Hello,
I am a non-trad (graduated 5 years ago) and a current Health Peace Corps volunteer. I am getting ready to apply this coming cycle and had taken my MCAT before starting my service. I have a good academic history (3.7 science/3.8 overall), and personally, I feel I also scored well on the MCAT (90th percentile, 130 Chem/Phys, 131 Bio, 128 Psych/Soc). However, in the score breakdown, I did score low on the CARS section (124). Because I am abroad, I do not plan to re-take the MCAT and I feel overall well prepared to apply. What is your advice for addressing this weakness in the application process?
Thank you all in advance for your support and advice.
-Andrew
I don’t think I would even bring it up in my application or interview unless directly asked. You had a “weak” section, sure, but relative to the rest of matriculants, you would be within the realm of “normal” for CARS. If for some reason you get asked about it, be straight forward with whatever rationale you can come up with without making excuses. If you reflected on it and know how you would improve it should you take it again, bring that up. I would NOT retake that test for an isolated average area. Unless you’re at harvard or something, I’d suspect the question to be phrased more as a joke than as a serious inquiry into shortcomings. As a reviewer (which I’m not), I would view it more as an isolated area of non-superhumanness that you are entitled to as a non-superhuman and not necessarily a deficient area. Your MCAT is on par, if not elevated, compared to your GPA, so you have good balance to your ability of academics. Not knowing anything else about you, I’d be surprised if you didn’t get into a school in your first application cycle from a numbers standpoint. Standard advice to mitigate murphy’s law, apply broadly…
https://www.aamc.org/download/321494/data/factstablea16.pdf