The Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) is the entrance exam required by the great majority of medical schools in the United States and Canada. Designed by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), the exam is administered twice a year, in April and in August. It is a full day exam composed of four sections, Verbal Reasoning, Physical Sciences, Writing Sample, and Biological Sciences.
The Physical Sciences section contains questions on physics and general chemistry. The Biological Sciences section contains questions on biology and organic chemistry.
All sections except the Writing Sample are in multiple choice format and are marked on a scale from 1 to 15. Raw scores on the Writing Sample are converted to a letter grade ranging from a low of J to a high of T.
Information and registration packages can be obtained from the counselling offices on most university campuses, or by writing directly to:
Telephone: (319) 337-1357
MCAT Schedule
Section | Number of Questions | Time | Time per Question
Verbal Reasoning
| 65
| 85 mins
| 1 min 10 s.
| Break
|
| 10 mins
|
| Physical Sciences
| 77
| 100 mins
| 1 min 10 s.
| Lunch Break
|
| 60 mins
|
| Writing Sample
| 2
| 60 mins
| 30 mins
| Break
|
| 10 mins
|
| Biological Sciences
| 77
| 100 mins
| 1 min 10 s.
| |
Examinees will probably be required to arrive at the exam centre by 8 a.m., local time. After administrative matters are settled, examinees will begin writing the exam around 9 a.m. The exam usually ends at about 4 or 5 p.m.
Note: In the exam, you are to use a 2H pencil for the multiple choice sections and a black ball point pen for the WS section - bring these with you. No calculators or notes are allowed.
Scoring System
The MCAT is a "standardized" test. A standardized test is simply one that is sensitive to differences in capacity or aptitude in specific areas and not sensitive to other (extraneous) factors or attributes. The MCAT Physical Sciences section, for example, attempts to measure facility with introductory chemistry and physics without giving the examinee a "bonus" for calculus or advanced courses taken.
Your raw score is "scaled" to a curve of how the entire group of people taking the test performed (and in some cases, how everyone who took the exam over the past few years did). Thus, your final score is based not only on your individual performance, but on the performance of the testing group as a whole. Your MCAT score indicates how far above or below average your raw test score is.
The Verbal Reasoning, Biological Sciences, and Physical Sciences sections are scored on a 1-15 scale with a target mean and standard deviation of 8 and 2.5, respectively. However, in practice the target mean and standard deviation are not met exactly, since scores are assigned to try to meet certain other criteria (e.g. a 15 corresponds to the 99.9th percentile, or there are as many 10+ scores as 1st year openings).
Your results should arrive in the mail 8 to 9 weeks after the test.