Non-academic factors in medical school selection: a report on rejected applicants.

During the past two decades, along with the growth of higher education a highly developed mythology has emerged about the kind of person who gains a university place. Part of this mythology was given credence in the 1950s by Floud, Halsey, and Martin (1957), and their findings were endorsed in the 60s by, among others, Jackson and Marsden (1962), Little and Westergaard (1964), Bernstein (1969, and the Committee on Higher Education Robbins Report (1963). These researchers were mostly concerned with the social class factor in selection. But the mythology about medical schoql selection is at once more complex and more subtle, for it embraces a number of factors closely correlated with class but which may nevertheless be the downfall of the highest born. In this paper, I want to examine a number of the more prominent factors in relation to a sample of unsuccessful applicants. The type of school the rejects went to; certain forms of extra-curricular activity ; positions of prestige or authority in the school; encouragement from staff in their application; and the place of home residence. (This list includes some of the topics recently revived and fiercely debated in the journal of the Junior Hospital Doctors’ Association, On Call [1970].) As far as I am aware, comparable data for medical students is available for only three of these five areas. In view of this situation it seems reasonable to examine the characteristics of unsuccessful applicants for the relative absence of those qualities which the mythology deems necessary and the presence of those which may be a hindrance to acceptance. At the same time, it is worth looking at factors