Selecting medical students

The task of selecting a cohort of medical students often from a large pool of well-qualified applicants is complex, fraught with uncertainty and inevitably accompanied by logistical difficulties. The failure of many applicants to gain entry to medical school, despite being highly motivated, apparently possessing a sense of vocation and being endowed with eminently desirable personal qualities, is also a cause for concern. Such concern, widely perceived within universities and the health care system, has led to moves to consider alternative and more appropriate student selection criteria (see, for example, the GPEP Report, 1984). Faced with often large numbers of applicants, medical schools need to create and implement an efficient and effective selection policy. Ideally, this would comprise: (1) a statement describing the qualities (academic and non-academic, cognitive and non-cognitive, and demographic) that the medical school requires in its students if they are to be compatible with, and later successful in, the course of studies offered, to ensure the entry into the profession of good doctors; and (2) a list of valid, reliable and acceptable tools or methods with which to select these desirable qualities. In practice this seldom occurs, often because the qualities required are not explicitly defined. Even when they are adequately defined, the most appropriate methods for their identification are frequently not used, usually because they are costly or time-consuming to operate. Even when the qualities are explicitly stated and the best methods put in place for their identification, a