Selection to medical school in Great Britain

BMJ 1999;318:937 ( 3 April )

Letters

Selection to medical school in Great Britain

Admissions procedure at St Andrews is driven by purely academic criteria

Dundee University Medical School has some questions

Prejudice may not be responsible for difference in success rates

League tables only help if uncertainty is properly looked at

Author's reply

Admissions procedure at St Andrews is driven by purely academic criteria

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR $---$ Readers of McManus's paper might be misled into believing that, in 1997, it would have been unwise for a prospectivemedical student from an ethnic minority to apply to St Andrews.¹The reality is that for those who met, or were predicted to meet,our clearly published academic entry requirements, the chanceof receiving an offer was 98.5% (compared with 97% for comparablyqualified white applicants). It is doubtful whether these offerrates were equalled by any other medical school in the UnitedKingdom.

The difference between perception and reality can be explained as follows. First, McManus based his calculations on achievedA level or Highers grades whereas, for the former at least, selectionto medical school has to be based largely on predicted grades.At St Andrews, and probably elsewhere, the relationship betweenpredicted grades and likelihood of an offer is far from linearbut shows a marked threshold . . . [Full text of this article]

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Factors affecting likelihood of applicants being offered a place in medical schools in the United Kingdom in 1996 and 1997: retrospective study • Commentary: League tables will help • Commentary: Some legal aspects arising from the study: I C McManus, Aneez Esmail, and Marie Demetriou
BMJ 1998 317: 1111-1117. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]