MCAT vs. GRE for CAA Applicants: What the Research Says About Student Success

Why This Study Matters for CAA Applicants

CAA applicants spend a lot of time trying to determine what makes an application competitive.

GPA, prerequisite grades, healthcare experience, shadowing, letters of recommendation, interviews, and standardized tests can all become part of that conversation. The problem is that relatively little published research exists specifically on CAA admissions.

Medical schools have decades of research examining admissions metrics. Other health professions have similar bodies of literature. CAA programs have much less data available.

That makes a 2024 study from researchers at the Emory University School of Medicine particularly interesting. The researchers examined whether MCAT and GRE performance was associated with how students performed academically after matriculating into Emory's Anesthesiologist Assistant Program. At the time, applicants were required to submit one exam or the other.

For prospective students, the study addresses a question that comes up frequently:

If I have the option of taking the MCAT or GRE for CAA school, does one provide a better indication that I am prepared for the curriculum?

The answer appears to be yes, but there are some important qualifications.

What Did the Researchers Study?

The researchers reviewed standardized test and academic performance data from five graduating cohorts of Emory AA students.

There were:

• 81 students who submitted the MCAT
• 96 students who submitted the GRE
• An average MCAT percentile of 58
• An average GRE quantitative percentile of 67

Rather than comparing raw MCAT and GRE scores, the researchers used percentiles. For the MCAT, they used the student's total MCAT percentile. For the GRE, they used only the quantitative reasoning percentile.

They then compared those scores with two measures of performance in AA school.

The first was the student's science GPA, which represented science coursework from the first four semesters while excluding grades from clinical rotations.

The second was the student's cumulative GPA at graduation, which incorporated both academic coursework and clinical performance. The average science GPA among the students studied was 3.24, while the average GPA at graduation was 3.46.

This distinction becomes important when looking at the results.

What Did the Study Find?

The MCAT had a stronger relationship with AA school performance than the GRE in both comparisons.

All four relationships were statistically significant in the study, with p-values between 0.01 and 0.04. However, their strengths were different.

The researchers characterized the relationship between MCAT performance and AA program GPA as moderate, while the relationship involving GRE quantitative scores was weak.

In simpler terms, students with higher MCAT percentiles tended to earn higher grades in Emory's AA program, particularly during the science-heavy portion of the curriculum.

Higher GRE quantitative scores were also associated with higher grades, but the relationship was considerably smaller.

Why Might the MCAT Have a Stronger Relationship With AA Coursework?

This part of the study probably will not surprise anyone who has looked closely at the two examinations.

The GRE is a general graduate admissions exam. Its quantitative section evaluates mathematical and analytical reasoning, but it is not designed specifically around the biological and physical sciences.

The MCAT is different.

Preparing for the MCAT requires students to work through biology, biochemistry, chemistry, physics, psychology, sociology, critical analysis and reasoning skills, research interpretation, and other subjects relevant to health professions education.

CAA programs also place students into a demanding science curriculum involving areas such as physiology, pharmacology, anatomy, and anesthesia-related sciences.

The Emory researchers suggested that this overlap may help explain the stronger relationship. Someone who has demonstrated an ability to learn and apply a large amount of scientific information on the MCAT may also be better prepared to assimilate the science-heavy material encountered during the didactic portion of AA school.

That is a reasonable explanation, but it is still an explanation rather than proof of why the association exists.

The Relationship Became Weaker Once Clinical Performance Was Included

One of the more interesting findings is what happened later in the program.

The MCAT correlation decreased from 0.425 with science GPA to 0.351 with cumulative graduation GPA.

The GRE correlation decreased from 0.198 to 0.146.

In other words, both standardized tests became somewhat less informative once clinical performance was incorporated into a student's overall GPA.

There is an important lesson here for applicants.

Doing well in the classroom and becoming a strong clinician overlap, but they are not exactly the same thing.

A standardized examination can evaluate certain academic abilities. It cannot fully evaluate how someone communicates with patients, responds to feedback, works within an anesthesia care team, performs under pressure, develops technical skills, or behaves in a clinical environment.

The study's authors make a similar point. They note that interpersonal skills, resilience, hands-on experience, and other nonacademic characteristics can contribute to success in the health professions and are not adequately captured by standardized examinations.

So, Should CAA Applicants Take the MCAT Instead of the GRE?

This is where the research needs to be interpreted carefully.

If you are deciding between the two tests solely based on which examination showed a stronger relationship with performance in this study, the MCAT clearly came out ahead.

