Should you retake the MCAT?

[Adminnaoum]

Ok, you got your score back - you may or may not be happy with it.

At this point students usually ask: should I retake the MCAT?

To help answer that question we've put data from the AAMC on MCAT test retakes and changes in scores into a tool to tell you what your score would likely be if you retook the mcat.

Should I retake the mcat test?

Use the Medical School Finder tool to see if your original score and "probable retake score" are competitive at different medical school.

(ADDED) As discussed in the rest of this thread - these are just statistics. If you work hard, you can improve your score a lot. The key is hard work, and preparing intelligently. These stats show that it is hard to make big improvements - but hard work will get you there. Just ask some of the members of this forum.

I hope this helps,

drn

[johnpotkar]

hi, i took a look at the "retaking mcat calculating" website, it's dissappointed, it seemed that the most one would improve is by 2 or 3 max, is that right? thank you!

[Adminnaoum]

you can improve more than a couple - but the probabilities are stacked against you.

The key is to figure out your weaknesses, and really address them over the 6 months before the next test (April 22, 2006).

[dr.allenI]

there are many consideration when retaking the mcat. If you are determined your score will most likely improve.Fist time I took it I made a 18(spring) and second time I took it I made a 32(august). So there is hope. First and foremost take aamc practice exams not just kaplan or princeton. Second, design a schedule where you study certain amt of hours each day. Third work on your weakness more than your strength areas.

P.S. Hope this will be motivational to all retakers and acording to the website I should have made a 20 second time around and not a 32. HA take that mcats.

[twoprudentialplaza]

I'm going to be obnoxious here but please delete this god-awful thread. I was so discouraged when I first read this thread and plugged my #'s in that I almost dropped my plan of pursuing a medical career.
I made a 9 point improvement. It's not a fluke, I just worked my butt off and made it.

[Adminnaoum]

Congrats twoprudential!

Your experience should be an inspiration to all.

The truth is that many people who retake the mcat don't do what they need to improve their scores - if you work hard you can do it, and you're a great example of that.

The tool shows the statistics reported by AMCAS - and the key point is that if you got a high score (30+) to start with, retaking the mcat will likely bring down your score.

Hard work beats every statistic.

drn

[nebula1885]

I used the tool and it's telling me that I shouldn't retake the MCAT ( I would go down by one point). But my verbal is a 6 while b=12,p=10,w=R. What do you think?? Do I have enough time to prepare for the august MCAT and improve the verbal? I've heard if you go down it can look really bad. Is a retake even worth it?What's your advice??
P.S. the rest of my application looks strong

[trozman]

I'd like to point out that whoever made that doesn't know their statistics very well. For example, if you put in 7 as the BS score, it tells you that the most likely score on retest is a 7.

If you look at the stats, you see all it does is look at the median score, without taking into account how the distribution leans.

In the case of BS... there is a 45% chance you'll get 7 or below and a 55% chance you'll get 8 or higher.

It's not hard to see that you have a better chance of getting an 8 (or HIGHER) than getting a 7 or lower.

Anyways, I agree that statistics are pretty much useless. The average student gets around 26 on the MCAT, if you were to use statistics, you wouldn't even bother taking it the first time, after all, you'll most likely get 26.

[wagdog1]

Well I know that on my Kaplan diagnostic I got a 21 and on the first full-length I got a 24. After four more full-lengths and much more review, I was pulling 29's on the practice ones and on test-day I got a 32 as well.

I think that the courses make it easier to stay organized and work steadily at the goal... it's more spoon feeding. You don't need Kaplan or PR to do better, but they make it much easier if you at least do the majority of the work... had I dont all of it I might be looking at a 35 right now but who knows. It's not worth the retake to find out.

So yeah, vast improvements are within your grasp. Just work at it. This tool is probably true if you take minimalistic steps to imrpve your score such as studying the night before the test or simply by speeding up. If you review your stuff, especially with a lower score, you are sure to improve more than what the calculator predicts.

[wetzel]

Many students, in preparing for their first MCAT, buy the big MCAT book, attend the review course and conduct a long, slow, careful review of the material from beginning to end. The big review cycle is timed to be finished about two weeks before the test. This is like tunneling through the mountain without ever conducting a survey of the mountain. Sometimes things don't gel as well as they could before the test. The knowledge never gets a good sense of overall structure.

If you studied for your first test like this, big improvements can happen on the second test because now there is alread good sense of overall familiarity from the first study cycle with the entire body of material. The physics fundamentals start talking with the chemistry fundamentals on the second go-round, and the chemistry starts talking with the biology.

The MCAT is arduous, so it is obviously best to be done in one attempt in the sense of getting on with your life, so on the first try, it is a good thing to combine fast and slow complete cycles through the material.

But each time you make it all the way through Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Organic Chemistry, your intuitive sense of the overall coherence of the sciences will improve, and this leads to better performance on conceptually oriented questions of the MCAT. The more cycles through the material, the more structured your knowledge base will become, and the better you will be able to see unfamiliar situations on MCAT passages in their proper scientific context.

So you definitely can improve on the 2nd MCAT if you see studying for the 2nd test if you see it as a continuation of a process that is going to lead to you breaking through to a deeper understanding of science.