#mcat 2021 2022 | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

religion-is-a-mental-illness · 8 months ago

Text

By: Apunaja

Published: Mar 19, 2024

I just watched this clip of Don Lemon interviewing Elon Musk, where Lemon pushed back on Musk’s claims of DEI policies impacting the quality of medical care and insisted that there is no evidence that standards are being lowered in medical programs in the pursuit of diversity goals. It was infuriating to watch. The word ‘gaslighting’ repeatedly came to mind.

I don’t know if Lemon genuinely doesn’t know the facts about this issue, or if he is deliberately misrepresenting the inconvenient truth, but as anyone who has been paying attention to this issue can attest, it is indisputable that standards are indeed being lowered, in myriad professional and educational contexts, for the express purpose of increasing the racial diversity of that group’s membership. What makes it hard to believe that Lemon isn’t being disingenuous about this is that in so many of the cases where this is happening, the proponents of the policy openly state that the reason they are changing their standards are in order to increase representation of minorities. Of course, they don’t call it “lowering standards for diversity”. But when you get rid of a testing requirement, or lower the passing grade, or modify the entrance qualifications to deliberately allow lower performing black and Hispanic students entrance, you are by definition lowering standards for the sake of diversity and equity, no matter how you spin it.

It’s high time for the false claim that ‘promoting DEI doesn’t adversely impact standards’ to finally be put to rest. In the interview, Lemon said he looked forward to people providing evidence of the claim, so I’m going to attempt to do that here, to lay out unambiguous evidence of educational and professional standards being compromised for the sake of DEI. I’m going to first focus on the area of medicine, which is what Lemon was specifically talking about, and then I’ll get into many other arenas where we can see this happening.

In a 2022 City Journal article, the esteemed Heather Mac Donald describes a required medical exam being altered (both in its subject matter and its grading) to allow for more students to pass:

At the end of their second year of medical school, students take Step One of the USMLE, which measures knowledge of the body’s anatomical parts, their functioning, and their malfunctioning; topics include biochemistry, physiology, cell biology, pharmacology, and the cardiovascular system. High scores on Step One predict success in a residency; highly sought-after residency programs, such as neurosurgery and radiology, use Step One scores to help select applicants. Black students are not admitted into competitive residencies at the same rate as whites because their average Step One test scores are a standard deviation below those of whites. Step One has already been modified to try to shrink that gap; it now includes non-science components such as “communication and interpersonal skills.” But the standard deviation in scores has persisted. In the world of antiracism, that persistence means only one thing: the test is to blame. …The solution … was obvious: abolish Step One grades. Since January 2022, Step One has been graded on a pass-fail basis.

Further in the article, she explores how med school entrance standards have been adjusted to increase the number of minority students entering even though their grades were far lower:

In 2021, the average score for white applicants on the Medical College Admission Test was in the 71st percentile… The average score for black applicants was in the 35th percentile—a full standard deviation below the average white score. The MCATs have already been redesigned to try to reduce this gap; a quarter of the questions now focus on social issues and psychology. Yet the gap persists. So medical schools use wildly different standards for admitting black and white applicants. From 2013 to 2016, only 8% of white college seniors with below-average undergraduate GPAs and below-average MCAT scores were offered a seat in medical school; less than 6% of Asian college seniors with those qualifications were offered a seat, according to an analysis by economist Mark Perry. Medical schools regarded those below-average scores as all but disqualifying—except when presented by blacks and Hispanics. Over 56% of black college seniors with below-average undergraduate GPAs and below-average MCATs and 31% of Hispanic students with those scores were admitted, making a black student in that range more than seven times as likely as a similarly situated white college senior to be admitted to medical school and more than nine times as likely to be admitted as a similarly situated Asian senior.

Later on she recounts a further example of reducing standards to increase diversity at a top-tier institution:

The University of Pennsylvania medical school guarantees admission to black undergraduates who score a modest 1300 on the SAT (on a 1600-point scale), maintain a 3.6 GPA in college, and complete two summers of internship at the school. The school waives its MCAT requirement for these black students; UPenn’s non-preferred medical students score in the top one percent of all MCAT takers.

The article details many more examples of diversity efforts impacting the quality of the curriculum, admissions, faculty hiring, research funding, accreditation, publishing, and other aspects of the medical education arena. I strongly encourage you to read it in full here.

But where did all these changes stem from? A 2020 Quillette article reveals how these policies were a result of a long-running campaign to increase diversity:

…in 2009 the body that accredits medical schools, the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME), touched off a parity panic across the med school landscape by issuing stern new guidance on diversity. In order to remain accredited, declared LCME, medical schools “must” have policies and practices in place that “achieve appropriate diversity.” …In the wake of the LCME’s watershed edict, working groups were convened, budget line items were created, and high-profile hires were made to facilitate diversity boosting and community recruitment. A main stumbling block seemed to be minority candidates’ poor performance on gatekeeper exams like the MCATs.

