Abstract
This article is the author’s formulation of important issues concerning medical school admission: that (1) in recent years, almost all applicants who have been admitted to medical school have obtained the M.D. degree and been licensed to practice; (2) given this high success rate, an accepted applicant’s economic security is virtually guaranteed; (3) the admission decision contributes directly to the formation of a highly paid, high-status professional elite; (4) the link between students’ academic aptitude for medical education and their achievement in medical school is weak; (5) schools pay lip-service to the importance of students’ character, motivation, and other personal qualities but continue to select students with high grades in science courses and high MCAT scores; (6) admission officers and committees often confuse selecting students with predicting their achievement in medical school; (7) two core values in American culture (self-reliance and competition) encourage the use of norm-referenced measurement in all phases of education; and (8) there are alternatives to the traditional approach to defining eligibility for professional education.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 136-139 |
Number of pages | 4 |
Journal | Academic Medicine |
Volume | 65 |
Issue number | 3 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Mar 1990 |
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Education