Can I vent about situational judgment tests?

[CowsCows]

I'm so frustrated. I took Casper last year and may have to reapply this year, don't know yet because I'm on several waitlists. But apparently PREview is a new thing? And it's $100? And Casper changed its fee from $12/test and $12/distribution to a fixed $85? I'm flat out poor and also don't qualify for AAMC fee assistance. A handful of the schools that I actually have a shot at getting into require these expensive tests which honestly are pointless because anyone can figure them out and give them the answers they want (I "practiced" for 10 mins and got a 4th quartile score on Casper ) This whole process is such a money grab /rant

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[Dral]

It is frustrating. It ends feeling a bunch of expensive hoops to jump through. On the good side, sometimes things get better:

USMLE Step 2 Clinical Skills - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Pay attention to the testing centers. I'm lucky I was in driving distance to the one at Penn. Others had to pay more for travel on top of the $1300 fee. It was fun paying out $1300 when I was already in debt about $200k from med school.

 

[jamaica jan sun princess]

The gates to medical school are guarded by pretentious money grubbers who sit in ivory towers (our resident adcoms excluded of course). But to get in, you have to pretend to be as altruistic and money indifferent as possible. Get used to it; through medical school and attendinghood, you will pay fee after fee for the privilege of being a physician. Because the powers that be know you'll pay whatever it takes to perform DRE's and drain abscesses.

 

[wysdoc]

I'm so frustrated. I took Casper last year and may have to reapply this year, don't know yet because I'm on several waitlists. But apparently PREview is a new thing? And it's $100? And Casper changed its fee from $12/test and $12/distribution to a fixed $85? I'm flat out poor and also don't qualify for AAMC fee assistance. A handful of the schools that I actually have a shot at getting into require these expensive tests which honestly are pointless because anyone can figure them out and give them the answers they want (I "practiced" for 10 mins and got a 4th quartile score on Casper ) This whole process is such a money grab /rant

It might help to know that only 16 AMCAS schools are asking for PREview. See the list here: #1

 

[frosted2]

Wait until you start having to pay hundreds of dollars (each) for Sketchy, Pixorize, USMLERx, AMBOSS, UWorld, Picmonic, Kaplan, etc. because your professors can't teach 99% of the time. This process does not get any more affordable as you go along. Thats real fun when you're already paying nearly 100k a year to attend a school

 

[CowsCows]

It might help to know that only 16 AMCAS schools are asking for PREview. See the list here: #1

Thank you for this, there are 4 schools from my list that are on there and I'm just not going to apply to them. Hopefully I won't have to reapply at all. I'm just mad about Casper changing it from an as-needed pay basis to a fat flat fee.