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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]If the OP’s daughter didn’t score well on the SAT (1500+ at a minimum), med school is not likely to happen. It just isn’t. I know people don’t want to hear that, but it is a pretty accurate proxy for college GPA. GPA and test scores need to be almost perfect for med school. [/quote]

I just don’t think this is true. Where are you getting this magic 1500+ number? I have some close friends from undergrad who are practicing doctors who definitely did not have that high of an SAT score. I even remember one of them saying they barely squeaked into our undergrad school because their SAT was on the lower end of our school’s range, and now they’re an MD/PhD! You definitely have to be smart enough to score reasonably well on standardized exams but that 1500 line is pulled out of thin air.[/quote]

DP. Partly concur.
I work in med admissions consulting, was on a top5 med school admissions committee, have a spouse who served recently on a T50 committee. I am a physician as are almost all of my adult friends. Many of us have current premeds of our own and we have advised hundreds.
The SAT needed 15 years ago(ie when the newly minted Residency grads were juniors high school) is irrelevant to now just as my top-1% SAT 37 years ago was not anywhere near 1500 but at the time correlated to my high MCAT score. My ivy did predicted score brackets based on SAT and GPA and once you had your score they gave you a list of med schools to apply to. It does not work that way anymore, premeds can apply wherever they want, but there is information available provided by the ivy and other schools, for those that want to dig in to the data. 
As a consultant the past 5 med cycles there is an SAT correlation. [b]SAT scores of around 1440 without extra time correlates to being highly likely to achieve a 510+, the floor score needed to get into the lower to mid ranked MD programs. 1530+ single sitting/no extra time correlates to being able to get 520+, the general target score for applicants who want T20 med and are chasing top merit.[/b] Yes, there are students who seemed to get in to top undergrads with lower scores or TO, mid-1400s, who have had to work hard to keep up but have gotten into at least one MD program. There are also students with 1500-ish who should easily be able to perform well compared to peers yet they have poor study habits and it all falls apart in college. The student's drive and discipline matter just as much as SAT, though there is a certain minimum level needed. 1300s SAT with all the drive in the world is going to struggle to get above 500 on the MCAT even after many tries. Med school will not happen unless they choose to go to the Caribbean. [/quote]

Even if anecdotal, this is useful since you have the experience to back it up. I do wish there were published data on this, so that kids like the OP's could have information needed to make their own decisions, since whether you are pre-med or not may affect your decision to go to one school or another. I agree the SAT seems to be an entirely different thing today from what it was when I took it, especially the verbal section.

I'm curious, how "holistic" is med school admission these days? Are kids with very high GPA and MCAT being overlooked because they do not have the extracurriculars, or because they have mid essays?
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