Selection of Auckland medical students over 25 years: a time for change?

Abstract

The selection procedures used in Auckland have been reviewed, and the characteristics of those admitted over 25 years analysed. Students are admitted either as school-leavers, mature entrants, or through an affirmative action scheme. A further small number are admitted as part of overseas development assistance. School-leavers are invited for interview on the basis of their academic achievement. Mature students and the affirmative group must have a minimum acceptable academic standard, with the interview playing a dominant role. Two thousand four hundred and forty-eight students have been admitted. The mean age was 18.6 years, and 39.7% were women. Over one half of the students had a parent who had attended university and 13% had a medical parent. One in ten students failed to complete the course, academic failure and withdrawal being of equal importance. The high loss seen in the affirmative group was due to academic failure and has led to the introduction of extra tuition and support for these students. The emphasis on academic achievement by school-leavers has excluded many applicants with outstanding personal qualities. The academic staff has therefore decided to modify the selection procedure, the final rank order of these applicants being based on their personal attributes and life experiences.

Unto the third generation: evidence for strong familial aggregation of physicians, psychologists, and psychotherapists among first-year medical and psychology students in a nationwide Austrian cohort census

“…There were notable sex-of-relative effects in our data (see [6, 8, 11]), but only subtle sex-of-student effects. Medical students reported more medical relatives among fathers, grandfathers, and uncles than among mothers, grandmothers or aunts.…”

“…Yet, our data show that familial aggregation equally applied to male and female students, cf. [6, 8, 11]. A specific male-to-male mode of transmission was observable only for male psychology students who reported more male first-degree relatives (i.e., fathers) in the psychotherapeutic profession than female students.…”

“…The medical profession runs in families, as has been shown for English-speaking countries (USA [1–3]; UK [4–7]; New Zealand [8]), Scandinavia (Norway [9]), and German-speaking countries (Germany [10]; Austria [11]). Medical students report far higher proportions of relatives in the medical profession than can be expected from the overall prevalence of physicians in the total population (for a review of the literature on this topic and empirical findings therefrom, see [11]).…”

“…Medical students report far higher proportions of relatives in the medical profession than can be expected from the overall prevalence of physicians in the total population (for a review of the literature on this topic and empirical findings therefrom, see [11]). Proportions range from 13 to 25% for any medically qualified parent [4–10], and from 30% [8] to 46% [11] for any medically qualified relative. In comparison (extrapolated from the latest WHO figures; see [12]), only 0.3% of the total US and UK populations are physicians, and numbers are similar for other industrialized Western nations.…”

“…In comparison (extrapolated from the latest WHO figures; see [12]), only 0.3% of the total US and UK populations are physicians, and numbers are similar for other industrialized Western nations. Proportions of medical relatives are higher for male than female students [5, 9, 11], higher for first-degree than for more distant relatives [6, 10, 11], higher for male than for female relatives [6, 8, 11], and, on the whole, such effects may have further increased in recent years [4, 5]. …”