<p>To answer the OP’s question, here are my scores.</p>
<p>My Test Scores:</p>
<p>ACT:
English: 30
Math:29
Reading:27
Science: 35
Composite: 30</p>
<p>SAT
CR:560
Math:640
Writing:590</p>
<p>Don’t put too much weight on ACT/SAT scores. Past success do not guarantee future results. I did better percentile wise on the MCAT than the ACT or SAT. Totally different arenas, maturity levels, etc etc. Just do well, work hard and don’t think about the MCAT until your junior year.</p>
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<p>Of course right now you’re not going to be doing as well on MCAT Verbal as you did on SAT CR. You’re a freshman. MCAT takers are usually college juniors.</p>
<p>Should he ever get to that point, does anyone think the fact that this “prospective med student” already has 7 young children (and likely to have more. . .) would be a “negative” on his application?</p>
<p>Not if he has a good application, might even be a plus factor.</p>
<p>Oh thanks for the advise curm.</p>
<p>Actually I think that sounds pretty reasonable, Colleges. A 27-30 as a freshman is a pretty freaking good score. Obviously you won’t want to take the real thing for a while yet.</p>
<p>^^^ well the thing is the material is really fresh in my mind right now. (I can still remember the little details I learned in class). I just hope I don’t forget the material later on. I have only taken the bio/chem tests from examcrackers, I still have to learn physics/orgo (this may kill me on the MCATs). I haven’t even looked at the verbal section yet.</p>
<p>Have to correct myself… for some reason I thought colleges00701 was talking about just MCAT verbal vs CR. But point still stands.</p>
<p>I do not believe in correlation between ACT/SAT and MCAT. I strongly believe in correlation between quality of preparation and MCAT score, although there are exceptions for super duper awesome test takers. D. has been very good example to support my point. ACT=33 with self-preparation, very low MCAT score on first test MCAT without any preparation (both HS and college GPA=4.0).</p>
<p>Miami:</p>
<p>What I was asking was similar… </p>
<p>My question is not whether a certain SAT/ACT automatically means a high MCAT will be realized, but if a high MCAT is even possible, with proper prep. (Obviously, taking a high test college app score and attending podunk buy-a-degree college will not properly prepare one for any grad school test.)</p>
<p>One thing that a high score on the ACT requires is the ability for raw processing speed, and that cannot be taught nor learned. (Sure, practice against a clock will help, but cannot make a plodder into a thoroughbred.) A person with an IQ of <xx will NEVER score high on such a speed test, bcos they cannot physically process the info fast enough. Their brain is just not wired to handle that kind of temporal reasoning (think RAM processing on a computer) quickly.</p>
<p>Thus, the question really comes down to: do the xx scorers on the MCAT tend to have yyyy college app scores? For example, do most of those who score 31+ on the mcat tend to have had 33/2200 (or fill in the correct numbers)? Conversely, do only a small percentage of those who score below 2000/30 ever score 31+ on the mcat?</p>
<p>I do not believe that “podunk buy-a-degree college” exists in connection to any pre-med. Every pre-med that I know at any college, found classes extremely challenging even after superior preparation in HS. Do you have examples of “podunk buy-a-degree college”?</p>
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<p>Well this is intuitive. If someone with a 1100 SAT score goes to a college whose average SAT score was 1100 and whose classes are geared and curved for people whose average SAT score was 1100, then they would find the classes challenging. If someone has a 2300 SAT score, goes to Harvard, battles against other 2300 SAT scorers, they would similarly find the premed classes challenging. But, this doesn’t mean that the classes are equally challenging at Harvard vs. Podunk. The Harvard kid might go to Podunk U and have an easy time. Where this shows is on the MCAT which is standardized across all colleges. As I’ve said numerous times before, if you search on mdapplicants.com for low GPA, high MCAT kids, they tend to be from top colleges. If you search for kids with high GPA (3.9+) but low MCAT (28 or below), they almost always are from state universities or little known universities. From my personal experience, this holds true as well. Almost every person I know with awesome GPA but inexplicably low MCAT came from non-prestigious colleges.</p>
<p>Your daughter has done well in HS and college but she won’t know true competition until she takes the MCAT. I graduated Cornell with close to a 4.0 so I arguably didn’t find true competition until med school. Last year, I managed to score in the bottom 10 kids out of my entire graduating class (close to 2 std dev below the mean) on a neuroanatomy practical.</p>
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<p>I agree with this 1000x .</p>
<p>Well, according to D’s experience, there is no correlation. but one needs to collect significant sample to make any conclusion. No, her first test MCAT was not nowhere near 30 (she has never had “B” in her academic carier so far)</p>
<p>^^it’s also why Harvard has the highest mean LSAT scores…which happens to correlate well with the fact that they also have the highest mean SAT scores. </p>
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<p>Excuse my hyperbole – I watched the State of Union speech last night! </p>
<p>Forget the Univ of Phoenix for a moment, but consider all those premeds at a Cal State xx with sub-1000 SAT scores vs. the premeds at UC Berkeley who roll in with 2200’s. Since Berkeley also has some sub-1000 testers, they too can receive the same “education” as the 2200’s. Thus, the question is do those kids even have chance at a 31+ on the mcat? Of course, the answer is yes, but perhaps the chances are as good as winning the lottery, even with lotsa prep.</p>
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<p>True but only to a certain extent. But no amount of prep will enable an average college student to score 40+. They could spend two years straight on it with private tutoring and NEVER get there bcos their brain is just not capable. Ditto the LSAT. Unlimited prep will never get every one to an 180. Ditto the ACT/SAT.</p>
<p>D. is at state school. She graduated #1 from very small private HS. She was not allowed to use AP for credits in Bio, and she was happy that she started with very first Bio class. She witnessed good number of HS valedictorians from private HS changing their plans to go to Med. School. The very first Bio class that used the same textbook that D’s HS freshman Honors Bio class was weed out killer to everybody and all other Bio classes that follow were extremely challenging for everybody, including my D. who also commented that her college prep is superior to many others. She credits her HS for that. I an glad that D. is not at elite college where program is much more difficult. She does not need to have it more difficult than at her state college.</p>
<p>My son only took the SATs once, got a 1550/2250, but I attribute that to good attitude as well as good prep. (That is, as he was prepping, he’d look to see why his answers were incorrect.) So what’s the best way to study for the MCAT? (aside from coursework, of course!) I have heard many claiming to self-study, but are there books to use, certain well-known classes to take?</p>
<p>Miami–was that a “practice MCAT” your D took, and what year is she in college?</p>
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How about an analogy?</p>
<p>I agree that the kid has to have the ponies or else they’ll never make it through the lights in less than 9 seconds. All that practice , study, preparation, and question/format familiarity will do is help them get all their horsepower to the ground . In other words it stops/limits the needless wheel-spin. You can have the best traction in the world but if you are driving a Kia Rio… </p>
<p>The analogy holds , though, in that you may have 600 horsepower but if you have the wrong tires, don’t do any practice runs, don’t have the proper gearing, (insert other un-prepared drag strip activity), a car with 500 h.p. can beat you to the lights. It happens every week-end at a strip near you. ;)</p>