The tortoise and the unicorn
UMAT, taking it seriously and putting it in perspective
by , 21-09-11 at 06:28 PM (3386 Views)
Each year as UMAT results roll around the MSO forums are flooded with users anxious to put their results into perspective. Some are jubilant with their success, others desperate with disappointment. As someone who took the UMAT twice and who will be a doctor in a couple of months I'd like to offer some perspective, as much to those who did well as to those who did not.
The UMAT is an exam you take to get into medical school. Any extrapolation further than that, whether it be about your ability as a person or a doctor, how you understand people or how intelligent you are is conjecture. The evidence supporting any of these leaps of faith is not there and I've not seen anything in real life that supports it. Despite all of this people do and will continue to give UMAT far more meaning than they could possibly defend it deserving.
Fortunately, the only people who take those statements seriously are the ones too junior to know better. Take a look around, only two types of people think UMAT results have any credibility: (1) those with egos who have had their self-belief confirmed by meaningless numbers, (2) those who don't have the life/hospital experience to know better. The people I speak to who make the most assumptions based on UMAT are the ones who did very well in it and don't want to let go of implications it has for their own ego. Just like your ATAR, no one in the hospital will give a damn except for similarly deluded students. Once you spend a bit of time on the wards you will see the things that really make a good doctor have nothing to do with what the UMAT is testing.
This, however, is not the real tragedy of the UMAT. The real tragedy is when young students take poor results to mean they're not good enough to be a doctor. The real tragedy is when the UMAT distracts from things that really do matter - enthusiasm for learning, honesty, giving a damn when people feel like crap, hard-work, respect, and, especially, humility. When patients and doctors wonder about your ability these are the things they will think about. Grades and medical knowledge might come up as an afterthought, but UMAT won't rate a mention.
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