Post from Rishi Desai, MD, MPH, Khan Academy Medical Partnerships Lead
The MCAT stands for the Medical College Admissions Test, and it is one of the key milestones on the road to medical school in the US. For decades, it has been largely unchanged, but in less than a year, the MCAT is getting a make-over. The 2015 MCAT will include new content in areas like psychology and sociology, and that means that thousands of students looking to become future physicians will be looking for ways to get ready.
One year ago, in order to help students prepare for this important test, Khan Academy partnered up with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Association of American Medical Colleges, to put together videos and questions for the MCAT. So far, we have generated 400 videos and 500 passage based questions with about 2 million videos watched and 1 million problems solved over the past few months, and new content being made available each week.
Our goal is to generate even more useful MCAT content, and we’re doing that by launching two new competitions – one for talented video-based educators and a second for fantastic question and article writers. We are going to invite competition winners to participate in free training sessions, in order to bring together a focused group of individuals that can learn and share with one another. Thereafter, winners may be invited to become Khan Academy Fellows to work with Khan Academy on developing the next generation of pre-health and medical education content!
Taking a step back, our goal for creating MCAT content goes well beyond getting students ready for one test on one day. These resources are aimed at helping students understand the foundational concepts of science as they relate to health and medicine. Once they are made available, anyone curious to learn more about how muscles contract or how our mind performs complex tasks, can reach for one of these tutorials.
Our goal is to generate world-class content for anyone, anywhere, and we want to get your help to make this possible! So if you’re interested in making videos, creating questions, or writing articles, be sure to submit your content to us by June 13, 2014. Have fun!
