All I know is I got a C in orgo 1 and a B in orgo 2 and the orgo on the MCAT was CHILD’S PLAY in comparison. That level alone would have failed the class for sure.
The class had 2 profs. I still remember one year one of the prof’s put a synthesis question on the practice questions that even the other prof couldn’t figure out. “Was professor B on acid when he came up with this?” was what professor A said in the review session.
<<>>
What do you mean?
@iwannabe_Brown
@MaryGJ I think you misunderstand @mom2collegekids “Colleges do not prepare students for the MCAT.”
First, premed reqs are just garden variety courses open to anyone who has an interest or is required to take the course and who has completed any course prereqs. For example, a Chem course may be titled Chem 1, not Chem 1 for MCAT prep. Especially in large universities where a Chem 1 lecture may have 250-300 students sitting in the lecture, it’s highly unlikely that any prof would know who is premed or not, doesn’t care who is and is not premed, and certainly does not tailor his/her lecture to MCAT prep. A Chem 1 prof is not using say
as his/her syllabus. In large universities where there can be 2-3 sections of a Chem 1 course with 250-300 students each taught by different profs, I’ll bet by the end of the term, each student’s learning experience about Chem 1 concepts may be similar and may have exposed students to some of the background material tested on MCAT, but have not prepped students for MCAT per se. Many students are taking Chem 1 because they’re planning a PhD pathway, not MD. I think there are 3-4k colleges/CCs in US, most who teach Chem 1. Believing that all the kids who have taken a Chem 1 have received MCAT prep, no. Varying degrees of exposure to MCAT background material, yes.
I have zero experience in creating standardized tests. My own experience with standardized testing is decades old, so quite useless. I am relying on what S talked about as to SAT, MCAT, Steps 1,2. The time between a course like Chem 1 and the MCAT is for most, years. So the prepping I believe @mom2collegekids is referring to would entail is prepping nearer in time to the actual test, not only getting up to speed with old material, but covering material that a student’s prof simply never got to. In addition, test questions/answers are structured to lead test takers not only to the best answer given the facts, but also are set up to include facts that distract students away from answers that are not the best. A MCAT question could include one, maybe two facts that could easily distract a student away from the best answer, and get the question wrong. This is in part, why students have to engage in prep tailored to the MCAT, not only to cement the underlying concepts, but to help students recognize the test creator’s distractions. Prep typically involves, in part, taking multiple timed practice exams. One simply cannot get this or expect this level of MCAT prep from his/her Chem 1 prof at any university. One either has to get study materials to prep on their own, or prep via a more formalized review course.
This is exactly how standardized multiple choice questions are designed. I had an education professor for a grad class who worked for College Board. He helped design SAT, MCAT, LSAT, GRE exams for his entire career. (BTW, his classroom exams were the hardest I have ever taken in any class at any level on any topic.) There will be only one correct answer to any question, but there will be 1-3 partially correct answers that are still wrong because they are not the best answer to the question. (Test designers will discard & replace any distractor answer that doesn’t get enough test-takers choosing it.) There will also be one or two pretty obviously wrong answers to reassure the test taker that the other answers may be right. There’s a very carefully applied, well understood psychology that goes into designing standardized exam questions.
Additionally, the MCAT does not test the straight-forward knowledge of facts learned in a Chem or Orgo or Bio class, it tests how well a student can apply the knowledge of those facts to a novel situation or case. This is not a skill directly taught in any college class in the country.
Thank you @Jugulator20
@WayOutWestMom >>> the MCAT does not test the straight-forward knowledge of facts learned in a Chem or Orgo or Bio class, it tests how well a student can apply the knowledge of those facts to a novel situation or case. This is not a skill directly taught in any college class in the country.
[/QUOTE]
Yes, and I don’t think @marygj and @EllieMom realize this. They may be not understand the format of the exam. Virtually any decent school teaches the knowledge needed, but those BCPM classes are not teaching how the knowledge will need to be applied in various situations found on the exam.
It appears that they think that if a student has “really good profs” for the prereqs, the student will do much better on the MCAT.
And, as mentioned earlier, @EllieMom, a college applicant isn’t going to know what the MCAT scores are of the students from a prospective college. The colleges often do not know the MCAT scores of their students. And that info would be irrelevant anyway. The students who are strong standardized test takers often go to the better schools…where there are few/no weak test takers. The strong test taker who opted to go to his state flagship rather than an Ivy, will still get the same MCAT score regardless.
Example of a “bad” premed school would be - Vanderbilt. If you do a search on this site, you’ll see parents/students talked about the Chem course(s) in Vandy - the class average would get C and even bright student was “struggled to get that C”, a student opted to take Orgo at a local state school during summer and got easy A there. MIT is another “bad” premed school since their students are so gifted… same goes for Princeton, and JHU is not far behind (even Gtown adcom mentioned JHU on GPA related question).
I mean that if I only knew as much orgo as I needed for the MCAT there is no way I would have passed orgo 1/2 at Brown. Night and day both in terms of the breadth/depth of knowledge and especially with regard to the degree of difficulty of the problems. I still remember being stunned when I reviewed the orgo and did a bunch of MCAT orgo practice problems. “This is it!?!?!” was the thought that went through my head.
As alluded to above, there is no orgo for pre-meds at Brown. There is only intro orgo for chemistry majors/future chemistry PhDs.
^^ Perhaps that brakes the myth of “easy A in Brown, even for premed”?
^^ Perhaps that brakes the myth of “easy A in Brown, even for premed”?
The A’s are earned through hard, hard work but numerous. It’s different from a weed out system where the material may be difficult but doable, except the number of A’s is strictly rationed. Because many students at Brown are overachievers they rise to the higher expectations and, while they suffer doing it, in turn they don’t find the MCAT that daunting, resulting in an ideal combination of good grades/good scores. But no one said classes are easy at Brown.
Correct, but to many: “more As” = “easier”
There’s also nothing to disincentive collaboration, resource sharing, and peer education.
Taking the MCATs is like taking any other test. Based on getting 1580 out of 1600 on the new SAT, your chances on the MCAT are good, and anyone in their right mind who has a few hundred bucks to spare would take a prep class too.
The question I have is, where do you want to go to med school? If you don’t care, there are many seven year med options out there, and if you have the excellent stats NOW, why wait? Just get a list of seven year med programs you are interested in and apply to those.
I really don’t get how few excellent students who want to be doctors don’t consider seven year med. And you can get out of seven year med, if you really want to, but it seems silly to not do it if you’ve always wanted to be a doctor - you get a year of your life (and earning money!) back!
This is assuming you don’t hinder your chances at the specialty you want by rushing through the process. A couple extra years of internal medicine salary doesn’t make up for for the 40+ years of dermatology salary.
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/15534212/#Comment_15534212
The above is about a 6 year program, and maybe a 7 year program is the sweet spot, but i’d still vote for an 8 year guaranteed program over a shorter one.