Aug MCAT

[Guest k]

Does it "hurt" your application if you write the MCAT more than once. I'm planning to write this Aug, but I fear that I may not be ready. Should I just continue to study hard and "try" the Aug sitting, or will this be extremely non-benificial?

thanks

[Guest YongQ]

It doesn't hurt to take an MCAT more than once, but if you take it a FOURTH time, you need to request special permission (I'm a little hazy on the details about from whom you need consent, though). But, really it's a *huge* pain to take again, Thus, you want to be sure you have a shot at doing what you're capable of the first time, because by the time your next MCAT rolls by, you pretty much have to study from scratch or close to it. Plus, if you take it multiple times your faced with the possibility you might do worse and overwrite your better scores... so in closing, if you can't do your best this time around, put it off b/c taking an MCAT is such a huge process in itself, I can't imagine how stressful it'd be to go through it twice.

[Guest Ian Wong]

Hi there,

 

Just my quick two cents. So many people write the MCAT more than once, that med schools probably won't notice if you've written it twice. However, there's not really a situation where re-writing the MCAT would have helped you as much as just getting your ideal score the first time.

 

My suggestion is to work really hard for the next two months (that's plenty of time, esp. if you aren't working full-time, assuming that the material is still relatively fresh), and write that August MCAT. If you'd posted this message perhaps another 4-6 weeks later, when you didn't have anywhere near as much time to prepare, that might be a different story. However, I think that you probably have enough time to make a good attempt of it, and if that doesn't work out, then you have the previous experience to guide you when you start studying for the April sitting.

 

Ian

UBC, Med 3

[Guest BCgirl]

I just looked at the UBC med admissions site and for UBC they use your best test score, so even if you do worse on a re-write they'll take your highest score (as long as it's not more than 5 years old). Does anyone know what the other schools are like?

[Guest MEDCOMPSCI]

I believe it is the same almost everywhere. However, there are some things to consider:

 

a) Ottawa/Mac do not need MCAT's

 

UofT needs only a 24 (three 8's), which is acutally quite low (about 50% percentil or so).

 

That leaves Western and Queens. Western has some bizare requirements, but suffice to say that you need a min. of a 9 verbal and a P wriitng, with a sum of 21 or something like that (a 10 Q is 21).

 

Queens needs a 10 Verbal.

 

Most people are going to do poorly on the Verbal reasoning section; if you study for 2-3 months, you should be able to get a 9-10 in the sciences pretty handly. However, verbal is a strange beast and very hard to predict.

 

My advice would be to write the MCAT and see what happens. Let's say you don't do too well and get a 8V/8P/8B. You are still eligible for 3 schools in Ontario. If you don't get in, then re-write it and see what happens, hopefully you will get a 10/10/10/Q and have no problems.

 

By writing it after second year, you give yourself a shot at three schools, and maybe even more if you do well on the exam. If won't hurt you to re-write if things don't work out.