3 Things I Learned at MappdCon 2023
Collaboration, Not Competition.
This phrase emphasizes the need for pre-health students to work with each other and not against each other. The deck is already stacked against pre-health students, whether they are future physicians, dentists, veterinarians, physician assistants, and more. Nowhere exemplifies this more than websites like Student Doctor Network and the MCAT subreddit. While there is a lot of good information in those forums, there is so much false and negative information, it is difficult for most students to see their way through to the good.
I will always encourage pre-health students to seek out true information directly from the source. Instead of trusting secondhand info from a friend of a friend, or something that is merited as the “best” or “only” way to do something, ask your pre-health advisor or test prep specialist or admissions officer or the many professionals that exist to help you on your journey to become future health care providers.
There is no doctor without “DO”.
I ran into a student I knew from my past and they were talking with an esteemed professional from Kansas City University. The topic of DO vs. MD came up in conversation and the KCU professional said he didn’t know much about the gulf between DO and MD when the student said “there is no doctor without ‘DO’.” I’m not sure how I have never heard nor thought about this particular truism, but it got me thinking about why there was/is such a gulf.
It is said DO school and MD school have all the same training, except DO also includes a different philosophical bent. I think that description of the difference is indeed the problem. Why is it that DO school is always described as having an exception regarding the description of MD school? Why is it that people assume medical always refers to MD schools when somebody says medical school?
The change I would like to see is for DO and MD school to described as having the same training while having differing philosophies. Since the DO and MD residency programs have been combined, DO and MD school curricula have become far more similar. By emphasizing the similarities, I hope more students will seek out experiences working with both DO and MD physicians to learn about both philosophies before deciding to apply only MD or apply to MD and use DO as the back up plan. DO programs deserve more consideration, and I long to hear more students say they want to apply to DO only or apply to DO and use MD as the backup plan.
PA-CAT Vexes Me… Nah, It Makes Me Mad
I have long believed that as a test prep provider, my job is to work towards a system in which I no longer have a job teaching test prep. Standardized tests for entrance into schools upset me along with rampant grade inflation, and that somehow students today need to do more to be successful than I did when I went to undergraduate and graduate school back in 1991 and 1995, respectively. I was a first generation, financially disadvantaged student without test preparation who only applied to one undergraduate institution and one graduate institution, and I was accepted into both.
Now I see students like me feeling overwhelmed by spending nearly every waking hour studying for GPAs and test scores and doing 2 sports plus AP or IB classes and participating in 2 or 3 student organizations and… well, just so many things. These students are scared to death of the process, and many don’t get accepted even when applying to a dozen or more schools. Then there are students in even more precarious positions… DACA students, children of immigrants, underrepresented community members, LGTBQIA individuals, and the deck stacked even more against these students.
OK, let me explain how the PA-CAT fits this conversation. PA schools across the country are in a state of flux; the number of the schools requiring the GRE is on the decline, there is discussion of making the Master’s of Physician Assistant Studies into a doctorate level program, and then just before the COVID pandemic the PA-CAT appears as the would-be replacement for the GRE in PA school admissions.
I spoke with the group designing and testing the PA-CAT this past weekend, and here is the case being made for the necessity and, as they told me, the benefit of the PA-CAT for students. Their research has shown that the PA-CAT is stronger indicator of performance in PA school than both GPA and the GRE. OK, we might see this for the MCAT, DAT, and OAT as well (I will add references to relevant studies below). How does this help students? The case made to me was if a student goes to a rigorous school and consequently ends up with a lower GPA than somebody that goes to a non-rigorous school will now have a stronger chance of acceptance into a PA school.
In writing this, it was here I realized I may have buried the lede by putting this #3, but I wanted to stick with my more positive takeaways. I also decided to modify my title for this section as well…
Remember those disadvantaged students with whom I started this discussion? Is this going to help them? Many of these disadvantaged students will end up at those “less rigorous” schools like community colleges and small state institutions. So they’ll have better GPAs than those poor souls that attended those “more rigorous” schools like large state institutions and private schools. I won’t hop on my soapbox on how the perception of rigor at various institutions is terribly fraught with terrible logic and lack of data, but that means our disadvantaged student will not benefit from the PA-CAT according to the logic of the argument was made.
OK, well, let’s say the disadvantaged student is going to still get a bump because they are still able to score well on the PA-CAT, because they should simply be able to take the test and their knowledge is the only preparation for the test. The arms race begins again…. Test prep companies build a product to prepare the students for the PA-CAT, the students get taught the content on the test and are given many practice tests, and then they are charged for the prep materials because prep materials are expensive to produce. This well help those disadvantaged students who have those pesky high GPAs and can afford to… have time to prepare for…
And we find ourselves right back where we started. Institutional disparities that favor the affluent, privileged students have once again made it even harder for those disadvantaged students to get into PA school. I want to clarify that I don’t think the affluent, privileged students are doing anything wrong; heck, I am happy their hard work will pay off for them! I simply believe that all students should have the same opportunities put in front of them to be able to take advantage and succeed equally!
The final verdict? I wish the PA-CAT along with the MCAT, DAT, OAT, HESI A2, TEAS, GRE, ACT, SAT, AP, and the rest of the alphabet soup go the way of the PCAT and simply cease to exist. If you have the chance to investigate the origins of standardized testing in the US, I encourage you to do so, and you might have a distaste for the system as I do, but that is the subject of another post.
MCAT® Validity Research | AAMC
PA-CAT Research Abstracts | Exam Master