Once the unstoppable force of diversity activism met the immovable object of disparate MCAT scores, activists focused their efforts on reducing the MCAT’s significance and incorporating tests that were not based on cognitively demanding subjects like actual medical knowledge in favor of things like emotional intelligence, empathy, and communication:

The primary selling point of SJTs was thus that they allowed schools to consider factors other than such blind metrics as a straightforward ranking of applicants’ college grades and MCAT performance. The MCATs themselves were revised in 2015 to give meaningful weight to areas of the social sciences.

The amazing thing about all this is how, if you just listen to their own words, these activists are totally open about how they need to lower the standards to increase minority representation. Here’s one such statement from an advocacy group admitting that expecting minority students to meet the same academic standards everyone else is held to holds back diversity:

…a huge obstacle to diversity is that most medical schools have the same criteria for all applicants. To get a medical student population that is representative of the general population requires more than simply accepting applicants of color who have the same grades and MCAT scores as White applicants…

Their solution? Lessen the importance of the MCAT in applications.

While on the topic of medical schools, consider this chart, highlighting the likelihood that students in different racial groups are granted entrance to medical schools, based on their grades. It echoes Mac Donald’s claims above, and indisputably reveals that a low performing student has a much higher chance of getting in when they’re black versus being any other race.

Another way of looking at that same data is in this chart:

This 2023 Newsweek op-ed unambiguously advocates for the MCAT to be abolished as an entrance requirement in order to increase diversity:

A panel representing the American Bar Association (ABA) recently voted to eliminate the LSAT as an admissions requirement for law schools. The main reason for doing this: to increase diversity in law schools. The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) should follow the lead of the ABA for medical school admissions by removing the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) as a requirement.

Here’s a similar Washington Post piece proposing that the MCAT be changed to a pass/fail test. Why? In the author’s own words: “This is a crucial step if the medical profession is to diversify its physician ranks.”

There are further examples that could be provided, but I think this suffices to prove Elon’s claim. Copious examples of deliberate efforts to lower standards in medical education for the express purpose of increasing diversity. Mr. Lemon, do you find this evidence sufficient to acknowledge that Elon’s assertion was correct?

But it gets worse. As I said above, the problem of lowering educational and professional standards to increase diversity is not just an issue in the medical field. Campaigns pursuing this agenda are occurring all over society. Mr. Lemon, please bear with me a bit longer and allow me to provide further evidence of just how widespread this phenomenon actually is:

1. In Oregon, the state decided that students don’t need to prove mastery of reading, writing or math to graduate, citing harm to students of color. This a result of a law passed in 2021 which the governor’s office explained as follows:

…suspending the reading, writing and math proficiency requirements while the state develops new graduation standards will benefit “Oregon’s Black, Latino, Latina, Latinx, Indigenous, Asian, Pacific Islander, Tribal, and students of color.”

2. In order to address "racial disparities" and "inequities" in grading, Portland Public Schools are trying "equitable grading practices" that bar teachers from assigning "zeros" to students who cheat or fail to turn in assignments.

3. In Minnesota, they’ve decided to stop giving F grades in order to “end systemic racism”.

4. In San Diego, because too many minority students were failing compared to white students, the school decided to address the problem not by improving the pedagogy but by… changing how they graded students. “The grading changes are part of a larger effort to combat racism,” they explained.

5. NJ chose to lower the minimum passing score on the state’s high school graduation test. Why? Among other reasons given was this appeal to diversity:

One board member who supported lowering the passing score suggested that it was “unfair” to “Black and Latino students” to require underperforming students to demonstrate a higher level of proficiency in reading and math before graduating.

6. In Arizona, a student dean felt that it would “promote equity” if he stopped grading students essays based on the quality of their writing. (This sounds similar to an effort by a student org that called for ‘Black Linguistic Justice’ and demanded that they not be graded by the standards of ordinary English, what they referred to as ‘white linguistic supremacy’. 🤷‍♂️)

7. Along similar lines, Rutgers decided to deemphasize traditional grammar ‘in solidarity with Black Lives Matter’.

8. It’s not just the US embracing this insanity. In the UK, instructors at Hull University were told to overlook students’ grammatical errors as part of an “inclusive marking policy”. And for a similar reason, the University of the Arts in London has told its staff to ‘actively accept spelling, grammar or other language mistakes that do not significantly impede communication’.

9. Please read this detailed article at The Free Press about the new California math initiative that sacrifices mathematical education for diversity goals. This new framework seems primarily motivated by concerns that too many students are sorted into different math tracks based on their natural abilities, which leads some to take calculus by their senior year of high school while a disproportionate number of black and Latino kids don't make it past basic algebra. So their solution is to prohibit any sorting until high school, keeping gifted kids in the same classrooms as their less mathematically inclined peers until at least grade nine.

10, Those same lowered math standards are being implemented in Cambridge, MA:

Udengaard is one of dozens of parents who recently have publicly voiced frustration with a years-old decision made by Cambridge to remove advanced math classes in grades six to eight. The district’s aim was to reduce disparities between low-income children of color, who weren’t often represented in such courses, and their more affluent peers.

