"When University of Texas at Dallas senior Siddhartha Srivastava saw his score on the Medical College Admission Test, he thought it was a mistake.
Not because it was below his expectations, but because he had done what only 0.5 percent of aspiring medical students have done: achieved a perfect score." …
A perfect score is the 99.5th percentile now? When it was out of 45, a 38 was the 99th percentile, and 39 is already “100th” percentile (i.e. 99.5th percentile or higher) (https://aamc-orange.global.ssl.fastly.net/production/media/filer_public/5f/16/5f169a91-12b7-42e0-8749-a17f3bebe7a4/finalpercentileranksfortheoldmcatexam.pdf). When I was applying in 09-10, it was routinely said that no one had ever actually gotten a 45, so I’m not sure how the new score avoids bunching at the top if more kids are getting perfect scores now than before. Also no career in neuroscience guaranteed by this score, 10% of applicants to medical school with GPAs above 3.8 and MCATs above 39 were rejected to every medical school they applied to (https://www.aamc.org/download/321508/data/factstablea23.pdf). From the article though, sounds like he’s not the kind of kid who will fall into that 10%.
I don’t understand this. I suppose they are still trying to figure out how to score, or how difficult to make the new exam.