Should the MCAT grant extra time for students with learning disabilities?

The ‘best’ outcome from a social standpoint would be to have candidates take the tests with the accomodations they could reasonably except to obtain in medical school/medical practice.

ie, students on ADD should be taking their stimulants so they are functioning at the same level they would function in medical school.

Wow, both of these comments show a limited understanding of learning disabilities, and profound lack of knowledge & empathy on the topic. One that reflex's societies larger misconceptions..

First the the American Disabilities Act was passed and fought for by people for a reason. Second, there's such a thing as people with invisible disabilities. Really.
Third, ADHD is not the same thing as Dyslexia. Fourth, you can not drug away deep brain cognitive functioning differences, at best you can subdue certain symptoms. Meaning, you may temporarily negate a behavioral attribute, but you can not add a positive attribute, ie: you will never permanently make said person who is dyslexic,or ADHD or whatever, wired differently. Giving someone with a Neuro-linguistic disorder extra time is not analogous to an unfair advantage, you are simply trying to fairly accommodate a need due to their disorder, the same way you would if they need special seating due to wheelchair use, or brail for a visual impaired person, etc…It is a way of trying to even a playing field that can not be evened, as they have a legitimate problem.

The arguement that everybody will try to pretend they have ADHD or Dyslexia, in order to have a few extra minutes alone in a room to try and take advantage on a test is seriously flawed and backward.

It is deeply unfortunate that the courts can not be humane and fair at this late juncture. That we can not evolve to except and respect learning differences..

I am not saying that learning disabilies can not be coped with or compensated for, but one place they put a considerable stress on people is in the classroom, testing.

And, anyone who has struggled with severe dyslexia or some combination of learning problems (most people who have studied LD know that most people, have a combination of disorders, rather than just one discrete problem)
will tell you that they went through years of hell in school, worked their asses off, were made fun of and told they were stupid, maybe held back, some combination of that story.
So you tell me who you know who is going to fake years of struggling to learn to do things that come naturally to other kids?, just so they can get extra time on a test?

And here is the kicker, sure, I bet you some of those, faker, ADD, Dyslexics, did pretty ok on the test without the time and quiet *the law should have afforded them*, but they did not do their best, (a testament to their intellect) they could have done a lot better..Why not let them have the time? Who is it harming, (besides them)? I have always wondered, why are people so bothered by giving someone with a learning disorder a break?

Long, story short is that, maybe some of those MD'S to be who have ADD or Dyslexia and need extra time to take the test are exceptional doctors in the making, often people with these disabilities have a lot of other talents outside the box to be offered- great intuition, people skills, people with dyslexia often are great listeners (exceptional auditory memory), exceptional spacial and motor skills. Multi-taskers, etc. These are people who've had to suffer in some way, and know what it is to have a problem they've had to work at. This can hopefully only make them better more compassionate doctors.

I really hope that people in the medical field can start to have a more enlightened view of what these disorders are and how they effect people, as there is and has been so much information available for sometime now, it is unfortunate enough that the schools seem fairly lacking, but one would hope that people engaged in science would be open minded

regards,

I will leave you with a short list of people who had dyslexia and other learning disorders

Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, Alexander Graham Bell, Archer Martin, Pierre Curie, Fred Epstein, Harvey Cushing, Nelson Rockefeller, Winston Churchill—-the list could go on..

Anon 2:29
“The arguement that everybody will try to pretend they have ADHD or Dyslexia, in order to have a few extra minutes alone in a room to try and take advantage on a test is seriously flawed and backward.”

That is the dumbest thing I have ever heard…
I will make two predictions, based on the nature and method of your comment, first it is very probable that you have a true learning disability (rapid movement from idea to idea, general anger towards others who do not understand etc’) and second, that you are not a medical student. Medical students are the most competitive people in the damn world and will absolutely get on any medication, claim they have a disability or anything else that will get them a derm spot. At my school, literally, I am not exaggerating, one quarter of all students are on some type of ADD medication. Our schools psych dept seems to see it as a professional courtesy, you go tell them you are having trouble keeping up, they give you meds, you do better thus you must have really had ADD. It is truly a sad thing, but it is still a fact. If it is possible to cheat, or gain an advantage, people will always do it. As for your list of people, being smart has nothing to do with medicine. Memorizing a huge volume of info in a short time is what counts,

They should not give extra time for the MCAT, and they should not under any circumstances let medical students take ADD medications. It is simply a crutch.

Anon 2:29:

Your argument nicely dodges the issue of fitness for medical education, or rather pretends that it should apply for some but not others. How much exam time for the ADD sufferer is enough? Enough time to pass? Enough time to score above the 50th percentile? How much? Because giving extra time presumes that performance will be affected by time allowed. So this accommodation must be designed with some end in mind. What is that end?

