Stewart Lockett

Do you know what makes a good doctor? Do you ask your physician their MCAT score? Their class rank in medical school? Their Step scores? Or do you ask whether they listen, whether they stay calm under pressure, whether they explain things clearly, whether they can make hard decisions at 2 AM when someone is dying? Those of us who train physicians — from medical students to fellows — spend years discussing exactly this question. And one thing becomes obvious very quickly: merit is not reducible to a number. GPA and MCAT scores are opening screens. They help determine who can enter the conversation. They are not prophecies about who will become the best clinician, surgeon, teacher, scientist, or healer. We have all met brilliant people who collapse the moment uncertainty, chaos, or emotion enters the room. Would you want them taking the call when your child arrests at 2 AM? When your spouse has metastatic cancer? When your parent must come off a ventilator? Medicine is practiced on frightened human beings, not on Scantrons. And importantly, we actually know the literature on this. The relationship between standardized test scores and who becomes the most trusted physician, best professor, strongest researcher, or finest clinician is far weaker than many people desperately want to believe.