<p>Your argument about variance in difficulty doesn’t make immediate sense to me. Why would the gap between biochemistry and biology push scores down, unless biology was easier than English too?</p>
<p>If you ask 80 to 90 percents of ANY particular major to take MCAT tests, their average score will not be stellar. I think this may be one of the factors that the mcat score of a biology major is not high.</p>
<p>Remember that, even among all science majors, not all science majors have such a high percentage of premeds. There are much fewer premeds (and therefore MCAT takers) in physics, chemistry, math or, yes, even biochemistry and BME majors, than biology majors (percentage wise.) It is likely that fewer mcat takers from a major, the more capable those test takers tend to be. An anecdotal example: a higher percentage of biology majors at DS’s school are premed, as compared to the biochemistry majors. (the former: 80-85 percents, the latter: two thirds. The “atmosphere” may be somewhat different in a department with a very high percentage of premeds. So many students are superly eager to get good grades in all classes. This aspect of this kind of major is what DS dislikes sometimes.)</p>
<p>Yeah mcat2 hit on what I was unable to articulate.</p>
<p>i didn’t go through the whole thread, but doesn’t the answer to the OP’s original question depend on the school? before i transferred, i was a psych major and in order to earn my BS in psych, i had to fulfill all the pre-med requirements. i think it just depends on the school and what they know to be popular pre-med majors</p>
<p>^ I think it is true it depends on the school also. The same major at different schools could be quite different.</p>
<p>For freshmen or high schoolers, they may focus too much on the overlap courses between medical school prereq courses and the courses required by a major. An issue that is often overlooked is the additional courses a major requires you to take besides the medical school prereqs.</p>
<p>As an example, the family of chemistry-related majors will likely require two semesters of p-chem and/or biochem (depending on the school.) You need to think well ahead whether math/physics-intensive quantum chemistry or thermo topics is what you may be interested in – You may want to take more advanced maths as a preparation for these classes in your first two years or even in high school if you go to a highly competitive school. As a high schooler, I think the aptitude/fondness for physics and advanced math equal to or higher than AP Calculus BC may be more important than the aptitude/fondness in AP chemistry, if your future goal is to be a chemistry major (and almost all science majors except bio.)</p>
<p>For a biology major, you may be required or highly encouraged to take many upper-division bio labs which are not medical school prereqs. Actually, a bio major may encourage you to skip as many science classes at the level of medical school prereqs as possible, so that you can take more upper-division bio (esp. a lot of upper-division lab technique classes that will likely prepare you well for a research job in the graduate/PhD program.) – These very research focused, non-medical-school-prereq classes are really what high power science/bio/biochem prefessors want you to take, if you want these professors to think highly of you, instead of thinking of you as yet another premed whose interests is just the grades in those lower-division bio/medical school prereqs classes.</p>
<p>DS was not a good planner. He essentially took 3 labs and and an MCAT-unrelated evolution/ecology lecture class (because he needs these in order to graduate) in the last semester as a “preparation” for his MCAT – which left him almost no time for MCAT prep in that semester. (He prep-ed this test one year ago though – another abnormal/strange situation he got himself into. Luckily it turns out OK in the end. It really made us worried due to this wierd sequence of classes/MCAT-prep-course.) His departmental advisor jokingly said to him he seems to take many of his bio classes required by his major in a reverse order :(</p>
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Come on, it’s like saying that if you move to Cupertino or Fremont then you’ll get higher SAT scores – by a lot.</p>
<p>^ I do not think this is what BDM meant.</p>
<p>When I was in the bay area a few decades ago, Cupertino was considered as a “good” school district while Fremont was definitely not (kind of rural or newly-developed area whose school district can not compete against the one in Cupertino.) It appears that the segment of families with one or two parents with a professional job has become much larger since then.</p>
<p>At a few top colleges, if you said you were from a public high school in a “hot” area like the Bay area, many people (yes, it is a prejudice) would often assume you are from one of the few top public high schools. The SAT average of the top few percents of students there (who have a decent chance of getting into a very top college based mostly on their academic merit only) is higher than the counterpart of the non-top public high schools.</p>
