Medical school exam to go digital

The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) announced in July that it will administer only computer-based MCAT exams after August 2006, cutting the test's length nearly in half. Though the AAMC claims that the content of the MCAT will remain unchanged, some medical school hopefuls are still wary of the shift.

Jason Wang '07, treasurer of the Princeton Pre-Med Society, explained that many students may not feel fully comfortable reading and working with the exam off a computer. But the most daunting part of the exam remains the content: "The MCAT is a hard test, but it's not the format," he said. "The main anxiety of the test is the test itself."

As a result of the computerized system — developed by the company Thomson Prometric — the AAMC will be able to offer more test dates, with four periods of five days each available, as opposed to the current two test dates per year.

Ricky Gill '09, who expects to apply to medical school, was pleased by the increase in the number of offered dates. "Students now will have the opportunity to choose their test date, and not have the test choose [for] them," he said.

The increase in available test dates seems to him a fair tradeoff for having to take a computerized exam. "The change is so innocuous when you consider that all Princeton students are expected to be fully adept with computers anyway," he said.

The new system offers some advantages. With the new computerized format, the AAMC projects that students could receive their scores in only 14 days, in comparison to the present two-month wait. Also, with this electronic system, the AAMC expects tighter test security, an ever-increasing concern as the number of students taking the exam has reached 60,000. In addition, the AAMC would be able to add more functionality features, such as audio or video content, as the need arises.

Amjed Mustafa, an MCAT expert at Kaplan — which provides test preparation for the MCAT and other entrance exams — rates this change to the computerized format as "a nine on the one-to-10 scale" of causes of test-taker anxiety. Mustafa said that the main disadvantage for students taking the exam may be the impossibility of taking notes on charts or diagrams as would be possible on a paper test.

From a Kaplan survey administered to its MCAT prep students, over 80 percent had never taken a college-level exam on a computer and 82 percent worried that they would do worse on the new computerized MCAT.

Kaplan is recommending that concerned students try to take the last two paper administrations in April 2006 and August 2006, even if that would necessitate them completing their premed course work earlier than planned.