Many Dartmouth pre-medical juniors rested easy Saturday night, having completed about eight hours of multiple-choice questions in a high-stakes test that may make or break their chances at medical school.
Medical College Admissions Test taker Samantha Schilling '05 called her parents following the exam, went out to dinner and then called it an early evening.
"I played a lot of [beer] pong after it was done," pre-med Andrew Bates '05 said.
Pre-meds filed into Wilder Hall early Saturday morning to take the MCAT, a standardized exam that tests critical thinking and problem-solving skills and requires a significant scientific background.
The exam is primarily multiple-choice, with three sections testing verbal reasoning, physical sciences and biological sciences, but also includes two writing samples.
Zach Rubeo '05 said he arrived at the exam site before 8 a.m. and did not leave until about 5:30 p.m.
Rubeo went out at night following the test -- his first time, he said, in months.
"You couldn't really go out recently because you always had the MCAT books waiting for you when you got home," Rubeo said. "I haven't really been out since Winter term, when I took a review course."
Like Rubeo, many Dartmouth pre-meds prepared for the MCAT by taking review courses, which are taught by companies including The Princeton Review and Kaplan, Inc. Kaplan's three-month course includes 100 classroom hours at a price of $1,450.
Rubeo and Bates said the review courses they took were very helpful to their MCAT preparation.
However, they also stressed that the courses were best as a supplement, not a replacement for further studying.
"They provide you with a lot of material to study from, but really it's what you do on your own that makes the difference," Rubeo said.
Bates said that he did thousands of MCAT problems on his own in the weeks leading to the exam.
The MCAT is offered twice a year, once in April and once in August.
When students plan on applying to medical school weighs heavily on their decision whether to take the April or August test.
Bates said that he decided to take the April exam because he is applying to medical school during his senior fall.
If Bates were to take the August test, his test score would not be ready to send out with his applications. Medical schools would therefore have to postpone their evaluation of his applications, Bates said.
Ultimately, Bates said he made the choice to take the test in April because he worried that the delayed arrival of his MCAT scores would work against him in the medical school rolling-admissions process.
Most MCAT takers do not face the same time constraints as Bates, however, because the majority of Dartmouth medical school applicants choose to take a year or two off before applying.
The typical Dartmouth graduate enters medical school at the age of 24, said professor Lee Witters, adviser to the Nathan Smith pre-medical society.
Witters said MCAT takers can rest assured that nearly all Dartmouth applicants ultimately gain acceptance to medical schools over time.
"In reality, med school admission's committees look at a lot of significant factors--not just the MCAT or GPA."
Eighty-five percent of Dartmouth applicants were accepted to medical school for the fall of 2003.
In comparison, 94 percent of applicants from Harvard's class of 2002 were admitted during that period.
Of the 15 percent of Dartmouth applicants who were rejected, nearly all will gain admission following their second or third time going through the application process, Witters said.
Although many students said that they were satisfied by their MCAT experience, most expressed that they were simply glad to finally be done.
"I've been studying on my own since the fall so I'm relieved," Bates said.
I feel like a burden has been lifted off of my shoulders that has been weighing down on me for the past five months, added Priya Sahu '05. "I feel elated."
