<p>That is good to know… We have other kids so this info is helpful.</p>
<p>The premed advisor at D’s school told her that even with her MCAT score in the 95th percentile, GPA 3.67, double major (science and social science), and decent EC’s (Big Brother/Sister for 3 yrs, Battered Women’s shelter, school clubs, shadowing, research, etc.), she had a very small chance of receiving an acceptance to medical school because her GPA was problematic. Since she only became interested in med school in Jan of her junior year, we did not do our research and was taken back with the advice she received. It was: take a gap year, and do something spectacular EC wise or go to a master’s program and get better grades in grad school to prove that you are up to the rigor of med school. Needless to say, we disregard her advice and convinced our disappointed and distraught child to give it a shot and see what happens. Thankfully, she received acceptances and we are tempted to write a letter to the university. Hard to know who to complain to since her advisor is the head of the premed office!</p>
<p>Some colleges’s premed committe screens their applicants and discourage less qualified students not to apply, at the intent to boost their medical school admission rate. This why some colleges, mostly LACs that have small no. of applicants, brag about their 100% medical school admission rate.
To WayoutWestmom, I am glad to hear your D’s Mcat is much higher than the Act score. My son is studying hlMcat very hard now. He did not do very well on Sat (barely 2000). He was not good at handling the tricky math questions. I was worried he will not able to make a decent Mcat score, say 32, no matter how hard he is working, due to the correlation trend between Sat/Act and Mcat.</p>
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This person is either a whack job and/or has an extremely warped sense of chance. Your daughter’s MCAT score of 35 (95th percentile) and GPA of 3.67, give her 82% (based AAMC MCAT/GPA grid for whites) chance of getting admitted into an MD school! I wonder how many kids this “advisor” dissuaded from applying to med schools, based on his highly refined chancing skills!
Correlation does not mean causation nor does it mean inevitability. If your kid has the knowledge of the subject matter, has the ability to think critically and works hard, he can do well on MCAT regardless of how he did on SAT.</p>
<p>Well, to be completely honest–both my Ds were “one and dones” on their ACTs. And neither actually prepped for it. One kid got sick as dog during the exam but stayed to finish it and later refused to retake it since her score was “good enough”. (And she didn’t want to waste another whole Saturday taking a “stupid” test.)</p>
<p>As someone on this forum posted w/r/t standardized tests–you have to actually give damn about a test to do well on it.</p>
My second son must have gotten wind of this somehow. He pretty much walked into his SAT with very little preparation. If I didn’t know his PSAT score, I would not have believed his SAT score - a 2310. He is done. There are a couple of kids with similar scores that took SAT again recently, because of their parents disapproval!</p>
<p>kal123; Many premeds (based on informal polling of D’s friends/acquaintances) from her school took the advice of the premed advisor and is taking a gap year. This premed advisor was on the admission committee of a top medical school so it might be a warp view. We do feel bad for the kids that are getting bad advice. Thank goodness for the web so we can get data to make sound decisions. In the old days, everyone will just rely on the “experts” because isn’t that what they are paid for.</p>
<p>I do agree that a top med school would be difficult but that applicant shouldn’t have too much trouble getting into A med school (assuming you weren’t planning on applying in September or something stupid like that)</p>
<p>BUMPing this up for the tables at the beginning since I feel like we’re starting to get the annual influx of “i’m entering X year with Y GPA, am I doomed?”</p>