11. In order to advance their DEI agenda, the creators of the bar exam are changing the famously difficult tests that lawyers have to pass before they are allowed to practice. How are they doing so? In their own words (emphasis added):

…we take seriously the need to work toward greater equity in all that we do as a testing organization, and we actively work to eliminate any aspects of our exams that could contribute to performance disparities among different groups.

A WSJ article investigating these changes reports:

Based on the diversity workshop at the NCBE conference, it means putting considerable emphasis on examinees’ race, sex, gender identity, nationality and other identity-based characteristics. The idea seems to be that any differences in group outcomes must be eliminated—even if the only way to achieve this goal is to water down the test. On top of all that, an American Civil Liberties Union representative provided conference attendees with a lecture on criminal-justice reform in which he argued that states should minimize or overlook would-be lawyers’ convictions for various criminal offenses in deciding whether to admit them to the bar.

12. Of course, the obvious question presents itself: why bother changing the bar exam to allow more people to pass it if you can just get rid of it entirely? And that’s exactly what some states are doing. Just a few days ago, the State of Washington decided to no longer require lawyers to pass the bar exam. Why? It was hampering diversity.

The Bar Licensure Task Force found that the traditional exam “disproportionally and unnecessarily blocks” marginalized groups from becoming practicing attorneys and is “at best minimally effective” for ensuring competency.

13. The Washington State decision follows in the footsteps of Oregon, which stopped requiring the bar exam last year.

14. Taking the bar happens at the end of a law student’s journey. What about at the beginning, when they are taking the LSAT? No worries, diversity initiatives are lowering the bar there too! The American Bar Association voted in 2022 to stop requiring the LSAT for admission to law school. Why?

“In the grand scheme of things, folks of color perform less well on the LSAT than not, and for that reason, I think we are headed in the right direction,” Leo Martinez, an ABA council member and dean emeritus at University of California, Hastings College of the Law, said at the meeting.

15. In related legal arenas, Delaware chose to improve the diversity of its legal community by instituting a few changes of its own. Some of the changes, “which ultimately aim to also increase the number of Black and Latino judges”, include lowering the passing grade, halving the number of essays, and other competency requirements being relaxed.

16. Similar changes have happened in California, for the explicitly stated reason of increasing diversity:The California Supreme Court, which oversees the state bar, agreed to lower the passing score for the exam, a victory for law school deans who have long hoped the change would raise the number of Black and Latino people practicing law.

17. A 2015 NY Times headline: Study Cites Lower Standards in Law School Admissions. Why are they lowering standards? Answer: “…they need flexibility in selecting students to assure a diverse population of lawyers.”

18. Just like with med schools, law school acceptance rates are biased towards minorities. An analysis of admissions data data revealed that being from an under represented minority group (URM) boosted one’s chance of acceptance to a law school quite dramatically:

Almost every school we cover shows an increased chance of admission to URM applicants, with higher boosts for higher-tiered schools….As you can see in Table 1a, law schools typically give a 7% boost to URM applicants. In other words, a URM applicant who is exactly equal to a non-URM candidate, including all other factors we control for, is 7% more likely to be admitted to any law school than a non-URM equivalent. This number is a whopping 498% in the Top 14, 126% in the Top 25, and 52% in the Top 50 law schools.

Just as is happening in the legal and medical arenas, the practice of increasing minority numbers by eliminating entrance exams that ensure professional competency is happening in other professions too. Some examples of that:

19. In Washington, DC, officials considered getting rid of their social work exam over concerns that it failed too many people of color.

20. A required test for math teacher certification in Ontario showed significant racial disparities in the success rates of those taking it. As a result of the disparity a court ruled it unconstitutional and teachers were no longer required to take it. (The ruling has since been overturned.)

21. A similar case occurred in NY whereby prospective teachers had to take an Academic Literacy Skills Test. But because disproportionate numbers of black and Hispanic applicants failed it, the test was eliminated.

22. In a similar lawsuit, NYC had to pay out $1.8 billion to former teachers who failed a certification test. Why? The test was deemed racially biased since a disproportionate number of the failures came from minority teachers.

23. In 2015 the FDNY was pressured to modify its certification requirements to increase gender diversity, and for the first time ever passed a woman who failed a physical test that until then all fire-fighter applicants needed to pass.

Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro told a City Council hearing on the FDNY’s efforts to recruit women that he had changed FST requirements to lower obstacles.

24. A few months ago, a fascinating article appeared on this very platform exposing how the FAA deliberately lowered the testing requirements of flight controllers for the express purpose of increasing diversity. The consequences for the industry were, unsurprisingly, appalling:

A report on FAA hiring issues found that 70% of CTI administrators agreed that the changes in the process had led to a negative effect on the air traffic control infrastructure. One respondent stated their "numbers [had] been devastated," and the majority agreed that it would severely impact the health of their own programs.

25. Of course, a well-known area where standards have been lowered in the pursuit of DEI is in how colleges have stopped requiring applicants to have taken the SAT. I can’t begin to list all the colleges that have dropped the SAT entrance requirements in the name of equity (although many hid the decision behind the excuse of Covid), but according to this list, it’s over a thousand schools. A few prominent names that instituted the policy are Columbia, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, Harvard, MIT, UCLA, and SUNY. (However, in recent months, a few of those institutions have reversed the policy and now require it again.)

