Rethinking an Admissions Program to Align with the Mission of an Innovative Medical School
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COMMENTARY
Rethinking an Admissions Program to Align with the Mission of an Innovative Medical School Joel A. Daboub 1 & Andrew D. Bergemann 1
&
Stephen R. Smith 1
Accepted: 21 September 2020 # International Association of Medical Science Educators 2020
The formation of a new medical school creates unique challenges and opportunities. This was true at our school with its mission that is strongly oriented to leadership as a competency. Similar to most schools utilizing holistic admissions policies, we wanted to identify and matriculate applicants with a wide range of skills and attributes that are not necessarily linked to academics [1]. However, because of our unique mission, we wanted to place a particular focus on leadership, innovation and creativity, and community engagement [2], when selecting applicants. Therefore, we developed a combination of traditional and novel approaches, including a number of significant innovations that focus on mission-relevant attitudes and attributes. In line with the school’s values of selfreflection and adaptability, we have actively engaged in the evaluation of innovations and modified our initial design in response to observed outcomes. Each applicant initiated their candidacy for our school by completion of the Texas Medical and Dental School Application Process (TMDSAS) application, an approximate parallel to the A merican Medical College Application Service (AMCAS) used in most states [3]. We prescribed fewer pre-requisite courses than many other US medical schools in order to facilitate applications from students with more diverse educational and professional backgrounds. We designed a secondary application that specifically asked applicants to describe their life experiences related to leadership, innovation and creativity, and community engagement. In 2018, we changed this secondary application to an asynchronous video format, but still asked for life experiences in those same three domains (see Fig. 1).
* Andrew D. Bergemann [email protected] 1
Department of Medical Education, Dell Medical School, University of Texas at Austin, 1501 Red River Street, Austin, TX 78712, USA
Based upon the reviews of the applications and the ratings of the video interviews, students were selected for an on-site interview. Interview day comprised of a classical interview, a group task (which will be described in detail below), and five multiple mini-interview (MMI) stations. When all the assessment tools were completed, the Admissions Selection Committee (ASC) reviewed each interviewed applicant utilizing over 60 individual points of evaluation. These points of evaluation were generated from the reviews of each applicant’s original application and the ratings of their interviews. The components of our process that we regard as the most innovative are the addition of a group task to interview day and using video interviews to pre-screen applicants. Other noteworthy components included our removal of letters of recommendation from initial consideration, our use of dive
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