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<p>I’m aware of that, I wasn’t putting the blame of low MCAT scores solely on Oxford students. But of course the next question would be what else is causing Emory students to score lower than expected? Gaps in the pre-med science curriculum, poor professors, lazy or complacent students, students who are aren’t very good at test-taking, lack of test prep resources available to Emory students, or too many students who can’t afford test prep company courses, etc…? Which one is it?</p>
<p>Personally I believe it comes down to the attitude and abilities of the student and not so much the environment. It seems like Emory generally has a laid back atmosphere and even among pre-meds, who tend to be more hardcore when it comes to academics, many still are in it just because their parents told them to become doctors or everyone else is on the pre-med bandwagon. In effect, a good amount of students don’t really try as hard as the should be, whether it is science classes or mcat, and often prefer a “watered down” version of the premed science classes to get an easy A at the expense of not being well-prepared for the MCAT. Math/Science in fact tends to be a weak point among many of the premeds here (many are into the humanties), which is a real killer on the mcat when 2/3 of the sections are science ones.</p>
<p>The curriculum itself here may also exacerbate the laziness among some pre-med. In short many of the key science classes physics and bio in particular, are often not challenging enough (they are somewhat watered dwn) and many students can often get away with not paying much attention in class, studying just the night before at test, and pulling off an A- or A in the class, and believe that this pattern will carry over when they take the mcat. The reality is that most students (not just at emory) who do well (30+) will spend about 250 to 300 hrs studying for the mcat alone (not counting time taking the prereq science coures), which is a large time commitment that many emory students may not want to commit to. Another note is the timing of the sections on the mcat; you get 70 minutes to do 52 questions for the science sections and 60 minutes for 40 questions on the verbal, which is a much more stringent time constraint than what most profs here are allowing on their tests (most give you more then enough time and hence students dont have a sense of pacing during tests).</p>
<p>Of course all this only describes a portion of students here. In contrast many pre-meds here still have 3.8+ GPAs and 34+ MCAT, the general average of accepted students at top med schools. Emory itself has all the opportunities and resources for pre-meds to be successful, in the end the question of whether YOU will have a high GPA/MCAT and get into med school depends on your motivation, work ethic, and efficiency in getting the important things done.</p>