The MCAT (Medical College Admissions Test) is the entry exam every pre medical student must take to apply to medical school. Roughly 42 out of every 100 applicants even make it to one medical school acceptance (roughly). This makes the MCAT extremely stressful as it is one of if not the biggest components of the application.
Reasons why the MCAT is stressful:
—It’s not pass fail, so generally students have a range goal they have to aim for to be considered competitive. Generally you need to score above 75-80% of your peers to be “competitive”. Even then it’s not a guarantee
-Its generally advisable to only take it ONCE. The more times you take it the worse you look.
-MCAT scores EXPIRE. After a 2-3 year period you need to do it all over again to reapply to medical school.
-It’s 7-8 hours of physics, chem, orgo Chen, biology, biochem, English, psych, and sociology. That’s a lot of pure memorization.
Now this is where COVID comes in:
Kaplan is the company that runs the testing centers. AAMC is the company that runs the MCAT. And Medical schools all have their individual policies regarding how they evaluate grades.
When Covid hit, Kaplan started just canceling tests like crazy. Understandable there’s a pandemic and all that. Only problem is, AAMC didn’t update their policies at this point and it’s near impossible to sign up for tests again as they’re all booked. And the deadline to apply to medical school is FAST approaching.
TLDR: You’re fucked.
Obviously, everyone’s freaking out. Imagine having the most stressful exam of your life (so far) being canceled just out of the blue. And your window of opportunity to maybe schedule an MCAT so that you can maybe ace the exam so that you can maybe get into med school so that you can maybe be a doctor is closing.
Oh but it gets worse.
Then AAMC just starts going crazy. 8 hour test? Nevermind we made it 5! We’ll just throw out some questions we were planning on having in there! What if we were to just schedule 3 different time slots all on the same day? You don’t mind taking the test at 6pm and leaving our testing center at 12am right? Oops sorry! State guidelines change! You won’t find out that your test was canceled until very last minute! Oh but good luck scheduling! We’ll put you in a lottery system! Hopefully you’ll get the time slot you want!
Then when pre medical applicants obviously started complaining and reaching out, AAMC and Kaplan Twitter were NOT having it. “Ummmm you guys are future doctors sweetie. Life is tough! If you can’t handle it, don’t complain! There are thousands who would want to be in your position! Complaining isn’t professional!”
It was a shit show.
Source: Med Student who saw my peers go through this nonsense.
A17321 on May 5th, 2021 at 05:41 UTC »
Same thing goes for every AP test by college board when their software failed left and right last summer
WantedToBeNamedSire on May 5th, 2021 at 06:08 UTC »
Could someone give me a bit context?
justtingthings on May 5th, 2021 at 07:57 UTC »
For those of you who need context:
The MCAT (Medical College Admissions Test) is the entry exam every pre medical student must take to apply to medical school. Roughly 42 out of every 100 applicants even make it to one medical school acceptance (roughly). This makes the MCAT extremely stressful as it is one of if not the biggest components of the application.
Reasons why the MCAT is stressful:
—It’s not pass fail, so generally students have a range goal they have to aim for to be considered competitive. Generally you need to score above 75-80% of your peers to be “competitive”. Even then it’s not a guarantee
-Its generally advisable to only take it ONCE. The more times you take it the worse you look.
-MCAT scores EXPIRE. After a 2-3 year period you need to do it all over again to reapply to medical school.
-It’s 7-8 hours of physics, chem, orgo Chen, biology, biochem, English, psych, and sociology. That’s a lot of pure memorization.
Now this is where COVID comes in:
Kaplan is the company that runs the testing centers. AAMC is the company that runs the MCAT. And Medical schools all have their individual policies regarding how they evaluate grades.
When Covid hit, Kaplan started just canceling tests like crazy. Understandable there’s a pandemic and all that. Only problem is, AAMC didn’t update their policies at this point and it’s near impossible to sign up for tests again as they’re all booked. And the deadline to apply to medical school is FAST approaching.
TLDR: You’re fucked.
Obviously, everyone’s freaking out. Imagine having the most stressful exam of your life (so far) being canceled just out of the blue. And your window of opportunity to maybe schedule an MCAT so that you can maybe ace the exam so that you can maybe get into med school so that you can maybe be a doctor is closing.
Oh but it gets worse.
Then AAMC just starts going crazy. 8 hour test? Nevermind we made it 5! We’ll just throw out some questions we were planning on having in there! What if we were to just schedule 3 different time slots all on the same day? You don’t mind taking the test at 6pm and leaving our testing center at 12am right? Oops sorry! State guidelines change! You won’t find out that your test was canceled until very last minute! Oh but good luck scheduling! We’ll put you in a lottery system! Hopefully you’ll get the time slot you want!
Then when pre medical applicants obviously started complaining and reaching out, AAMC and Kaplan Twitter were NOT having it. “Ummmm you guys are future doctors sweetie. Life is tough! If you can’t handle it, don’t complain! There are thousands who would want to be in your position! Complaining isn’t professional!”
It was a shit show.
Source: Med Student who saw my peers go through this nonsense.