainly wouldn’t be out of place hanging out with me and my other (mid- and low-30s-MCAT-scoring) friends. </p>
<p>Unfortunately don’t know anyone else who score 40+ to add to your conjecture, TuftsStudent. I do know a kid who got a 39 and is a total…weirdo. No idea where he’s headed next year.</p>
<p>Tufts–not sure I agre with your premise. I’ve met 3 40 MCATs (OK, two had 40s, one was a 39). All of them have been fairly normal people with good social skills.</p>
<p>One is in med school. One is in medicine-related PhD program. And the third guy–he took the MCAT on dare and had no intention of ever applying to med school. (Too much work. Right now he’s an occasional substitute teacher and his GF & parents support him. He turned down a PhD math program at a Top 10 program because it was also too much work.)</p>
<p>I would dare that guy to do more work if I were you. It worked before.</p>
<p>I know (personally) someone who got a 44 - I’m sure a 45 has happened, but definitely not often. The good news is that you don’t need anywhere near there to get into even the most competitive med schools.</p>
<p>Tufts:</p>
<p>anything is possible, but the young man I known for 8+ years is the most impressive person I have ever met. And yeah, he looks you in the eye when he speaks to you and has a firm handshake. Also, played at Carnegie Hall, NCAA student-scholar athlete, and a gazillion other awards. No “social issues” whatsoever. I’m guessing just great parental DNA resulting in a a stratospheric IQ.</p>
<p>My uninformed impression was though that the “geniuses” of the world overwhelmingly had more personal problems than the average person. It would be very nice to hear that I am wrong about that.</p>
<p>Before I was a librarian, I was teacher of the gifted and talented–which means all of my students had at least an IQ of 130. I had several with IQs over 150. There was always few quirky, oddball kids (some with Aspergers) and one or two with definite emotional problems, but for the most part these kids were well adjusted, thoughtful, curious, empathetic and incredibly mature kids. Even in middle school–which is seething caldron of adolescent angst.</p>
<p>The most important is to apply to Med. Schools that match to your stats and all other “stuff”. D. has applied to 8, got accepted at 4, 2 pre-interview rejects and 2 waitlists at places that were not at the top of her own preference list. She did not have anywhere near 39-41 and 2 of her 4 acceptances were in top 20. </p>
<p>No genius is needed, just be smart where you apply…and it is very different from person to person.</p>
<p>@Tufts,
“I wouldn’t be surprised if a higher proportion of people with 40+ scores had something wrong with them socially compared to those in the 33-36 range.”</p>
<p>If someone chooses a different path, then there is “something wrong” with them? That’s called “xenophobia”.</p>
<p>^Well, however it is called, interviewers might not like it. We do not know if these people are different or not. What tufts is saying that as long as you are not hermit sitting in your room studying all the time, you are OK. That is what I got out of this comment. You can have a 45, just make sure that you are capable to connect to people of different backgrounds, make sure that you are social, participate in college life outside of academics, meet different people, you will be just fine.</p>
<p>^ It? What is “it”? Who are “these people”? I’ll let Tuft’s words speak for themselves. The quote is accurate, right? It wasn’t that long ago that just being female and wanting to be a professional meant that there was “something wrong” with you. So who’s today’s target? “These people”?</p>
<p>^I was referring to anti-social hermits. it seems that tufts referred to social aspect of personality. it is very important to be able to connect to people. One need to spend time with people socially to be able to connect to human beings with various backgrounds.</p>
<p>Being female doesn’t dramatically impact your ability to practice medicine. Neither does being homosexual or a number of other things that medical schools quite rightly don’t take into account when giving out acceptances.</p>
<p>I would hope that a medical schools would take into account whether an interviewee could communicate effectively with their interviewer. Unless you’re signing yourself up to do only pathology or diagnostic radiology, social skills are important in medicine. I see nothing wrong with discriminating against those who cannot carry a conversation properly.</p>