Estimating Students’ Academic Success in the Preclinical Stage of Undergraduate Medical Education Using the Admission Test Approach

Abstract

Introduction: Medical schools face substantial challenges in objectively selecting the best applicants, and the admission process can impact medical students' academic performance.This study aimed to estimate the students' academic success in the preclinical stage of undergraduate medical education using admission tests.Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted on 1,193 students' records from the 2014 to 2019 cohorts. The students' admission data comprised the cohort, sex, admission track,psychological test, and academic tests. The academic success was based on the student's end-year academic evaluation. Data were analyzed using contingency and Kendall's tau b tests with IBM® SPSS® Statistics version 16.0 for Windows. Results: Most of the 1,193 preclinical medical students' records included in the study were females (68.1%), from the regular admission track (78.5%), from the considered psychology test category (52.8%), and had an academic admission test of less than or equal to the median. (51.6%). Most students (89.7%) met all the academic requirements to pass the end-year evaluation. The bivariate analyses showed significant correlations between academic success and cohort (P<0.001), psychology test (P=0.005), and academic test (P<0.001). The analyses showed no significantcorrelation between academic success and sex (P=0.324), and admission track (P=0.128).Conclusions: This study indicated that cohort and psychology tests could estimate the student's academic success at the preclinical stage of undergraduate medical education. The admission criteria related to the academic tests during the admission process should be re-evaluated, so that the academic tests could select the best students among the applicants.