For all my fellow low MCAT scorers

I’m a few weeks into MS-1 at an MD school and have met a few people whose “application story” is along the lines of subpar gpa at a hyper-competitive undergrad followed by stellar MCAT. To me these are smart people who are likely to succeed and be an asset to the class, but probably wouldn’t here without the MCAT.

I agree with your premise that the MCAT ain’t everything, but it is something, and how much something it is really has to be judged in the context of the entire application. The corollaries of “you are so much more than a dumb test score” — “you are so much more than a dumb GPA” “you are so much more than a dumb letter of recommendation” “you are so much more than a dumb lack of research hours” — all turn on there being a variety of different metrics used so that adcoms can see you are more than whatever your individual deficits are.

That said obviously we can’t have an unlimited number of metrics to capture everyone’s individuality and if I had to pick just one the whole process would be based on CASPER.

/r/premed Thread