And your inspiring list of historical achievers you suggest had learning disabilities, how much extra time did they get?

Sorry, trotting out the ADA does not make for good argument. It either passes as license to bend, twist or break rational standards for the sake of anyone claiming to be special–forget that there might be rational reasons for having minimum standards–or it serves as the ugly club wielded by the federal government that is quick to make mandates for which others bear the costs.

This doctor would not particularly feel comfortable under the care of a colleague who had to have special timing accommodations to pass examinations either to enter medical school or to obtain a medical degree. And we know that once the accommodations are required for medical entrance, then the demands will follow for accommodations all the way through, course exams, USMLE, inservice boards and board-certification exams. Let’s not pretend this is about just the MCAT. Anyone who knows the special interests “educational” agendas of the “educators” who are advocates for special accommodations in testing can see where this goes and who benefits. And it isn’t the patients, that is for sure.

We are not talking about public school education where equal access to a public benefit for the disabled is required. Medical education is not an entitlement. You seem to pretend that it is.

Why not give anyone who wants it extra time? The test should measure knowledge, not speed of recall (at least in my mind). If you don’t know the answer, getting extra time is not going to help you.

First, I would like to commend the somewhat flawed, reductive logic (and callousness) displayed throughout many of these posts-

I am surprised that many of you can’t seem to stay with the original post question- which was simply one of ‘should people with “Legal Disabilities” be given Fair accommodations under the law’ (as The American Disabilities Act suggests) which is disturbing as one wonders how well you guys do at reasoning out complexities that occur within difficult treatment situations that lack a straightforward answer-
I would hate to end up needing a diagnostic workup from any of you.

Now to give answer to your FEAR—again, LD–dyslexics, ADD, ADHD, ASPERGERS, ask that fair accommodations be given during testing according to REAL disabilities. MOST people don’t want a free ride, or to bilk the system, the implications of statements posters make are deeply ill informed on the law, on the nature of disabilities, and generally flippant.

This question is not just about ADD, I realize most of you are hung up on ADD, but it is all Learning disabilities that are being denied here. Being a cynical person myself I would agree that yes, maybe a portion of your classmates are using ADD meds to get an “ extra edge” (huh, that is the whole of the college population right now, not just med school, it is an endemic & deeper societal issue) but the fact is that is not really going to make them smarter or better at anything in the end. And really your frustration with this is part of a larger ETHICAL question that the medical profession needs to grapple with. (And let’s be honest is not like med school students haven’t been known to take helpers for generations to aid studying before the ADD craze ever thought of becoming popular.)

The idea that no one who needs accommodations should be given them because a few people with one, very specific type of disorder are abusing their status is draconian.

No one is asking that young Doctors in training be released from the same workload, studies, hours, etc. as so called normal students.
I would expect that anyone with a disability who gets as far as MCATs is already determined, working and no slacker. I doubt this is someone asking to be let out of other duties.

So why is it so hard to understand that there are such things as learning disorders, that put certain, often intelligent individuals at a disadvantage in classroom situations. Often these same students are known to excel outside of the classroom, when information is put into practice.

Also, I thought we had decided it was no longer acceptable or PC to call people with LD, minimally brain damaged, stupid, lazy or just not trying as hard as everyone else. I thought we had advanced beyond that, but I guess maybe that does not apply to the medical profession?

And where do any of you get off comparing, alcoholics, smokers, with someone who has a learning disorder- or saying maybe someone just has a Low IQ or is Mentally Ill, as suggested by the one blogger, this is doubly ignorant and Ugly, in spirit.

To say if you can't finish the MCATs In the same amount of time as someone with no impairment then you are probably not fit to be there…
Completely misses the entire reason why we make arrangements for people with these issues.

It worries me that people are in the medical profession carrying around such bigotry toward people with disabilites. Step back can you hear how you sound? The overall sentiment in many of these posts is belittling and insensitive… how much do you know about any of these disorders, besides media hype or a pop article you read, maybe a few lines were dedicated to it in one of your primers, did you do Neuropsych rounds for a few weeks and touch lightly on it ?

