I Hate Science and Math...Can I still be a Doctor?

bluedevilmike
Fri, 19 Jan 2007 16:49:36 +0000

As a social science major who took the MCAT, I disagree quite seriously.

The MCAT, even the “science” sections, is entirely a reading comprehension test, top to bottom. You are given information in a passage. While this information must be filtered through background science knowledge, this knowledge is something that all pre-med students have acquired from their standardized curriculum.

What differs is how well and how quickly they read, and how easily they process scientific material (written in an unscientific way) to sort through that data and extract the relevant points. These are skills that reading/writing-heavy majors train their students in, on balance, somewhat more than science majors tend to train their students in.

As BRM also often points out, sometimes too much background knowledge can make reading comprehension more difficult, and this too is a weakness that science majors might run into.