@Creekland : I agree. I usually think to get students to successfully do higher levels of thinking (or to expect it to be demanded), you have to make that expectation clear and model the type of thinking and problem solving you want them to do. It isn’t easy at all (for students, and nor for many instructors), but it definitely isn’t easy if you go through grade school virtually unexposed to other ways of thinking in learning (except maybe in the social sciences. When I was in HS, the curriculum and exams in social sciences APs had started to evolve, especially in history where the DBQ was becoming common).
Future medical students need both in my opinion depending on the specialty. Many med. schools veer from pure memorization and I would argue that STEP 1 is somewhat similar to the MCAT with the items it has which are mostly at level 3 (MCAT probably has more “analysis” level 4 items):
https://www.usmle.org/pdfs/step-1/samples_step1.pdf
I would argue that the usmle would be considered almost a “good” multiple choice test. You need to memorize the content so that you can pull from that, but then you need to be able to really apply it in these contexts.
Being able to read decent sized passages, analyze data/figures, and apply/reason at times may be easier than literally memorizing every case and every stat. The weirdness of medical school is that the pre-clinical sciences curriculum at many may be very memorization pitched (many of the research universities have medical schools that have somewhat veered from that), but yet the MCAT was required for them to get in and STEP 1 is a huge component of which residency opps they will have access to. This is why I think it is indeed critical for future medical students to get to the next level as much as possible, especially high achievers who in grade school already became decent at algorithmic logic and amazing at regurgitation. I also imagine that there are certain specialties where understaning and reasoning is a pretty critical component. Whether or not the medical school pedagogy and assessment strategies require it may be different from what some practices require it. You need lots of knowledge (which most med. school students can handle) plus more in many cases.