So why do I say this, well I went through school with multiple, learning disabilities. I had and still have severe dyslexia & hyperactivity amongst other problems. They called it minimal brain damage; you try living with that for a while. When I was young they told my mother I was retarded, that label followed me for many years. I scored PhD level on a general knowledge test when I was 15, but because of my learning disabilities, continued to have real issues dealing with regular school. I scored very high on untimed tests, but if I was given a timed test I would fail, so my record was scattered with failure after failure. When I would be tested a few times a year in a quiet room, the tester would look at me with astonishment. I scored in the 99% on the verbal SAT, it being untimed, are you going to say I cheated? Most likely! When I went to college I never went out of my way to ask for special considerations, or tell people I had a disability. I worked very hard, never asked to do less or fewer classes. You can’t imagine my excitement after years of being stifled intellectually to get as much as I could out of my experience. BTW, I maintained deans list every semester and graduated third in my class. (You can pretend that this was because I was allowed to have some extra time on some tests, and use a computer to type my answers if you really want to.) I don’t tell people I have any kind of learning problems, but yet it affects me in many ways, hyperactivity is not something one grows out of, more something one grows into. Dyslexia well it is both wonderful and terrible. Yet I excel at my job, mainly due to my multitasking abilities, and visual skills. I never get lost due to the fact that I can quickly make mental maps, take pictures in my head, once seen remembered forever. I remember word for word most any thing said to me.

I tell this story to try to humanize this situation for you and because I think I am an average example of the tenaciousness of people with learning differences when they intend to accomplish something. Years of defeat teach us to be strong; working hard becomes second nature, when people have tried to tell you over and over that you can’t do something.
So don’t underestimate a colleague, who may have a learning disorder.

There are many reasons why I would tell you not to write off the skills of someone with a learning difference, and say they may be unfit to be a doctor or anything else for that matter. Time will out. If someone is not adept it will become obvious. This is not like letting a blind man do surgery, find a better analogy!!

Try to take a deep breath and understand that regardless of the fact that the ADD craze maybe annoying and granted some unscrupulous may well be faining, this is no reason to Disregard and Violate the rights of the many who have LD ‘s and legitimate ADD or ADHD. And, as far as for those of you commenting on memory, speed and general functioning-
Again every disability is different, every person is different, but most people within the spectrum of dyslexia, ADHD are quick on their feet, excel outside of classroom situations, in places where they can put their knowledge into use in the real world.

Again If someone is not competent to become a doctor, then even if they pass the MCATs with * unfair extra time advantage*, their lack of intellect, talent, work ethic, heart, will come out in the wash, Right? Or will it?

Seems like there are an awful lot of Average, perfectly NORMAL, Type A, left-brain doctors out there who got through all the training and memorizing, etc, and yet they lack empathy, understanding, humanity and the ability to form a gestalt…I guess the core part that I in my stupid way would call the healing aspect of the medical arts.

PS- to the fellow who said "being smart has nothing to do with medicine" well that does explain many things that I have wondered about for sometime, Thank you

Anon 12:36:

You obviously have your agenda. And just as obviously, you conveniently pretend that medical education is an entitlement, just like any other activity for which the requirements of the ADA presently apply. Please explain why this is so. Please explain why standards of fitness to perform should not apply equally to all aspirants, just as they do for many occupations, like military and commercial aviation.

You plaintively make your case on sympathy, and just as easily make your backhanded smears on the medical profession whenever you observe those who posted here don’t agree with you. So you are quick to take offense at physicians’ suggestion that equal timing and testing standards be enforced but are untroubled in your ad hominem suggestions that doctors are unsympathetic boors for disagreeing with you. Nice try. Try a little harder; no one is timing you here.

In so much of medicine, time is of the essence. Asking a candidate to perform under a time constraint is not unreasonable, in fact it is a pretty fair representation of the testing requirements a physician will have to face throughout her career, not just at the MCATS. It is so much a part of the process, even well beyond completion of residency that it can be thought of as being part of the job.

No one posting here suggested people with learning disabilities lacked the capacity for significant achievement. You seem to want to hang the reverse on everyone else, however. And you very conveniently have avoided the issue of fitness. Does it not possibly occur to you that many candidates who aren’t claiming disabilities might themselves also do better in an untimed exam? The purpose of the MCAT isn’t just to produce a knowledge assessment of medical school applicants, it is that but also a demonstration of performance under a limited time resource allocation. It is a test, not a project.

Anon 12:23:

So how much extra time did Dr. Epstein get? Probably none.What is your point in using his example except perhaps that he didn’t need any extra time? (Surely not what you meant.)

I still don’t see in your example a compelling reason to make exceptions for dyslexics or anyone else with claimed disabilities in taking the MCAT under the same conditions as every other aspirant. And once again, you nicely dodged the question of fitness. And you didn’t bother to answer the poster above you who asked why the additional time for a “learning disabled” applicant might be a uniquely necessary accommodation to them but not to others making no such claim. Nor did you bother to address Anon 10:25’s opening question: how much time is enough for the “special needs” claimant? Enough time to produce what outcome exactly?

Well, the last time I was in the hospital, I whipped out my handy-dandy stop watch and quizzed the doctors.

I may not have gotten the best doctor, but certainly got the best test taker.