Nutmeg: In my time on SDN, the two most commonly misspelled words seem to be:

Argument (not arguement)
and Definitely (not definately)

Usually the spell checkers get hassled for being pedantic, but on this thread it seems appropriate to point out spelling errors. You don’t want to make these mistakes on the test.

Also, some people tend to become complacent and depend on MS Word to sort out their "to, two, and too" mix-ups and their "there, they’re and their" mix ups. All of these are important things to keep an eye on (or "important things on which to keep an eye," if you want to get technical). Which brings me to the point that there are a lot (not alot) of instances wherein we generally end a sentence with a preposition (looking at, going to, etc.) If rephrasing the sentence in the above manner makes it sound clumsy (as in the above example) a good idea is to rephrase the matter entirely; e.g., "It is important to keep an eye on these" or "Beware of these common errors,’ etc.

Another important point: sentence fragments. (did you catch that that last sentence is a sentence fragment? ) Make sure that every sentence has a verb, and preferably, a subject.

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lorelei: Several people have pointed out common spelling and grammar mistakes. It’s always a good idea to try and correct these in your writing. However, it’s important to know that the MCAT Writing Sample is NOT a spelling or grammar test. Your score is based on how well you fulfill the three tasks and write a unified essay.

If your spelling or grammar is so poor that the grader has a difficult time following your essay or determining whether you did fulfill the tasks, you will lose points. But spelling "definitely" as "definately" should not lose you any points.

Of course, you want to make your essay as easy to follow as possible, and give the grader the general impression that you know what you’re doing, and correct spelling and grammar will help with that, but I wouldn’t waste time studying grammar when you could be studying, say, physics.

(As an example, I had a friend in college who suffered from a learning disability which caused him to be a terrible speller - it was so bad that the spellchecker in Word didn’t help him because Word couldn’t figure out what words he was trying to spell, so I always proofread his papers. He actually outscored me on the MCAT writing sample.)

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QofQuimica: Students sometimes ask why some people who are great writers score poorly on the MCAT WS, while others who make grammatical and spelling mistakes score higher. It may seem like the WS scoring is completely subjective, but it isn’t. This section does not really test people’s grammar and spelling, as long as their mistakes do not interfere with their ability to make their points clearly. People who score poorly in the WS do so because they do not follow the essay instructions, which are very specific. You must explain what the statement means, give a specific counterexample, and give specific criteria for when the statement holds or does not hold. Also, your essay must be unified. If you do not complete one of the three tasks, your score drops precipitously (bottom half). If you do not make your essay unified, ditto. But if you do not have perfect grammar, you can still score well as long as you do a good job at answering the three tasks in a unified way. See Post 02 for more information about the three tasks on the MCAT WS.