In mid-February the Association of American Medical Colleges approved recommended changes to the Medical College Admission Test, or MCAT, slated to come into effect for the 2015 exam. The changes will increase both the overall test time and difficulty with the addition of a new section.
The new section will focus on behavioral and social sciences, the overall test time is increased from five and a half hours to about seven hours. Other changes include more advanced concepts in biochemistry, expansion of the critical thinking section and the removal of the writing section.
The driving force behind the revisions, which were finalized in November 2011, was to simply update an exam that hasn’t seen a major change since 1991.
Kaplan Test Prep senior communications manager Russell Schaffer said in an email overall the new MCAT is more difficult than the current version, and undergraduate premedical programs will need to act quickly to prepare students for the changes.
More than 300 MSU undergraduate students applied to medical schools last year, making it one of the biggest sources of medical school applications in the country, Schaffer said.