26. Among all the many cases where destructive DEI policies are being implemented, possibly the most disturbing arena of all is when actually talented and capable students are purposefully denied opportunities that can help them excel. An example of this in action is the numerous school districts that have chosen to remove “Gifted and Honors” classes for the stated reason of increasing equity. Some examples:

Culver City, CA:

Troy, MI

Barrington, RI

New York and this too

Seattle, WA

Vancouver, Canada

27. If they’re not eliminating the Honors programs entirely, many schools are simply dropping the entrance requirements so that they are open to anyone, thereby diluting their very purpose. Some places this has already happened:

San Francisco

Boston, MA

Montgomery County, MD

New York City

Fairfax, VA

The result of these admission changes? Massive increases in students failing. For example:

…at the John D. O'Bryant School of Mathematics and Science, just 50% of seventh graders met or exceeded expectations in math, down from 85% as recently as 2019. Nor was the Boston Latin School, the crown jewel of the system, immune: Just 70% of seventh graders either met or exceeded expectations in math, down from 94% three years ago.

28. Even the military is affected by demands to lower standards to increase diversity (albeit gender diversity, not racial). The Army actually removed a physical test because not enough women were passing it:

On Monday, the Army ended its requirement that soldiers do at least one leg tuck — where they hang from a bar and pull their knees up near their shoulders — as part of the new physical fitness test, as it became clear that many troops, particularly women, were unable to do it.

29. Speaking of gender diversity, Oxford University decided that because not enough women were passing their math and computer science examinations, they would add more time to the exam to help them. (Apparently, it didn’t even help.)

30. Oxford also decided to let a History test be taken at home in order to increase the number of women passing.

31. And because too many men were getting top grades in a classics course over the women, Oxford also decided they had to overhaul the entire course in order to bridge the gender gap.

32. Across the globe in Australia, the University of Technology Sydney chose to boost their gender diversity by allowing female students to enter its engineering and construction courses with lower grades than the males.

33. Back in 2016, a doctoral student at the University of North Dakota actually published a paper suggesting that STEM courses be made more inclusive of women by making then “less competitive,” so maybe that’s where the above universities got their inspiration from?

34. The lowering of educational standards for the sake of diversity is happening in arts education too. Consider how auditions were scrapped at a Brooklyn performing arts school in favor of a lottery. Why? Diversity!

The Department of Education says standards like auditions — or test scores and grades at other schools — block access for underprivileged kids, and the new policy will diversify student bodies across the district.

The above examples are just a sampling of the many instances of the pernicious trend of DEI deliberately compromising the standards of performance to advance its agenda. Public figures and pundits like Don Lemon need to stop repeating this lie that there is no downside to promoting these policies. On the contrary, it’s imperative that everyone recognize how these Harrison Bergeron-like policies directly lead to a deterioration of our educational outcomes, an undermining of our scientific, technological and medical progress, a diminishing of our professional competencies, and a fraying of our societal cohesion.

It’s time for DEI to DIE.

Don 🍋 is astonishingly dumb.

#Elon Musk #Don Lemon #DEI #diversity equity and inclusion #diversity #equity #inclusion #DEI must die

11 notes · View notes

vomitdodger · 7 months ago

Text

Long and thorough article. Choice paragraphs below showing every step of the way is compromised:

“In May 2021, the AMA released its Organizational Strategic Plan to Embed Racial Justice and Advance Health Equity, “dedicated to embedding racial justice” in all medical practice. Among the plans key priorities is one whose implications for medical education and medical school admissions are readily apparent: “Develop structures and processes to consistently center the experiences and ideas of historically marginalized (women, LGBTQ+, people with disabilities, International Medical Graduates) and minoritized (Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian and other people of color) physicians.”

The medical profession’s leaders, almost without exception or dissent, now vigorously enforce this new orthodoxy of anti-racism. Most notably, they have designed and implemented a new version of medical education explicitly grounded in ideology rather than scientific excellence. In pursuit of this project, the president of the AAMC (which accredits U.S. medical schools) and the chair of the AAMC’s Council of [Medical School] Deans stated publicly in July 2022: “We believe this topic [Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion] deserves just as much attention from learners and educators at every stage of their careers as the latest scientific breakthroughs.”

The AAMC’s DEI Competencies, issued in October 2021, details the new required social justice skills that medical students must acquire. In addition, the AAMC has discouraged the use of the rigorous Medical College Admissions Test (MCAT) as a filter to help select medical students. Dozens of the 158 allopathic (MD granting) U.S. medical schools have made the MCAT optional. Several medical schools, including the prestigious University of Pennsylvania, have programs to admit students from designated “underrepresented” identity groups without requiring the submission of MCAT scores at all. The MCAT itself has been revised to include social justice questions that are easy to ace because the answers are always the same: structural racism is the cause of any group disparities that disfavor underrepresented groups. But even this re-engineered test shows persistent group disparities in test scores, which means that Asian applicants must score almost 4 times higher than black applicants to have an equal chance of admission.”

