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<p>Sure, but that actually presumes that premed adcoms actually know which courses are harder than others, and which profs are harder than others. How many adcoms actually know this? </p>
<p>Let me give you an example regarding Berkeley. Berkeley has 2 OChem tracks: the lower-division Chem 3AB series and the upper-division Chem 112AB series. Each series basically teach the same thing, but the latter series is usually taken by chemistry and chemical engineering majors whereas the former is taken by biology majors. However, not only is either track acceptable for the purposes of premed requirements, but the 2 tracks can also be mixed-and-matched (i.e. you can do Chem112A and then 3B to fulfill your premed requirements). </p>
<p>What is not so well known, but has been figured out by savvy premeds, is that the ‘weeder’ course in each track is unsynchonized: in the 3 series, it is 3A that is the weeder, and in the 112 series, it is 112B that is the weeder. Hence, savvy premeds have figured out that the optimal path for them to take to maximize their grades is to take 112A and then 3B. But the med-school adcoms obviously don’t know this trick. Heck, a lot of people at Berkeley don’t even know about this trick. If you just look at somebody’s transcript, and you see 112A followed by 3B, what happened is not obvious. That’s just one example of how you game the system. Then there is an ‘advanced iteration’ of the game in which one particular 112 prof is known to grade easier than the others, etc. </p>
<p>The major advantage of relying on the MCAT is that it eliminates all these games. No longer would students feel the need to shop around for easy courses and easy profs where they can get high grades for the least possible work. On the MCAT, you either know the material or you don’t, and hence students will be looking for those courses in which they will actually learn, which was supposed to be the whole point. </p>
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<p>Or, more importantly, that they could have gotten an A if they had just taken the same course, but at a different school. Or even at the same school, but under a different prof. Like I said, some schools and some profs grade easier than others. It is not only highly demoralizing, but also unfair, to be working harder and knowing more than somebody else, but actually getting a lower grade, just because you happened to have the harder prof. </p>
<p>Again, the advantage of the MCAT is that it is fair. Everybody has to take the same test. You don’t have to worry about different students being graded under different standards just because they had different profs. The process is fair.</p>