title: Perspectives on medical school admission.
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.
authors.affiliation: Office of Educational Development, University of North Carolina School of Medicine, Chapel Hill 27599-7530.
authors.forename: W C
authors.initials: WC
authors.lastname: McGaghie
mesh_terms: D000124:Achievement; D001076:Aptitude; D001077:Aptitude Tests; D003163:Competitive Behavior; D004470:Economics, Medical; D004521:Educational Measurement; D008007:Licensure, Medical; D011336:Probability; D012570:School Admission Criteria; D012577:Schools, Medical / Q000592:standards*; D012945:Social Values / Q000208:ethnology; D014481:United States / Q000208:ethnology