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Abstract
BackgroundStruggling medical students is an under-researched in medical education. It is known, however, that early identification is important for effective remediation. The aim of the study was to determine the predictive effect of medical school admission tools regarding whether a student will struggle academically.MethodsData comprise 700 students from the University of New South Wales undergraduate medical program. The main outcome of interest was whether these students struggled during this 6-year program; they were classified to be struggling they failed any end-of-phase examination but still graduated from the program. Discriminate Function Analysis (DFA) assessed whether their pre-admission academic achievement, Undergraduate Medicine Admission Test (UMAT) and interview scores had predictive effect regarding likelihood to struggle.ResultsA lower pre-admission academic achievement in the form of Australian Tertiary Admission Rank (ATAR) or Grade Point Average (GPA) were found to be the best positive predictors of whether a student was likely to struggle. Lower UMAT and poorer interview scores were found to have a comparatively much smaller predictive effect.ConclusionAlthough medical admission tests are widely used, medical school rarely use these data for educational purposes. The results of this study suggest admission test data can predict who among the admitted students is likely to struggle in the program. Educationally, this information is invaluable. These results indicate that pre-admission academic achievement can be used to predict which students are likely to struggle in an Australian undergraduate medicine program. Further research into predicting other types of struggling students as well as remediation methods are necessary.
Highlights
Struggling medical students is an under-researched in medical education
The Australian Tertiary Admission Rank (ATAR) was found to have a 3–4 times greater impact in predicting who is likely to struggle in comparison to Undergraduate Medicine Admission Test (UMAT) and interview scores
This study focused on an overlooked, yet important topic in medical student admissions, while determining whether or not selection tools (ATAR, UMAT, and interview scores) had any utility in identifying which students would most likely struggle during an Australian undergraduate medical program
Summary
Struggling medical students is an under-researched in medical education. It is known, that early identification is important for effective remediation. There is a group of students known as ‘strugglers’ who fall into neither of these categories These struggling students are the ones who encounter academic and/or personal difficulties, which causes them to struggle throughout their study in a medical program [1]. The main challenge posed by these struggling students is the need for effective tools and methods to accurately identify them, so that remediation plans can be put in place [7,8,9,10] These students are not necessarily incapable of completing their course, and it has been suggested that up to 95% of the struggling medical students do have the essential attributes to successfully complete a medical program [11]. Considering the scarcity of knowledge on this topic, research into this area is greatly needed
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