The authors themselves concluded that the MCAT may be a better measure of preparedness for the academic portion of an AA program than the GRE and suggested that program directors may want to consider the MCAT over the GRE when evaluating applicants.

But that is not the same as saying:

Every CAA applicant should take the MCAT.

Your decision still depends on the programs you plan to apply to, which examinations those programs accept, how competitive you are likely to be on each examination, and how much preparation time you have.

An excellent GRE score does not suddenly become a poor admissions credential because of this study. Likewise, simply taking the MCAT does not make an applicant stronger.

The research looked at performance on the tests, not merely which test appeared on an application.

What This Study Does Not Tell Us

This may be the most important section for applicants.

The study does not show that applicants who submit an MCAT are more likely to receive an interview.

It does not show that MCAT applicants are more likely to be admitted.

It does not establish an MCAT score that applicants should consider "competitive."

It does not show that someone with a lower MCAT score will struggle in AA school.

And it does not show that someone with a high MCAT score will become a successful CAA.

The study included students who had already been admitted to and attended one AA program. It was designed to examine the relationship between standardized test performance and subsequent academic performance, not the likelihood of admission.

That is an important distinction because an applicant trying to use this research to determine whether a 500, 505, or 510 MCAT will earn an interview would be asking the data to answer a question it was never designed to answer.

There Are Also Important Limitations

The researchers acknowledge several limitations.

Most importantly, this was a single-program study conducted at Emory University. AA curricula are not completely identical from one institution to another, and admissions requirements are not standardized across programs. The authors specifically note that these differences make broader, multi-institutional research difficult.

There is another point applicants should keep in mind when comparing the numbers.

The study compared the total MCAT percentile with the GRE quantitative percentile. It therefore was not a perfectly equivalent comparison of two tests measuring identical material.

The study was also retrospective. Students were not randomly assigned to take one examination or the other. These results demonstrate an association between test performance and GPA. They do not establish that doing well on the MCAT itself causes someone to perform better in AA school.

This is valuable research, but it should be treated as an early piece of evidence rather than the final answer on standardized testing in CAA admissions.

What Should Applicants Take Away From This?

For most applicants, there are three practical lessons.

First, academic preparation matters.

CAA school involves an enormous amount of scientific material delivered over a relatively short period of time. The fact that MCAT performance was associated with science GPA supports something applicants probably already understand: demonstrating that you can handle rigorous science coursework matters.

Second, the MCAT may provide programs with information that the GRE does not.

The stronger relationship observed in this study gives programs at least some empirical reason to view the MCAT as a useful measure of academic preparedness for an AA curriculum.

That does not mean programs actually weigh the two exams differently during admissions. Applicants should not assume an admissions preference unless a particular program communicates one.

Third, neither test tells the whole story.

Even the stronger MCAT relationships were moderate rather than extremely strong, and those relationships weakened when clinical performance entered the picture.

That is exactly why an application contains more than a standardized test score.

Your academic record can provide evidence of whether you can handle the coursework. Your healthcare and shadowing experiences help establish that you understand the profession. Your letters can tell programs how other people have experienced working with you. Your personal statement provides context for your path to the profession. Your interview gives programs an opportunity to evaluate qualities that cannot be represented by a percentile.

A test score is one piece of that picture.

Additional Thoughts

The 2024 Emory study provides some of the first CAA-specific evidence suggesting that MCAT performance may be more strongly associated with academic success in AA school than GRE quantitative performance.

For applicants who have a genuine choice between the two examinations, that finding is worth knowing.

It should not, however, be turned into a rule that every applicant needs the MCAT or that submitting the GRE makes an application less competitive. The study did not examine admissions decisions, interview selection, or acceptance rates. It examined what happened academically after students entered one AA program.

Perhaps the larger takeaway is that CAA admissions research is finally beginning to answer questions applicants and admissions committees have been discussing for years.

As more programs open and the applicant pool grows, multi-program research may eventually tell us much more about which characteristics predict success in CAA education. For now, this study gives us an important starting point, but not the entire answer.

A note on our interest in this

The CAA Readiness Index uses your MCAT or GRE score, alongside your GPAs, to work out where you stand against accepted applicants. We have no stake in which exam you take, and this article is a reading of someone else's research rather than a claim about our own.

References

Monroe KS, Amerson L, Bundy W, Greene Y, Jarvis G, Stever J, Patel GP. Pre-Admission Standardized Tests and the Relationship with Anesthesiologist Assistant Student Performance: A Retrospective Analysis. Advances in Medical Education and Practice. 2024;15:815-819. doi:10.2147/AMEP.S480696. Free full text at PubMed Central.