Student Selection Into Medical School : Issues and Practices

Abstract

Each year, medical schools around the world face the difficult task of selecting candidates into their programme from an ever increasing pool of eager applicants. A considerable amount of time, effort and money are spent on the selection process but are medical schools getting a good return on this investment? Do we get the sort of medical students and doctors that we want? Are we clear about what we want in the first place? Does it matter, anyway? Matching congruence between applicant's and institutional needs, improving predictivity and acceptability of selection process and establishing a code of practice are important issues that need to be addressed in the selection of students into medical school. Are there explicit examples of selection processes that attempt to address these needs? This paper highlights the practical issues surrounding student selection into medical school and reviews the selection practices and procedures of a number of leading medical schools in the world to address some
of these issues.