The MCAT was the only aspect of the entire application process which demonstrated true aptitude for a science/medical based curriculum. And they’re largely doing away with it.

And it isn’t just medical schools. The indoctrination and dumbing down of standards continues through residency/fellowship and practice. Example: This is how certain hospitals come to the forefront to promote the trans mutilation. Brigham and Womens Hospital in Boston being one of the worst.

Emergency Medicine is another example. EM is represented by ACEP:

👆the president of ACEP (black female naturally-not a racist comment-just an observation for a demographic that is less than 5% of emergency medicine physicians) actively OPPOSES that anti-DEI legislation.

And to prevent trolls citing the usual lazy dumb denial of sOuRcE???? for that 5% statistic, here it is:

8 notes · View notes

itsallwearecalledtodo · 2 years ago

Text

I posted 17,915 times in 2022

That's 8,614 more posts than 2021!

798 posts created (4%)

17,117 posts reblogged (96%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@mariposasmonarch

@eventually--darling

@as-catolica

@distance-does-not-matter

@mookybear12404

I tagged 10,008 of my posts in 2022

Only 44% of my posts had no tags

#birds - 1,532 posts

#passeriformes - 682 posts

#art - 631 posts

#catholic - 471 posts

#dracula - 422 posts

#dracula daily - 350 posts

#the locked tomb - 337 posts

#extraordinary attorney woo - 266 posts

#the owl house - 251 posts

#queens thief - 192 posts

Longest Tag: 138 characters

#do y’all know how much applying to med school and taking the mcat costs????? it’s insane. almost like they don’t want people to be doctors

My Top Posts in 2022:

so I keep thinking like what if God had wanted Moses to write a scientifically (not just spiritually) accurate creation account in Genesis. imagine trying to explain evolution to someone who doesn’t know what cells are. there’s just so much we’ve discovered about the natural world that we learn at a young age and take for granted I think.

340 notes - Posted February 12, 2022

y’all ever wanna just. wrap yourself up in God’s love and never leave

458 notes - Posted February 4, 2022

me: ugh why isn’t God speaking to me right now why is He silent

also me: *doesnt pray*

536 notes - Posted October 25, 2022

St Therese of Lisieux also enjoyed making potions and mixtures like all little girls apparently do: “It was a great joy for me to prepare mixtures with little seeds and pieces of bark I found on the ground, and I’d bring them to Papa in a pretty little cup�� from ch 2 of her autobiography

837 notes - Posted January 9, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Worst thing ever in the whole world is when a thunderstorm is forecasted and then it doesn’t storm. literally so rude I was excited for this all day.

128,138 notes - Posted August 22, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

#tumblr2022 #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review #the CHOKEHOLD EAW had on me in July DHDHSHJDHDHD

4 notes · View notes

blackmagicmcat · 4 years ago

Text

So I took the Kaplan diagnostic adapted for the new 2020 exam (so 4 and got a 484 (7th precentile)

Here is my score break down:

Biology/Biochem - 120

CARS - 122

Chemistry/Physical Sciences - 120

Psychology/Sociology - 122

Now my next step is to make an excel spreadsheet of the questions I got wrong or guessed right! I will take a picture/share a template of what it looks like when I start it.

My list of resources is still in the making~ (kindly wait for it, but in the meantime reddit is an AMAZING source of free information and resources)

#premedstudent #premedlife #premed #mcat 2021 2022 #mcatprep #mcat #mcat study #mcat scores #studyblr #study space #study hard

6 notes · View notes

thelasttime · 2 years ago

Note

DUDE I lived vicariously through you that year!!! Yeah honestly!! Taylor would rather you focus on school and make that bread than tumblr. I am still happy when you show up. Congratulations on your senior year! I hope it is fruitful and as free from stress as a senior year from college can be

madie (2017-2021): hitting post limit everyday

madie (2022): appearing once in a blue moon

thank you!! i hope it goes well, i'm not applying to medical school yet but i will be studying for my MCAT throughout the semester + working on my spanish honors thesis + being president of my orchestra + being on the recruitment for tour guides + maintaining a thriving social life

#asks #asking you this*#anonymous

2 notes · View notes

pdf-dedication · 3 years ago

Text

[PDF] Read & download MCAT Complete 7-Book Subject Review 2022–2023 by Kaplan Test Prep for Free

Download/Read PDF MCAT Complete 7-Book Subject Review 2022–2023: https://bit.ly/mcat2022-2023

Mirror: https://bookshub-community.blogspot.com/2021/07/pdf-epub-download-mcat-complete-7-book.html

BOOK DESCRIPTION:

Named "Best of the best MCAT prep book" by the Chicago Tribune!

Kaplan’s MCAT Complete 7-Book Subject Review 2022–2023 reflects the latest, most accurate, and most testable materials on the MCAT. Streamlined and intuitive layouts facilitate easier review.