<h1>26 appears to suggest that the superior score of humanities majors is entirely a selection effect.</h1>
<p>But that’s not plausible if you buy the assumption above, which is that MCAT scores are dominantly determined by scientific prowess. In other words, #26 actually proves my point.</p>
<p>Unless you want to argue that the students with the most talent in science become English majors, but I don’t think you want to go there.</p>
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<h1>22 is a fair point. But the statistic still speaks for itself: if scientific prowess and advanced science coursework really was the key factor for the MCAT, you’d expect that to trump. And yet they do dramatically better even on the biology subsection.</h1>
<p>And that’s despite the fact that they’re at three disadvantages: (1) the types of kids who choose English should have somewhat less science predilection; (2) they have less science training; (3) the very best English majors typically go on to graduate programs in English.</p>
<p>So for English majors to still beat biology majors by a full point – despite whatever mild selection effect there may be – isn’t totally conclusive, but it’s very suggestive.</p>
<p>Point of post #22 was exactly what I was going to post myself (had it all typed out), but I decided to check the numbers just to verify before clicking Post. What made me skeptical of emphasizing this possibility is the fact that when you look at the average GPAs, the sciences are actually amongst the top for mean GPAs (and top for mean non-science GPAs). Which leads me to assume that either 1) science majors don’t work as hard prepping for MCAT (which wouldn’t make sense given the GPAs are the same = same work ethics), 2) science majors are overindulged in scientific knowledge and therefore over think (or go so deep/advance that their intro knowledge in specificity is succumbed), or 3) science majors don’t prepare you well for MCAT - (or 4, random error/flux). Your pick(s) on which is/are the reason(s).</p>
<p>And their standard deviations for the mean MCAT is almost smack in the middle, which doesn’t work for point 22. - Interestingly enough, with Humanities’ mean MCAT being amongst the highest, their standard deviation is the lowest, which also doesn’t work for the point.</p>
<p>^ Whoa, nice work. Never occurred to me to check those other indicators.</p>
<p>As a History major, I just have to say…uhhhh…whut? 
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<p>EngineeringHead has a very good point by paying attention to some details on the numbers.
May I propose yet another theory? (quite a daring one.)
Looking around the students in any engineering or science department, there are over representations of students from families whose household heads are either first or second generation American. (This phenomenon is even more noticeable in any graduate schools.) Back in their parents/grandparents country, scientists and engineers are more respectred careers. So they more likely push their offsprings toward these majors as compared to a typical family.</p>
<p>But due to the fact that their families are still not very assimulated into the main stream culture, unless the students or their parents are very talented in their EQs (not IQ), these students may have a relatively more difficulty on many aspects (esp. the soft skills that are in great need in the medicine career.) They can work hard in getting good scores (esp., PS or BS sections of MCAT – looking at how great the scores some of these students got, for example, even by self-study, e.g., shemarty’s BS is perfect 15.), they lose out on some other critical aspects in the application. MIT kids’s higher GPA requirements may be explained in the same way – too many students with the science bend while the medical schools only want X percents of science majors.</p>
<p>I know this is a very controversal theory.</p>
<p>IMO, there IS a lot of self-selection for humanities majors. Take music, for example, which has a high acceptance rate to med school. While music is typically considered grade-inflated (lotsa A’s if you just show up and work hard), the simple fact is that someone who can both fulfill music ‘labs’ (and performances) and earn excellent grades in science labs is one smart guy/gal. </p>
<p>Ditto Philosophy majors - writing long papers and labs???</p>
<p>Sure, they’re better at balancing things. But if the MCAT tests science skills, then your argument would have to be: not only are humanities majors self-selecting because they’re better at balance, they’re also self selecting because they’re better at science even relative to science majors.</p>
<p>And I don’t think that holds water.</p>
<p>Therefore, the first assumption I listed – that the MCAT is dominantly a science test – can’t possibly be right.</p>