Pre-med survival -SAT link.. anyone?

Bigredmed
Tue, 13 Feb 2007 00:02:40 +0000

Passion can make up for a lot. I’d really focus on making sure that he finds a major, and a school that he really enjoys.

You probably can’t use SAT as a judge of being able to handle pre-med, but there certainly correlations between all standardized tests. Some people just test well. I used to work for Kaplan, doing MCAT prep, and because we were a small center, the MCAT instructors typically had to fill in for other science based tests (DAT, PCAT, etc) and had to take the practice exams to get close to qualifying marks. It was a common phrase for someone about to do that for the first time, that “if you’re good at one standardized test, you’re good at all of them”.

I don’t know of any exact ratios/score formulas/rules of thumb for correlating the SAT to the MCAT (supposedly, the ACT score +/- 2 points works fairly well, and there is a well established one for the LSAT and old SAT), but there is some correlation. However, even then someone who hasn’t tested well in the past can come in, with proper preparation and do really well.

You’d be surprised at the stats that get people into medical school. They’re certainly not frequent, but they do happen. Hit an interviewer the write way, really show your dedication to medicine, and sometimes things happen. But keep in mind that’s a long ways off.

The point should be that he needs to focus on being competitive as he builds his resume. There is no ONE thing that will guarantee a spot in medical school, you really do have to have it all - grades, MCAT, research, volunteering/clinical experience, campus involvement, leadership experience, etc. Being competitive, depending on his state of residence, means he should be shooting for a 3.5 GPA and 27 on the MCAT. It’s certainly no guarantee, but depending on the other aspects of his resume, those scores won’t categorically get him eliminated (unless he lives in CA, because of it’s size has the most competitive public admissions in the country). There’s a whole host of other things to consider, some of them years off, so just see how he gets through first semester chemistry.