You’ll get efficient strategies, detailed subject review, and 3 full-length online practice tests—all authored by the experts behind the MCAT prep course that has helped more people get into medical school than all other major courses combined.

Efficient Strategies and In-Depth Review

Guided examples with expert thinking in our Behavioral Sciences, Biochemistry, and Biology books present scientific articles and walk you through challenging open-ended questions

Entirely revamped CARS content with updated methods for the latest exam challenges

High-Yield badges indicate the most testable content based on AAMC materials

Concept summaries boil down the need-to-know information in each chapter, including any necessary equations to memorize

Full-color, 24-page MCAT Quicksheets emphasize the most important information in visual form

Chapter Profiles indicate the degree to which each chapter is tested and the testmaker content categories to which it aligns

Charts, graphs, diagrams, and full-color, 3-D illustrations from Scientific American help turn even the most complex science into easy-to-visualize concepts

Realistic Practice

One year of online access to 3 full-length practice tests, selected instructional videos, practice questions, and quizzes

Hundreds of practice questions in the books show you how to apply concepts and equations

Quizzes at the beginning of each chapter help you figure out what you already know and prep more efficiently

Learning objectives and concept checks ensure you’re focusing on the most important information in each chapter

Expert Guidance

Sidebars illustrate connections between concepts and include references to more information, real-world tie ins, mnemonics, and MCAT-specific tips

Comprehensive subject review written by top-rated, award-winning Kaplan instructors who guide you on where to focus your efforts and how to organize your review

All material is vetted by editors with advanced science degrees and by a medical doctor

We know the test: The Kaplan MCAT team has spent years studying every MCAT-related document available, and our experts ensure our practice questions and study materials are true to the test

3 notes · View notes

fieryrondo · 4 years ago

Text

Hi anon! I’m not sure if it’s advice I can offer you but I can tell you about my own experience applying to medical school (disclosure: I can only speak about the US medical school system so if you are thinking of applying to medical school elsewhere, I’m afraid my answer will not be particularly useful). But I’ll try my best to give as complete an answer as I can, because I think it’s an important question and because I, too, have been in your shoes before.

‘Is 30 too late in life to get into such long and demanding studies?’ Well, it depends. I can tell you that there are many many students, myself included, who didn’t go straight into medical school after undergrad (and even for students who majored in biology and/or did all of their premedical requirements for application take at least a year or two off to accumulate other life experiences like a job, or internship or traveling; it’s become somewhat fashionable to take time off; it makes for a more well rounded application and can give you time to really think about why a career change might be for you. One of my classmates is a mother of three children. Another started and sold their own business before medical school. Another was a restaurant owner. Firefighters, painters, wealth management, engineering. I worked in grant writing, health communications and volunteer management. People who are passionate about medicine come from all walks of life.

When you think about ‘too late’ I think it’s important to also consider the timeline. it’s 2020. You’re 30. Assume you’re going to apply next year in June 2021 (since it’s too late for this current cycle). Assume you are accepted and enter medical school in the summer of 2022 (the earliest you would start). 32. Medical school is four years. 36. Assuming you’re going for general practice (family medicine, pediatrics, internal medicine are 3 years). 39/40 would be the soonest when you would be a fully fledged practicing physician. If you’re interested in subspecializing, add another 4 years or so. That still leaves you with at least 20-25 years of practice. A very respectable career length. So ask yourself, would you be willing to give up close to a decade’s worth of earning years if that means 20-25 years of doing work you find fulfilling and satisfying? It’s a personal question with no one correct answer, only the one that’s honest to you matters. Accept that this soul searching is and will be an ongoing process throughout your training.

After you find your answer, it’s important to think about finances. Or in other words, is it ‘realistic’? Medical school is expensive. Even applying to medical school is expensive. It sucks but like many things in America (or any capitalist society really), career changes favor those who have the resources and means to do so. What classes do you need to take in order to prepare for the MCAT, for medical school applications? Do you have the financial means to fulfill any preadmission requirements and to apply? Do you have a good enough credit to qualify for all of the education loans you’ll need ot take out (a classmate of mine sold off their business to fund their medical education. Nice, but not everything is in that situation.) Chances are you’ll have to take out loans. Do you have a good/adequate credit score? Anything in your payment history that might prevent you from getting government loans? What GPA or scores do you need to meet to be competitive for the schools you’re applying to? Do you have the academic chops (or willpower/determination) to do what you need to do to show that you are academically prepared for the rigors of med school life? Just some things to think about.

As for your concerns about having children and settling down, that’s worth considering too. Medical students are also widely diverse in this respect. Some are married/engaged. Others are single. Others still date casually. I encourage you to talk to women physicians to get an idea of how they’ve handled that aspect of their life plans. Some find it easier to manage than others. Understand how these plans may affect your intended timeline and completion. Most reputable medical schools and residency programs are willing to accommodate family life planning. I have a classmate who took a year off for her pregnancy. She’s back again, and on track to graduate next spring.

