|
Director of MCAT visits WCMC-Q
Doha, Qatar
March, 2004Dr. Ellen Julian, assistant vice president of the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) and director of the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT), visits Doha this week at the invitation of Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar. Dr. Julian delivers a lecture to an invited audience on the role of standardized tests in admission to U.S. medical colleges on Sunday March 21 at 4:30 p.m. During her five-day visit, Dr. Julian is scheduled to meet with senior officials of the Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development, and Qatar University. In Sunday’s lecture, she focuses on the MCAT, which is a pre-requisite for admission to almost all North American medical colleges - including Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar, a branch of the Weill Cornell Medical College in New York. WCMC-Q is the only center for the MCAT in the Gulf region, and one of just two such centers in the Middle East. The MCAT tests knowledge of the sciences basic to medicine, and English-language comprehension and writing skills. It is held twice a year, in April and August; in August 2003, the test was held at WCMC-Q for the first time, and it was taken by WCMC-Q pre-medical students and by a number of candidates from outside the College with an interest in studying medicine. The date of the next test is April 17, 2004. Dr. Ellen Julian is an expert in educational measurement and testing, with a Ph.D. from Florida State University. She has a Master?s degree in educational research design and statistics, and a Bachelor?s degree in psychology. The formative years of Dr. Julian?s career were at the United States? National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME), where she worked on the development of a scoring system for patient simulations – both the computerized versions that are now part of the U.S. Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) Step 3, and those using living, standardized patients. It should be noted that the USMLE Steps 1-3 are a pre-requisite for all medical graduates to receive a license to practice in the U.S. During Dr. Julian?s time as a psychometrician for the National Council of State Boards of Nursing, the Council moved from paper-and-pencil testing to computer–based adaptive testing.
|
|
| ||||||
| © Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar |