What Score Should We Be Aiming For?

[Emojis4Life]

I'm so used to the 1-15 scoring scale that I have no idea what's considered a good score for this new MCAT. Does anyone have any ideas?

[keepingitreal]

I think a 127 or above in each section. 

[oshaku]

Just think of it as whatever the old score you want, and add 117 to it.

[Emojis4Life]

^ Haha I feel silly now. Right, don't know why I didn't see that. Thanks

[rmorelan]

ha, the mcat with yet another weird scoring system

[Emojis4Life]

Why didn't they stick to the old scale and make it out of 60 instead?

[oshaku]

Probably because they want a new range so new/old MCAT can be easily identified by scores alone. I heard that in general, all of the major American standardized testing try to have non-overlapping score ranges. Though it doesn't always hold.

[fandanstan]

The Examkrackers book says that the AAMC wants med schools to be able to easily tell good scores from not so good ones.

 

Their reasoning is that the median of all 4 sections = 125 (min = 118, max = 132), therefore the midpoint of all 4 sections combined = 500, a nice round number.

 

Basically, med schools can tell you did good if you get a score above 500, so aim to score as far above it as possible.

[sprinkles]

The Examkrackers book says that the AAMC wants med schools to be able to easily tell good scores from not so good ones.

 

Their reasoning is that the median of all 4 sections = 125 (min = 118, max = 132), therefore the midpoint of all 4 sections combined = 500, a nice round number.

 

Basically, med schools can tell you did good if you get a score above 500, so aim to score as far above it as possible.

 

 

So with that reasoning ^ does it mean that a 125 is a 'good score' (or 50% percentile) and anything higher is a 'better score' ?

 

Its got me really confused. I was reading that pdf they released to med school admissions committees, and to me it almost seemed like they were saying the 'best' scores are the ones in the middle? They were saying one of the main points of changing the MCAT was to center the distribution in the middle and give applicants with 'middle scores' a chance to be 'seen' by admissions committees. It was really interesting because they were able to correlate that for example, 2 groups of students with 4.0 GPAs , ones scoring 25-30 on MCAT, and ones scoring 40-45 on MCAT, the stats showed that those who scored lower on the MCAT ended up doing better at med school and licensing tests than those who scored better on the MCAT! (it was quite fascinating really!)

 

 

But all of that makes me feel like a) COOL! A score in the middle is actually GOOD! But then it makes me think b ) wait....so a REALLY high score...isn't a good thing? huh 

 

*so confused* 

[oshaku]

well, a 125 is like an 8. So it's not really that good if you actually want to use it to get in. A better way to think about is you should aim to be in the 80+ percentile (90+ to be really good), and use there chart to find the corresponding score.

[sprinkles]

But *is* it though? Because I understand people have matched the new scores to the old scores, but the MCAT people have said that they aren't/shouldn't be comparable? :/

[bruhh]

I think whatever AAMC is doing is for themselves and at most, the U.S. schools will conform. As for Canada, most med schools who have published cut offs for the new MCAT actually have the exact same cut offs as the old one, meaning that they correlated a 127 directly to a 10 to produce a cut off. I don't think there will be a significant change in the interpretation of scores. The best applicants will be selected as its always been the case.

[FifthCycle]

I think whatever AAMC is doing is for themselves and at most, the U.S. schools will conform. As for Canada, most med schools who have published cut offs for the new MCAT actually have the exact same cut offs as the old one, meaning that they correlated a 127 directly to a 10 to produce a cut off. I don't think there will be a significant change in the interpretation of scores. The best applicants will be selected as its always been the case.

 

Exactly this.

 

I've always aimed for Westerns requirements of 9/11/12. So that would be like a 126/128/129 on physical/CARs/biological respectively. The only tossup is sociological, then again, I got a 128 on my first try for that today, so I'm not too worried. A good total score would be the percentile equivalent to a 30-32, definitely a 32 for Western.  

 

And yes guys, that means a 500 is absolute garbage - so get that out of your heads. It isn't acceptable. I never heard any of you ask whether or not a 26 was okay on the old test, we all knew it wasn't.

 

Here are some equivalent scores by section and for the entire test.

 

New - Percentile - Old

125- 50% - 8

126 - 60% - 9

127 - 80% - 10

128 - 88% - 11

129 - 95% - 12

130 - 97% - 13

131/132 - 99% -  14/15

 

Whole test now:

500 - 50% - 25/26

501- 55% - 26

502 - 59% - 26/27

503 -64% - 27

504 - 68% - 28

505 - 73% - 29

506 - 76% - 30

507 - 80%- 30/31

508 - 83% - 31

509 - 86% - 31.5/32

510 - 89% - 32/33

511 - 91% - 33

512-519 - 92 - 96%  34-36

520 - 528 - 97-100% 36-45

 

PS. These are just estimates, but you get the big pic. 

 

Sources:

Old: https://www.aamc.org/students/download/361080/data/combined13.pdf.pdf

New: https://www.aamc.org/students/download/378098/data/mcat2015scorescaleguide.pdf