<p>Congrats, Pharmagal! Your son should be very proud!</p>
<p>When does he intend to apply for medical school?</p>
<p>Congrats, Pharmagal! Awesome for your S.</p>
<p>Those are great results. Congrats. Now they can concentrate on the rest of the package without concern about the MCAT.</p>
<p>Congrats waffle and S of Pharmgal, fantastic results!</p>
<p>Thanks to all for your good wishes. It’s been heartwarming to share trials and triumphs here with a nurturing CC community.</p>
<p>Shades, DS is in a BS/MD program with TCNJ/UMDNJ. Before he took his MCATs, I had asked him whether he would consider looking at other top tier programs if he were to get a good score, his answer has consistently been that he wants to stay within the 7 year program and try for top residencies thru UMDNJ.</p>
<p>He took this test after completing his 2nd year College, actually…which makes me wonder whether the score would go up in another year’s worth course work and maturity? Any thoughts?</p>
<p>Congrats waffle and S of Pharmgal. Both of you got great results!</p>
<p>Somebody posted in the past that many kids in a BS/MD program are very good academically and this may be the reason why they got into one of these programs in the first place. Although this may be anecdotal, this is a good anecdotal evidence anyway.</p>
<p>With a grade as high as this, isn’t it recommended (by most people) not to retake the test as there is really no need?</p>
<p>Congrats again!</p>
<p>Pharmagal:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Yes, several thoughts, all leading to a resounding NO RETAKE.</p>
<p>Just as you said, his score might go up with maturity alone. It’s doubtful that more coursework would help - MCAT tests a relatively small pool of knowledge. There are anecdotal stories of too much coursework actually leading people to select wrong answers.</p>
<p>However, high scores are, in my opinion, due in part to chance. Did you get tested on the subjects you knew best? If so, your score might be higher than if you were tested on topics that you were weaker in. By retaking, your son is exposing himself to fickle fate, and simply by getting the “wrong questions,” his score might drop.</p>
<p>Then there’s the issue of retaking. We’ve always said on this board that retakes are bad, and that’s generally true. However, there are different kinds of retakes. The applicant who retakes a 28 and receives a 34 on retake is much different than the applicant who retakes a 38 (and receives whatever score). In the first situation, the applicant might be seen as someone who can’t hit the mark on the first try, but given enough time, learns from his mistakes. This is not a desirable quality, but some adcoms will reason that maybe with a little more training or a little more experience, this problem can be overcome.</p>
<p>The second applicant is going to be seen as a fool, someone who thinks a 38 needs to be retaken and therefore has really bad judgment. (It would be even worse if the second applicant’s retake score is inferior to his first.) In my (albeit limited) experience, it’s often viewed as a trait which is irremediable, and therefore it is worse than “having trouble getting it right the first time”. You do not want the tag of “bad judgment” stuck to your son. </p>
<p>The truth is, you wouldn’t want your son to be in the shoes of either applicant, but if I had to pick one, I would NOT want to be the applicant who’s seen as having poor judgment. Bad judgment will kill your application fast.</p>
<p>Thanks BDM and MCAT2.</p>
<p>I don’t think my DS will retake MCAT even if I ask him to. 
Was his good score by chance? I am sure there is some chance involved in the ease or difficulty of test one gets at any occurrence. But he had been practicing all Summer with Examcrackers and AAMC website and his last scores on AAMC tests 9 and 10 were 38 and 40, resp.</p>
<p>I think he just practiced very well besides maintaining a 4.0 GPA in the Program. So, it might be a combination of knowing the material well, rigorous practicing, and some chance.</p>
<p>I have no doubt that your son practiced hard and studied diligently. However, that still doesn’t change the [data</a> on retaking from the AAMC](<a href=“http://www.aamc.org/students/mcat/admissionsadvisors/examstatistics/retester/start.htm]data”>http://www.aamc.org/students/mcat/admissionsadvisors/examstatistics/retester/start.htm). Statistically speaking, your son’s unlikely to do as well as he did before. This indicates to me that there’s some element of chance in an excellent MCAT score.</p>
<p>Thanks Shades.</p>
<p>Pharmagal,
My D is in bs/md also. She is planning to apply out (retaining spot in her program), but only if she gets 33 +. Otherwise, she needs 27. She is also junior. She is planning to take MCAT next spring. If you have any suggestions based on your S experience, please, share, if you can. D’s concern is Writing and Verbal. She is very strong writer, but does not care at all about current political / economic events. I just wonder what kind of issues in general your S needed to cover. If you can share without specifics, if not I will understand. Thank you.</p>
<p>Hi MiamiDAP,</p>
<p>Based on some of your prior posts, I think your DD has a terrific chance of getting a high MCAT score. My DS is very much like your DD. Has maintained a 4.0 GPA throughout.
