This directory had several articles. Previous AAMC mailouts regarding
admissions also had some of this data in the introductions, although which
specific document escapes my memory.
http://www.aamc.org/students/mcat/research/bibliography/
Huff, K.L., & Fang, D. (1999). When are Students Most at Risk of
Encountering Academic Difficulty? A Study of 1992
Matriculants to U.S.
Medical Schools. Academic Medicine, 74, 454-460.
RESULTS: The results of the survival analysis indicated that (1) while the
risk and timing
of academic difficulty varied across the groups
studied, a majority of the students who
experienced academic difficulty eventually graduated
from medical school and (2)
students with non-science undergraduate majors did
not have a greater risk of academic
difficulty. The results confirm previous findings
that increased risk of academic difficulty is
associated with low MCAT scores, low science GPA, low
undergraduate institutional
selectivity, being a woman, being a member of a
racial-ethnic underrepresented minority,
or being older.
This one used MCAT, GPA or both vs Step 1 2 and 3
http://www.aamc.org/students/mcat/research/bibliography/julia001.pdf
All of us know the emphasis on research even before medical school.
The pressures to pick young white males interested in research who come
from prestigious universities must be enormous and gaining ground every
year. Of course there are other candidates.
Wish I had written the following, but I did not.... Can anyone identify
the author (no scrolling down!)
The Admissions Process
"What about the way we pick students for admission? My concern here is the
imbalance that currently exists in how we convey to applicants the
selection criteria we use. I'm referring, of course, to our tendency to
under-emphasize, because they are harder to measure, the personal
characteristics we are seeking in our applicants, and to over-emphasize the
more easily measured indices of academic achievement.
"I know how tough this issue is. And please don't misunderstand me; in no
way am I suggesting that native intelligence and academic prowess are
anything less than essential for success in medical school, or for becoming
an effective physician or scientist. What I am suggesting, however, is that
our admission processes do not project to prospective applicants the degree
to which we value, in addition to GPAs and MCAT scores, those other
essential attributes we prize: altruism, fervor for social justice,
leadership, commitment to self sacrifice, empathy for those in pain.
"That many idealistic students do make it through the process, despite the
distorted signals we send them about what we are looking for, is no
guarantee that sufficient numbers will continue to do so going forward. If
more such intelligent and dedicated idealists were to perceive that we
would give as much weight to what's in their hearts as to what's in their
heads, a career in medicine would no doubt attract them strongly. As it is,
I'm persuaded that many don't perceive this balance in our selection
criteria, and turn away convinced that medicine is for grade-grubbing
Philistines but not for them.
"To balance the strong message we send about the importance of grades and
test scores with more visible evidence of our co-equal interest in
humanistic attributes, let me offer six ideas for you to consider:
"1. Use MCAT scores and GPAs only as threshold measures. Rather than giving
more weight to higher ores, why doesn't each school decide for itself, from
data available from its previous students, what level of GPA and MCAT
performance is sufficient for predicting success in clearing the high
academic hurdles of medical school -- and leave it at that. We would send a
powerful signal to those intelligent idealists who are currently eschewing
medicine if they knew that, once having met the academic achievement
threshold, they would be evaluated solely on the basis of their humanistic
qualities, their penchant for serving others, their leadership abilities,
and so on.
"2. Even more daring, how about beginning the screening with an assessment
of personal characteristics and leave the GPAs and MCAT scores 'til later.
Rather than looking first for reasons to reject an applicant -- like
evidence of a lackluster start in college, or a bad semester, or a C in an
organic chemistry, or a "7" on an MCAT subtest -- why not look first for
reasons to accept an applicant - like evidence of deep-seated social
awareness, of having triumphed over adversity, of personal sacrifice for
the benefit others - and only then consider the statistical predictors of
mastering our challenging curriculum.
Approaching their task in this way,
admission committees might well find many instances in which truly
compelling personal characteristics would trump one or two isolated
blemishes in the academic record.
"3. Look even more favorably than you do now on the more mature applicants,
those who chose some other field at the end of college, but who awakened
several years later to medicine as their true calling. Such students often
manifest a depth of motivation that not only predicts success as future
physicians, but also provides inspiration to their fellow students.
"4. Stop using the average MCAT scores and GPAs of our matriculants as if
they were valid measures of the relative quality of our schools. Take a
look at the devastating critique of the U.S. News & World Report's rankings
of the "best" medical schools in this month's Academic Medicine and see if
you don't agree with what the authors have to say. In accepting without
objection the use of such misleading measures as average MCATs and GPAs,
let alone in ballyhooing them in our own promotional materials, we
reinforce the public perception that they are, indeed, our principal
criteria for admission.
"5. Use past experience to improve our ability to spot the truly
outstanding prospects. As a general rule, it doesn't take long for a
consensus to emerge among faculty and staff about who among each entering
class of students are destined to be the best, most caring, most
compassionate physicians. They are the ones who win the humanism awards,
who tutor their classmates, who are elected class representatives, who are
the pacesetters for student-initiated community service activities, and so
on. Why don't we look back at those students' credentials at the time of
admission and see if we can find some common
characteristics that might be helpful in sharpening our ability to
identify such stars among future applicants. And let's use even more of
those star students as recruiters and as full-fledged members of our
admission committees.
"6. Help us devise better tools for evaluating students' personal
characteristics. It's too easy to assume that the so-called soft qualities
we're looking for are beyond our ability to assess any more accurately
than we do with our present crude measures. I just don't believe that. But
we'll never know for sure unless we try. For starters, I
have directed the AAMC staff to see what we can do to develop better tools,
and I urge all of you to give thought to this tough problem. Not only
because we may actually succeed in improving our selection process, but
also because there are surely many more dedicated and intelligent
idealists out there who would recognize our efforts to seek better measures
of character traits as a strong signal that we want them as colleagues.
Author is Jordan Cohen, address to AAMC a year ago
November 4, 2001
Jordan J. Cohen, M.D., President of the Association
of American Medical Colleges
(AAMC), issued the following statement, today, at the
Association's 112th Annual
Meeting in Washington, D.C.: Our Compact with
Tomorrow's Doctors
http://www.aamc.org/newsroom/pressrel/2001/011104a.htm
Wish I could say that admissions committees were following his lead. What
if LCME actually took these into account in accrediting medical schools?
Robert C. Bowman, M.D.
[email protected]
Education - the entire pipeline