After Months of Studying, Pre-Meds Tackle MCAT

Tomorrow morning while their friends sleep in, hundreds of Harvard pre-meds will begin to answer about eight hours’ worth of multiple-choice questions in a high-stakes test that could make or break their admissions to medical school.

The pre-meds will be taking the Medical College Admissions Test (MCAT), a standardized exam that tests their critical thinking and problem-solving skills and requires a significant scientific background. The exam is mostly multiple choice—with three sections testing verbal reasoning, physical sciences and biological sciences—but also includes two writing samples.

For many students, the MCAT preparation has not only shaped their schedules in recent weeks, but for several months.

“I definitely took easier classes this semester to have more time, and I cut back on extracurriculars and hanging out,” said Lara C. Bishay ’05, who will take the MCAT tomorrow.

Sewit Teckie ’05 also decided to lighten her course workload.

“I was taking four classes, but I dropped one to take three,” said Teckie, who said she needed to clear her schedule after her MCAT preparation class consumed so much of her time.

Like Teckie, many Harvard pre-meds enrolled in preparation courses, which often span up to six months and are taught by companies like Kaplan, Inc. and the Princeton Review.

“I’d say that it would be very difficult to prepare for the MCAT without either taking a class from the Princeton Review or Kaplan,” said Antonio L. Perez ’05, who will take the test tomorrow.

Other pre-meds shared the belief that the preparation courses were important to their MCAT studying.

“It’s good because they have a lot of old tests and a lot of material that I wouldn’t have been able to find on my own,” said Bishay. “They have like an infinite amount of problems—you could never do them all.”

In addition to the stress on their schedules, many say that the MCAT brings with it a good amount of a pressure to succeed.

“I was really nervous last week and the week before,” Bishay said. “It’s sort of high-stakes test. It’s easy to be like this test will determine the rest of your life, but you have to keep things in perspective.”

Some were able to calm their nerves, despite the stress of their peers.

“I don’t feel pressure solely because I don’t associate with pre-meds,” said Teckie, an economics concentrator.

Medical schools often use MCAT scores to predict students’ performance in the first two years of medical school. But admission offices apply different weights to the test in making their decisions, according to Lee Ann Michelson ’77, director of Premedical and Health Care Advising at the Office of Career Services (OCS).

Michelson said that even if Harvard students score well below Harvard’s mean, their chances of going to medical school are still very good.

In fact, 94 percent of applicants from the senior class in 2002 were accepted to a medical school.

“In terms of whether how well I do will determine by entire career, I doubt that,” said Perez.

On each section of the MCAT, students can obtain a maximum score of 15. The mean scores of medical school applicants from the class of 2002, the most recent year analyzed by OCS, were 10.9 on the verbal reasoning section, 12.2 on physical sciences and 11.5 on biological sciences. This compares to national means for medical school applicants on the three sections of 8.7, 9.1 and 9.3, respectively.

The MCAT is offered twice a year, once in April and once in August.

According to Michelson, students base their test date choice on a variety of factors such as whether they are writing a thesis, the relevance of current coursework and their summer plans.

Despite months of preparation, many students said they will be studying until the very end, and the College has banned parties Friday night to respect late night crammers.

Bishay said that she would spend the remaining time before the test in the books.

“I feel guilty not studying,” she said.