Basco WT Jr, Buchbinder SB, Duggan AK, Wilson MH, Associations between primary care-oriented practices in medical school admission and the practice intentions of matriculants. Acad Med 1998 Nov;73(11):1207-10, Department of Pediatrics, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, USA [email protected]
More on his work at http://www.musc.edu/catalyst/archive/MedicalEducator/co6-30meded.htm
See also his work in South Carolina regarding rural docs, rural background at http://www.scmanet.org/New%20SCMA%20Journal/January%202003%20eJournal/Basco%20manuscript.pdf
In multivariable analyses, premedical recruitment efforts and public school ownership (all p < .01) were associated with greater interest of matriculants in both generalism and rural practice.
PURPOSE: To assess associations of primary-care-oriented medical school admission practices with matriculants practice intentions. METHOD: The authors performed cross-sectional, secondary analyses of databases from the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC). The independent variables were four medical school admission practices. The control variable was school ownership (public vs private). The dependent variables were the proportions of matriculants at each school interested in generalism, rural practice, and locating in a socioeconomically deprived area. RESULTS: One hundred and twenty medical schools (95%) completed the AAMC's Survey of Generalist Physician Initiatives in either 1993 or 1994; 94% of matriculants replied to the AAMC's 1994 Matriculating Student Questionnaire. Twenty-five percent of the schools had admission committee chairs who were generalists, half had over 25% generalists on their admission committees, 64% gave admission preference to students likely to become generalists, and 33% reported premedical recruitment efforts that targeted applicants likely to become generalists. In multivariable analyses, premedical recruitment efforts and public school ownership (all p < .01) were associated with greater interest of matriculants in both generalism and rural practice. CONCLUSIONS: Public medical schools and schools with premedical recruitment activities targeting future generalists admitted greater proportions of students interested in primary care and rural practice.
Basco, W.T., Jr., Gilbert, G.E., & Blue, A.V.(2002). Determining the Consequences for Rural Applicants When Additional Consideration is Discontinued in a Medical School Admission Process. Academic Medicine, 77, S20-S22. http://www.aamc.org/students/mcat/research/bibliography/basco002.htm RESULTS: There were 2,033 in-state applicants with complete data (not missing MCAT scores) in the four cohorts. Rural applicants comprised between 8.5% and 9.7% of applicants, depending on the year. MCAT science scores for rural applicants were significantly lower in three of the four, but Verbal Reasoning scores were not significantly different between rural and non-rural applicants. Mean GPAs were not significantly different either. In three of the four years, rural applicants were half as likely to have attended undergraduate schools in the more competitive Barron's categories, but these differences reached statistical significance in only one year-1998. Without the adjustment for rural applicant status, the median ranks of rural applicants were lower than those for non-rural applicants in all four years. Across all four years the adjustment for being a rural applicant had a marked positive effect for rural applicants while having minimal effects on non-rural applicants. The adjustment for rural status did not ensure an admission interview for every rural applicant, but it did mean that a large majority of the rural applicants received admission interviews in all four years. Without the adjustment, fewer than half of the rural applicants would have received admission interviews in two of the years evaluated-1997 and 1999.
Admissions Challenges Alabama - admissions committees face great challenges balancing academics, failure rates and diversity in ethnicity and geography. The fact is that the predictors are poor and it is far to easy to decline admissions to rural and ethnic background students. Relying on measurements instead of more comprehensive evaluations is a major problem facing medical schools and national workforce goals
Admissions for generalists and rural physicians