Expert: Todd Johnson - 4/13/2009

Question
QUESTION: I saw in an answer you gave, that you referred to a way of judging colleges as to
the MCAT scores of their undergraduates. My son has been accepted in a
number of colleges. How can I find out the MCAT scores for those colleges?

ANSWER: Mitchell,

The only really good way to get this information is by contacting each college and asking the question. You will probably want to talk with the premed advisor on campus as most colleges have such a person. You would also want to know whether the number given you is the mean or the median MCAT score.

In addition to this question, I would ask how many students go on to medical school within 2 years of completing college. It is not unusual for students to take a year off before starting medical school which is why you want to ask about the 2 year time frame.

I would also ask if there is a selection process on which students get recommendation letters for medical school. Some colleges will write recommendation letters for all students that wish to apply while other colleges will only write recommendations for the strongest students that they think are likely to get admitted. This is why you might see a weaker academic college that claims that 100% of applicants get into medical school. If you limit who you support than you can cherry pick only the best students and get a good result. However, it skews the true numbers.

I hope that helps.  



---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Thank you,
It would seem either way would be of service as long as all schools were using
the same criteria. We have tried to get such info out of the schools and they
seem reluctant to allow themselves to be judged by the results and resist
answering the question directly.

Answer
I wish I could say I am surprised but unfortunately, transparency is not a strong point of a lot of colleges. The only remedy is to push hard. They have the answer to questions like this and if they really don't, that would concern me even more. There are of course no guarantees because so much depends on how the student works at each college, but giving past numbers is something that should be done.

If the college will truly not give any information then I would go with the college that is the most transparent. If a college has good numbers, they are not generally hesitant to tell people. At this point, until your son makes a decision on where to attend, you are in the drivers seat so I would get more insistent at the colleges he is interested in.