He has completed all his Science requirements before the start of last Summer and now in junior year, is now completing remaining liberal arts requirements + a semester of Research to go. </p>
<p>DS studied for it all Summer. I think he spent about 3 hours/daily in studying all Summer. He took Kaplan’s prep but didn’t like their exams. He complained inordinately that their scoring was way too easy and exams too tough. Therefore, focused mostly on Examcrackers and AAMC on line tests to prep. His first tests on AAMC were lower in score ~around 32 or so but as he progressed through tests, his score got better and he grew more confident as well. By tests 9 and 10, he was scoring 38 and 40. </p>
<p>Does that help you? Let me know if you have any specific questions.</p>
<p>MiamiDAP,</p>
<p>Just wanted to add, actually DS doesn’t care about politics either. I nudged him a great deal to read The Economist but he never showed any interest. However, he has always been a voracious reader of fiction. I think verbal was his weakest section with a 12.</p>
<p>You can only advise them so much, you know. They will do what they want.</p>
<p>If I had a 4.0 and a 38, I would have applied to Cornell, Case, may be even given a shot for Yale, Harvard. He doesn’t want to. “I would rather be a big fish at UMDNJ than a minnow at top schools” he says. </p>
<p>As parents, we can only influence them, advise them, provide a nurturing environment, and share their moments of sadness or joy. Their lives and their decisions are so much their own.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Keep in mind that your son may actually have a harder time getting interviews at lower-ranked schools compared to top-ranked ones. With your son having stats like that, many lower-ranked schools may decline to interview your son because they assume that even if they extended an offer of admission to him, he would surely turn them down for a more prestigious school. Since they don’t think he’ll end up coming, they won’t want to waste an interview slot on him.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I remember that somebody posted that the applicant should have his/her MCAT scores in hand before s/he selects the list of medical schools to apply to. This may be the reason. The so-called “Tufts syndrome” may be more common during the medical school application cycle than during the college application cycle because 1) there are so few slots, and 2) the interview is required. This is an unpleasant aspect of medical school application.</p>
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<p>Pharmagal: If you do not mind to share this with us: what was his score of the diagnostic test that any Kaplan student would take before the prep course? Did he take any of Kaplan’s full-length online practice tests at all? (I thought the first 5 practice tests are “required.” Am I right?)</p>
<p>I fully agree with you that “we can only influence them, advise them, provide a nurturing environment, and share their moments of sadness or joy.”</p>
<p>Hi, MCAT2</p>
<p>I’m replying on my mother’s (Pharmagal) account. </p>
<p>O.K., first of all, when I heard I got a 38 from my parents (I was too chicken to check the score myself), retaking it was the LAST thing going through my mind…
That being said,</p>
<p>What I did to get a 38:
I studied all summer, but this is how I split my summer up:</p>
<p>First, I used the Examcrackers lesson books for physics and verbal (my weaker subjects at the time)</p>
<p>After cementing the basics, the rest was practice.</p>
<p>While attending the Kaplan course, I did a couple of practice problems from the Examcrackers 1001 questions books (for chem and bio, and 101 passages from verbal) every day. Only a few every day like ~ 50 from chem and bio and about 2-3 passages every day from the verbal. Unfortunately, I forgot to order physics, and I can definitely say that my score would’ve been higher if I had studied from the 1001 Physics Questions book as well.</p>
<p>The bulk of my practice was composed of the AAMC practice exams. These are by far the most important resource you can access for the MCAT, because they accurately reflect the difficulty, the scoring, and also the graphical user interface of the actual exam. Every weekend, I took one of the 8 AAMC tests, and spent the rest of the weekend relaxing, taking a break from studying after analyzing the test results.</p>
