MCAT Prep? Not here.

Sometimes people ask me if I have any plans to release a Strategy Guide for the MCAT.  The answer is always a resounding no.

Here’s my thinking on this.  My approach to solving the standardized testing problem in America is to make it easy and cheap for people to score higher on tests, with the idea that the end result will be a change in the testing industry.  Until those changes are made, the people who use my materials and my personal help will have an advantage over the people who don’t.  That’s just a fact.

Medicine is, at least theoretically, a field with standards and practices that must be respected.  The way I see it, the MCAT is one of the medical field’s first lines of defense.  I simply don’t want to help people score higher on the MCAT than they should.  (I know that there are other lines of defense, and that the MCAT may not be the best tool for evaluating potential in the medical field.  But I don’t care.  I’m not going near it, just to be safe.)

The same thinking just doesn’t apply to other fields of training.  The MCAT is potentially a matter of life or death, and the stakes aren’t as high for other tests.

There’s another reason I’d never put together an MCAT Guide, though: You actually have to know some stuff to do well on the MCAT.  While I’m sure anyone can learn the necessary science to do well on the test, I don’t want to get into the business of teaching subject matter to people.  That’s why I stick to the SAT, PSAT, GMAT, LSAT, and GRE.  These tests only use “reading, writing, and ‘rithmetic” to evaluate students, and most students don’t need long refreshers on basic algebra and geometry before they take the SAT.  They only need to be shown how basic algebra and geometry can answer any SAT Math question (even the ones that supposedly involve function graphs and probability).  I focus on the tests that can be beaten through strategy alone, not through subject-matter knowledge, because strategy is what I do best.