See, but, that's the point. What is the point of the MCAT? To simply winnow out? You really believe that a standardised test does that?
Yes, it does, clearly and effectively.
@70,000 people take the MCAT annually. 50% of them score below the minimum standards of any med school in the USA.
Is everyone who doesn't get a certain score on the MCAT unqualified for med school? No. But most are. And they get to try something else rather than take up space that could be allocated to someone with better odds of success in med school. Is everyone who
does get a certain score on the MCAT qualified for med school? No. But most are, and the med schools winnow out a certain portion as well...and then the medical board exams (standardized at the state level) and residencies and internships further winnow.
Unqualified people still slip though, to be sure, but not as many as would happen if, instead of 35,000 potential students, there were 70,000 because there was no MCAT.
And again, what method do you propose to replace it?
But, even before that level, testing is still not really proving anything. Take a 4th year uni student and give him a test in his field. He does pretty well. We'll say 95%. Fantastic mark. Six months later, after graduation, sit him down and give him the exact same test and his marks, if he passes at all, will be skin of the teeth. It's been proven that you lose about 75-80% of what you learned in uni 6 months after graduation.
So, what did that test actually prove?
Assuming that is true- I know of no such study- it is probably because most of what we learn in college is not used after college and/or wasn't learned well in the first place- both hurdles to retention as long-term memory.
And according to a 2001 Dartmouth paper on the nature of memory, even that forgetfulness is not as thorough as you might think: "..."forgotten" material can be relearned in less time than is required for the original learning, even after many years' disuse."
So, while the test may only prove that you knew something on test day, echoes of that knowledge linger in the mind, more easily recalled or retrained than learning it anew.
Or maybe another example. We've all taken high school level math. At least, most of us likely have. Solve the following:
A^2+b=17
How much you want to bet that while some of you can do this (I certainly can't), most can't? Despite the fact that we have had testing, and likely multiple tests that show that we could do that while we were in high school. All the testing shows is that you are able to retain in short term memory, a selection of skills that will fade within a few months after testing.
Again, math beyond the most rudimentary stuff is not used by most people- myself included- so there is no reason to retain it. Heck, most of us know that even as we're learning it. So it fades with disuse, and our attitude towards math while learning it contributes t the speed with which we lose it. But, as the Dartmouth study points out, I could relearn it in less time now, having leaned it once, as opposed to having never learned it at all.