Changes to the Medical College Admissions Test may take effect as early as 2015, pending a vote by the American Association of Medical Colleges this summer or fall, according to Lee Witters, pre-health advisor at the College and Dartmouth Medical School professor. Preliminary recommendations for various alterations to the exam outlined in a special report delivered by a 20-person committee from the AAMC aim to more holistically assess an applicant's readiness for medical school by testing qualities such as critical reasoning and ethical grounding, according to an AAMC press release.
The revised MCAT would contain four sections molecular, cellular and organismal properties of living systems; physical, chemical and biochemical properties of living systems; behavioral and social sciences principles; and a critical analysis of living systems. The test would focus on test-takers' statistical and research abilities, and would not contain a writing sample, according to the report. While the new test would retain the same grading scale and a strong focus on the physical sciences, the report recommends that the new MCAT also test students on behavioral and social science, cross-cultural studies, ethics and philosophy and "a wide range of social science and humanities disciplines," the report said.
While the current MCAT lasts five hours in addition to one hour of registration, the revised MCAT would be 90 minutes longer in length, according to the report.
The wider range of subjects tested will make students more prepared to address the social and behavioral determinants of health and disease, as well as ethical concerns and culturally sensitive issues, as they enter medical school, Witters said.
"The question is, what are the attributes that one wants to have in a medical student, and how do you learn about these attributes," Witters said. "If the process is weighted too heavily to science, you're leaving out all these wonderful personality attributes."
The recommendations' emphasis on holistic evaluation extends to the larger application process as well, Witters said. The report calls for research on how other measures of personality characteristics can be incorporated into the test and application process.
The recommendations are preliminary and remain subject to revision, Witters said. Even after the AAMC votes on the changes, there is no guarantee that they will ever be enacted.
"I think it's very likely that they will be adopted, but I don't have a crystal ball," Witters said.
Because the recommendations are still open to revision and lack concrete details, advisors can offer only little direction to students curious or concerned about how the changes will affect their undergraduate experience and preparedness, Witters said.
"We really don't know what it is they're going to be asking students to do to prepare for this exam, or for a new admissions procedure," Witters said. "Until we really know we're going to have to sit tight and see."
As the plan for implementing the committee's recommendations is developed, the College may have to adjust its advising and course offerings for undergraduates who hope to apply to medical school, according to Witters.
It is important that the pressures of preparing students for a new MCAT do not eclipse the centrality of a liberal arts education, at Dartmouth and other institutions, Witters said.
"There's a lot of national angst about how this is going to fit into a liberal arts curriculum that doesn't have a specified pre-med major," he said. "We are not a vocational school."
Natalia Vecerek '14, who plans to apply to medical school, said that the College's liberal arts emphasis will be an advantage for students taking the new MCAT.
"I think the distributive requirements [at the College] are really good for well-roundedness," Vercerek said. "I'm going to plan mine around classes that will prepare me for the MCAT."
The exam's longer duration will probably increase its difficulty, Sarah Tanaka '12, who recently took the MCAT, said in an email to The Dartmouth.