One thing is important. You have to be very sure. Medicine is a demanding profession, both in its training and its career lifespan. If you’re not sure medicine is for you, I encourage you to find out more. Talk to family/friends who are physicians, shadow physicians to get a flavor of what might the day-to-day look like. Volunteer at hospitals/clinics (might be challenging to do during covid era). Do as much research as you can so you are as informed if not more about medicine as an outsider to the field can be.

And since this post is way too long, I’d like to conclude: you are not alone. It isn’t talked about as much as it should be, but non-traditional applicants for medical school are very common. And indeed, more schools are now interested in diversifying their student bodies, bringing a more diverse group of individuals with eclectic past experiences, rich and different and unique. Think about what you’re passionate about. Do you love working with patients? Or are you more interested in studying the physiological processes of the human body and how it functions? Biology can be a frustrating major in the sense that it is so broad, medicine is only one of many paths you can take. And if you have your heart set on health care, know that physicians, though certainly among the most visible of those on the frontlines of healthcare delivery, are not the end-all be-all of medicine. I’d consider physician’s assistant, nurse practitioner, pharmacist, and others if you’re interested in something similar to physician but not nearly as big of a time or money investment.

Think long and hard about your reasons for considering medicine. Why a doctor? Why now? And will I be happy? Make it a point to research the pros and cons. Medicine is a fulfilling career but it is far from perfect. Think about what would make you most happy, most satisfied. Sometimes the answer is simple. Other times it’s complex. It’s important to consider both. And if your answer is still yes after all of these considerations, hold on because it will be a long and arduous journey but worth every dogged step. I’m only starting down this path myself and I find it immensely rewarding.

Feel free to reach out to me here or private DM if you have any follow up questions. Best of luck.

#anon asks #fiery answers #med school #advice

3 notes · View notes

lostcybertronian · 4 years ago

Text

Update

I have decided to fall back to Plan B. This is for multiple reasons (including admissions for schools now looking more toward people with additional experience, not just an undergrad degree) but the gist of it is is that I am not taking the MCAT again this summer. I will not be attending medical school in the fall of 2021, but instead in the fall of 2022, after I get a master’s in medical science.

#so i am back :')#lostandwandering

5 notes · View notes

humeruspremed · 4 years ago

Text

Hey all I took a looooong time off of Tumblr! I graduated undergrad, took a wilderness first responder course (highly recommend this for premed students - it's at University of Colorado) and then the pandemic happened and then my MCAT got cancelled (twice!). It's been a wild ride... I actually decided to go back to school and get my Master's degree in Biology online before I apply to med school. I graduated undergrad with a 2.9 gpa, and even with a fantastic MCAT (that I work my arse off to get) I know it won't be enough. I also know I don't have solid letters of rec! I plan on connecting better with my professors and working really hard to get a gpa of over 3.5. I'm going to take the MCAT in January (depending on how this whole pandemic thing turns out) and applying in the 2021-2022 cycle for med school.

This week I'm up at the Mayo with my mama, and let me tell you, this has been interesting during Covid. You get used to wearing a mask and getting your temperature taken a lot. 🤣🤣 I've been doing some light MCAT studying with the Miledown Anki decks and my Kaplan books. I love the Mayo and the Alix School of Medicine would be incredible to get into, so I've been daydreaming about that too 🤣

#premed #realistic studyblr #studyblr #study #college #nontradpremed #nontraditional student #online school #grad studyblr #grad student #grad school

4 notes · View notes

religion-is-a-mental-illness · 1 year ago

Text

By: Stanley Goldfarb

Published: May 2, 2023

For better or worse, I have had a front-row seat to the meltdown of twenty-first-century medicine. Many colleagues and I are alarmed at how the DEI agenda—which promotes people and policies based on race, ethnicity, gender, religion, and sexual orientation rather than merit—is undermining healthcare for all patients regardless of their status.

Five years ago I was associate dean of curriculum at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, and prior to that, codirector of its highly regarded kidney division. Around that time, Penn’s vice dean for education started to advocate that we train medical students to be activists for “social justice.” The university also implemented a new “pipeline program,” allowing ten students a year from HBCUs (historically black colleges or universities) to attend its med school after maintaining a 3.6 GPA but no other academic requirement, including not taking the MCAT (Medical College Admission Test). And the university has also created a project called Penn Medicine and the Afterlives of Slavery Project (PMAS) in order to “reshape medical education. . . by creating social justice-informed medical curricula that use race critically and in an evidence-based way to train the next generation of race-conscious physicians.” Finally, twenty clinical departments at the medical school now have vice chairs for diversity and inclusion.

Although some discussion of social ills does belong in the medical curriculum, I’ve always understood the physician’s main role to be a healer of the individual patient. When I said as much in a Wall Street Journal op-ed in 2019, “Take Two Aspirin and Call Me by My Pronouns,” a Twitter mob—composed largely of fellow physicians—denounced my arguments as racist. Over 150 Penn med school alumni signed an open letter condemning me. Meanwhile, my name has since been scrubbed from the university’s website and I’ve been excised from a short history of the kidney division.

