<p>If you score 3-4 points below your AAMC average on the later AAMCs (7,8,9,10,11) on the real thing, should you retake if the real score was in the 32-33 range if your goal is a top tier (top 10/top 20) medical school and if the GPA, ECs, and research are competitive for such schools?</p>
<p>It seems extremely common to score 2+ points below your best scores.</p>
<p>The biggest concern about retaking is that you may not only not do significantly better, you may do worse! Many great students here have considered retaking, but very few have actually done so.</p>
<p>Most people on CC do not place a great deal of emphasis on getting into a top tier med school. Are you in a state with good schools? Will that score allow you to get in?</p>
<p>The score will get me in to most of the in state schools and make me competitive at a couple but not ensure anything, which is also why I’m unsure to retake or not because those are the ones I’m most interested in.</p>
<p>AMCAS has a chart for that!</p>
<p><a href=“https://www.aamc.org/students/download/271680/data/retestertotalscorechange.pdf[/url]”>https://www.aamc.org/students/download/271680/data/retestertotalscorechange.pdf</a></p>
<p>It shows the number and precentage of increase or decrease based upon original subscore in each section.</p>
<p>At the pre-med conference in UC Davis in California this past weekend, the advice on this question was to stick with what you got (if it was 30 or above) and NOT take the MCAT a second time. If you take it a second time and score lower than the first time, the adcoms at the med schools will assume you got lucky the first time and will actually be biased towards using the lower score. The risk isn’t worth the gain.</p>
<p>Unfortunately I don’t think that kind of drop from your average is large enough to warrant a retest, especially when, as the chart shows, you have a greater than 1/3 chance of lowering your score.</p>
<p>There is definitely a risk of scoring lower, however the one thing that is nagging me is that I never scored as low as a 33 on a practice test except for the AAMC I took almost 2 months before my MCAT. After that AAMC, I had not scored below a 35 on an AAMC, so I feel as though the 33 is as low as it can get for me.</p>
<p>Also, I do agree that >30 does not warrant a retake to get into a medical school, but what about specifically for the top in-state school or top 20s, for example? From MSAR data, a 33 is close to the 20th percentile or so at some of those schools while a 36 is near the 80th or so percentile, so it seems like a big jump to at least get a shot at the interview.</p>
<p>ultimately it’s your life. If you would rather dedicate your time to studying the MCAT and risking putting yourself in a worse position rather than something else be our guest. The students who get into top schools don’t get in because of their high MCAT scores, it’s everything else on their application that gets them in and only you have your full picture. Is your time at this point best spent on the MCAT?</p>
<p>I know it sucks, i’ve been in your shoes (<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/pre-med-topics/573112-what-do-big-drop-practice-scores-but-still-really-good-score.html?highlight=retake+mcat[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/pre-med-topics/573112-what-do-big-drop-practice-scores-but-still-really-good-score.html?highlight=retake+mcat</a>) but you have to think about the whole picture.</p>