Importance of the PCAT and MCAT Essays
Pre-medical and pre-pharmacy students often want to know how much the essays count, or how the medical and pharmacy schools use their writing scores in evaluating their applications. Unfortunately, we cannot give you a very informative answer on this point.
MCAT: On the MCAT, the essay section is scored separately from the three multiple choice sections, and it is reported as a letter from J-T instead of numerically. Many people believe that the medical schools do not place very much weight on this letter score, especially in comparison to the importance given to the three numerical subscores.
PCAT: For the PCAT, information is even more scarce. The essay section used to be optional until June of 2005, but it is now required, and your essay score will be reported to the pharmacy schools along with your science, reading, and math subscores. It is not known how individual pharmacy schools will evaluate the writing scores.
My personal feeling is that students should err on the side of performing well, or at least competently, on the essay sections of the PCAT and MCAT. It certainly cannot hurt you to do well on the essays, and it may even help you to some unknown degree. However, I do not recommend studying for the essay sections of these tests at the expense of preparing for the multiple choice sections. The medical and pharmacy schools definitely do care about your science and verbal/reading subscores, so it behooves you to score as well as you possibly can on those sections.