Similar outrage greeted the outgoing president of the Society of Thoracic Surgeons, John Calhoon, when, in a speech to members in January, he encouraged them always to “search for the best candidate” and noted “affirmative action is not equal opportunity.” Within 24 hours, the society denounced Calhoon’s speech for being “inconsistent with STS’s core values of diversity, equity, and inclusion,” and its incoming president announced, “We are going to do what we can to re-earn the trust of our members who have been hurt.” Apparently no one thought to ask the 170,000 Americans who annually undergo a coronary bypass—the most common form of thoracic surgery—if they, too, might prefer to be operated on by “the best candidate.”

After my drubbing by the Penn med school alumni, I didn’t stay quiet. At the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, I noticed that trainees were unprepared to care for critically ill patients. It was becoming clear to me that discriminatory practices—such as reserving monoclonal antibodies against Covid-19 for minority patients, and preferential hospital admission protocols based on race—were infiltrating medicine as a whole. I responded with another Wall Street Journal op-ed, “Med School Needs an Overhaul: Doctors should learn to fight pandemics, not injustice.”

I retired as I’d planned in July 2021, my honorific status as professor emeritus intact, though I haven’t been asked to teach. In March 2022, I published a book, Take Two Aspirin and Call Me By My Pronouns, and started a nonprofit called Do No Harm with some acquaintances to combat discriminatory practices in medicine. We began a program to inform the public and fight illegal discrimination. We demand that any proposed changes in medical school admissions or testing standards require legislative approval and a public hearing—and we are getting results.

Our argument is that medical schools are engaging in racial discrimination in service to diversity, equity, and inclusion. We have filed more than seventy complaints with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR), which exists in large part to investigate schools that discriminate based on race, color, ethnicity, sex, age, and disability. Surely the radical activists never expected anyone to turn the administrative state against them, but that’s what we did. And it worked—even under the Biden administration. Do No Harm has filed complaints through OCR over scholarships, fellowships, and programs with eligibility criteria that discriminate based on race/ethnicity (Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964) and/or sex/gender identity (Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972). Many of these are described as programs for students who are “underrepresented in medicine” (UIM).

For example, we brought the OCR’s attention to a Diversity in Medicine Visiting Elective Scholars Program (archived page) at the University of Texas at San Antonio’s Long School of Medicine, which excluded white and Asian students. This is illegal under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which made all racial discrimination associated with government programs illegal. As a result of our action, the OCR opened an investigation. However, Long School of Medicine took down the program page and scrubbed all evidence of it from its website, prompting OCR to close the investigation as “corrected.” While the original scholarship was meant for individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds, that worthy goal can and should be met without racial discrimination.

Or consider the University of Florida College of Medicine, which offered a scholarship solely to those who were “African Americans and/or Black, American Indian, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian, Hispanic/Latinx, and Pacific Islander.” We asked the OCR to investigate, and the university eliminated the race requirement. Likewise, we filed a complaint against the Medical University of South Carolina over eight scholarships excluding applicants who did not qualify as “underrepresented in medicine.” The OCR opened an investigation, after which the school dropped the exclusionary policy.

* * *

Racially discriminatory scholarships are not the only sign of the decline of American medical schools. A colleague at Do No Harm and I examined the trend of resegregating medicine, including the idea that black physicians provide better healthcare to black patients than physicians of other races. There is no question disparities exist in health outcomes for minority communities. But no valid studies support the rationale of creating a corps of minority physicians, and last month Do No Harm filed a complaint with the OCR against Duke University’s School of Medicine’s Black Men in Medicine program for race- and sex-based discrimination.

Even the highly touted New England Journal of Medicine is pushing for race-based segregation in medical schools. Last month, the journal published an article by several doctors and academics at the University of California–San Francisco and UC–Berkeley, calling for the expansion of “racial affinity group caucuses,” or RAGCs, for medical students. “In a space without White people,” the authors write, “BIPOC participants can bring their whole selves, heal from racial trauma together, and identify strategies for addressing structural racism.” The RAGCs include a caucus for white-only medical trainees, as if this would lessen objections to an agenda that has nothing to do with healing and everything to do with identity politics.

Do No Harm is also pushing back against the tide of race-based programs in the corporate world. In February, in the wake of a lawsuit we filed against Pfizer last September claiming a violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, the pharmaceutical company ended a requirement that college junior applicants to its Breakthrough Fellowship program—which offers guaranteed employment—be black, Hispanic, or Native American.

At Do No Harm we have publicly and repeatedly pointed out that the likeliest basis for healthcare disparities is not racism, but patients presenting late in the course of their illness, too late to achieve best outcomes. Therefore, we push for better access for minority patients and encourage healthcare institutions to improve outreach to minority communities. We believe that focusing on racial identity will harm healthcare, divide us even more, and reduce trust between patients and physicians, all of which will lead to even worse outcomes.

We have heard from dozens of physicians, nurses, and medical students who feel prevented from speaking out. My advice to my colleagues, young and old, is this: fight back using every tool at your disposal. Highlight the damage that follows the lowering of standards. Call out discrimination done in the name of “equity” and “anti-racism.�� Recognize that the majority of your peers may share your views, even if they stay quiet.

10 notes · View notes