Radical Activists Are Corrupting the MCAT

The MCAT is the gold-standard test for admission to medical school. Surprise, surprise, it’s also a target of radical activists. They claim the test is racist, which has led to dozens of schools dropping MCAT requirements for many minority applicants – a direct threat to physician quality. But they’re also taking another tack that will lead to worse physicians: Putting divisive ideology into the MCAT itself.

We recently looked through materials from the Association of American Medical Colleges, which administers the MCAT. On a page titled, “What’s on the MCAT exam,” it clearly states that applicants may be asked to identify “the most appropriate way to assess prejudice in a study on implicit bias.” This presupposes that implicit bias is real, even though implicit bias testing has been debunked and the concept is used to justify discriminatory policies. Another section focuses on “prejudice and bias,” including “power, prestige, and class.” This is testing for political views, not medical knowledge.

It gets worse. The MCAT now has content on “social inequality,” which focuses on “the segment of the population that is disenfranchised or lacks power.” It blames “institutionalized racism and discrimination” for this supposed problem, while stating that “social justice” is “essential to address health and health care disparities.” Again, this is divisive ideology, not medical education.

The list keeps going. Another section focuses on the “social determinants of health,” which is part of the push to get medical students to focus on political issues like food stamps, housing policy, and the like. Yet that’s not what future physicians need to know. Even the AMA agrees that physicians have no power to change the patient’s “social condition.” Treating individual patients is all that matters.

The MCAT should be free of identity politics and radical ideology, so that it accurately tests future physicians for their knowledge of medicine. Alas, that’s the last thing activists want. They want to kill the MCAT, either by preventing people from taking it or corrupting the test from the inside. Either way, patients will suffer from the lowering of standards.
Have you seen identity politics in the MCAT? Please let us know – securely and anonymously.