The Medical College Admission Test^® (MCAT^®) is a standardized, multiple-choice examination designed to assess your problem solving, critical thinking, and knowledge of natural, behavioral, and social science concepts and principles prerequisite to the study of medicine.

The What’s on the MCAT Exam? Content Outline provides an overview of concepts and skills tested on each of the four sections of the MCAT exam. You can view the foundational concepts and skills tested and sample questions with explanations of the correct answers. A pdf of the entire Content Outline is available to download and print.

The MCAT exam is scaled and equated so that scores have the same meaning, no matter when you test.

The AAMC does multiple things when we score your exam.

• First, we count the number of questions answered correctly. The scores that you achieve on the four scored multiple-choice sections are based on the number of questions you answer correctly. Wrong answers are scored exactly the same way as an unanswered question and there isn’t an additional penalty for wrong answers. 
• Second, we take the number of correct answers (i.e., raw scores) and convert them to an MCAT scaled score for each section.  Raw scores from each of these four sections are converted to a scaled score ranging from 118 (lowest) to 132 (highest). For example, if your number correct on one of the sections is between 35 and 37, your converted scaled score might be 123. Number correct ranging from 46 to 48 might have a converted scaled score of 128, and so forth.

So why don’t we give you your raw score on test day or on your score report, and instead convert to scaled scores? In a given testing year, there are many different test forms administered, any one of which you could see on your exam day. The different forms of the exam are designed to measure the same basic concepts and skills, but each form contains different sets of questions. While care is taken to make sure that each form is about equivalent in difficulty, one form may be slightly more or less difficult than another. The conversion of number correct scores to scaled scores, through a process called equating, compensates for small variations in difficulty between sets of questions. The exact conversion of number correct to scaled scores is not constant because each conversion is tailored to the specific set of questions included on a test form.

The scaled score, reported on a 15-point scale, tends to provide a more stable and accurate assessment of a student’s performance than the number correct score. Two students with equal preparation who answered different sets of questions would be expected to get the same scaled score, even though there might be a slight difference between the number correct scores each student obtained on their test form. This is also done to ensure that scores have the same meaning across test administrations and testing years.

The MCAT^® exam is offered multiple times in 2023 from January and March through September at hundreds of test sites in the United States, Canada, and around the world. Visit our MCAT COVID-19 page for updates and information about health and safety protocols.

If you have a disability or medical condition that you believe requires an adjustment to standard testing conditions, we encourage you to apply for accommodated testing.