I understand your argument. Not saying it doesn't hold water. What I am saying, is we buy insurance to protect our investments right? The federal government needs to ensure that you have a statistical likelihood to succeed before loaning out copious amounts of cash. The mcat is just an insurance policy. It isn't a perfect correlation but we can't argue that it exists with a near 95% attrition to USMGs vs 60-70 in the Caribbean. Can't deny the data
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No, it
doesn't hold water. He's trying to say that there is
no correlation which is complete b.s. and beyond ill-informed.
This is the Gambler's fallacy. It is why, when there is a large sum in a lottery jackpot, everyone goes out and plays. Likewise, even when they lose, they still believe that they almost picked the right numbers, that they will be more lucky next time, or that they just need to play again because eventually they will beat the odds.
Likewise, it is the rare individual, in this example, who can overcome a pattern of poor performance leading to horrible test scores. Don't kid yourselves otherwise.
Years ago my aunt was in a car accident where she was thrown from the car, was intubated and received chest compressions on the way to the hospital, spent almost two weeks in the ICU, and had numerous other surgeries in follow-up. Guess what? She wasn't wearing her seat belt. You want to hear something even more shocking? She
still doesn't wear her seat belt because some idiot told her that if she'd been wearing one she "surely would have been killed." There is
no way to know this on an individual level. What did this ***** who told her that have that the rest of us don't? Magic powers? A crystal ball? Omniscience?
I've produced a few of the litany of studies that clearly demonstrate that MCAT scores predict success. It doesn't mean they guarantee success. It doesn't mean that someone who got a 37 on the MCAT won't still fail out of medical school for a variety of reasons. What it does mean is that the
law of averages determines that, if you
do poorly on the MCAT that you are likely to
do poorly in medical school.
Everything else is
irrelevant in this discussion. If you struggle with standardized tests - and you can't fix that fundamental problem - you are going to struggle in medicine which relies highly on them. I don't care what "exceptions to the rule" anyone can produce. There's a reason it's a rule.
-Skip