<p>The AAMC exams will very accurately track your development as you study. I started at 32 on the first AAMC exam (27 on the first Kaplan test) and slowly worked my way up to 37 on the 9th and 38 on the 10th AAMC test. That 40 I got wasn’t luck; in my desperate search for more practice materials, I decided not to take the last Kaplan test and instead took the 10th AAMC exam again. I got a 40 because I knew most of the answers =). But seriously, the AAMC exams quite accurately reflected my score on the actual MCAT. </p>
<p>Kaplan tests are worthless. I cannot emphasize this more. I would recommend them only to those who have scoured every nook and cranny of their house, the library, the local bookstore, and the internet for practice materials, yet have come up dry. In the Biological Sciences section on Kaplan test 3, I got 8 questions wrong and my score was 15. I hope this conveys how inaccurate the Kaplan tests are, and how they should only be used as a last resort. The material in the Kaplan tests is also at a level higher than that of the AAMC MCATs, so don’t stress out if you don’t understand any of it.</p>
<p>However, I do not think that the actual Kaplan course was a waste of time. It reviewed the basics–those things that you are sure you know, and probably won’t spend time studying. Although, similar to the time I was taking the SAT, I didn’t really adhere to Kaplan’s test taking strategies–passage mapping and all… I will still admit that there is value in review of what you think you already know.</p>
<p>I didn’t practice the essay portion of the test at all. I really didn’t know how to, because even the Kaplan tests would not score the essay portion. I have the New York times as my homepage, but I don’t really read it very often, and I spend a great deal of effort being apathetic about politics, so of course, both of my essay questions would end up having to do with aspects of politics. I’m just really glad I didn’t get a J.</p>
<p>Good luck
Remember - the main thing is to not stress out.</p>
<p>Hi, Pharmagal</p>
<p>Thank you very much for sharing your experiences with us.</p>
<p>Regarding how lenient the scoring on a Kaplan test is, I heard a similar complaint from my S also. I also heard that, relatively speaking, Kaplan’s VR and PS lessons are “better” (more comprehensive?) than its BS lessons. But this is what I learned from a single person – so it may be his bias only and others may have a different opinion. I just notice that his scores on BS sections on Kaplan tests are always higher than the other two sections by 0-2 points. I would guess that it may be due to the more lenient curve that you mentioned.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, he has not started on any of his AAMC tests 
He has completed the required Kaplan practice tests only. I remember that he was quite stressed out when he took the 4th Kaplan practice test.</p>
<p>Thanks again!</p>
<p>Biological Sciences has a ton of material, and I agree that there is a good chunk that you have to learn on your own (mostly low yield stuff). What you do cover, however, I would say is probably some of Kaplan’s best work. This is probably just my bias as a biochemist… It seems like a general consensus that Exam Crackers is the best for verbal reasoning. I wouldn’t know though.</p>
<p>Shades,</p>
<p>I agree with you that the interviews would be harder to get in most lower tier schools. However, this should not apply to applicants to their ‘own State’ schools. I say that because the tuition is not only lower within your state of residence but also because top students are eligible to State funded scholarships within their own state. It would be unfair to not give the same chance of scholarships to their very own state residents who pay state taxes and support the state funded medical school.</p>
<p>There are some top students who have stayed with UDMNJ in the past for this very reason. If their 4 yrs are paid for, why go elsewhere?</p>
<p>Thankfully, DS need not worry about his interview since he already had one at the time he got admitted to BS/MD program.</p>
<p>Ahh, so Pharmagal’s son got the same score on AAMC 10 as he did on the real thing. The same happened to me. Those last 3-4 AAMC exams are money.</p>