Widening access? Characteristics of applicants to medical and dental schools, compared with UCAS.

AIM

The aim of this paper is to compare the demography (age, sex, ethnicity, social status) and academic experience (school type, tariff scores) of focused and successful applicants to preclinical dentistry with preclinical medicine, and with higher education in general in the UK.

METHOD

Retrospective analyses of anonymised University and College Admissions Services (UCAS) data for focused applicants whose preferred subject was preclinical dentistry or medicine, and accepted (successful) applicants to the same programmes in 2006. These data were compared with publicly available data on applicants and accepted applicants through UCAS. Information for each medical, dental and general UCAS applicant included age, sex, ethnicity, socio-economic group, region, school type and tariff score. Logistic regression was used to model the probability of being accepted in relation to all explanatory variables and interactions.

RESULTS

In total there were 2,577 focused applicants to dentistry; 1,114 applicants were accepted, 4% (n = 46) of whom did not have it as their preferred subject choice. There were seven times as many focused applicants for medicine (18,943) when compared with dentistry; 8,011 applicants were accepted, 2.7% of whom did not have medicine as their preferred subject choice (n = 218). Just over half of the applicants to dentistry were from minority ethnic backgrounds (50.5%), exceeding medicine (29.5%), and higher education in general (19%). The proportion of female applicants was similar across all three groups at around 55%. Only one fifth (21%) of focused applicants to dentistry were mature compared with one third (33%) to medicine and one quarter (25.5%) of all UCAS applicants. Greater proportions of applicants to medicine (25.8%) and dentistry (23.5%) were from upper socio-economic backgrounds, compared with higher education in general (15.5%). When all other factors are controlled, the odds of being accepted for medicine, and for dentistry, are lower if mature, male, from a lower social class, from a minority ethnic group and have attended a further/higher education college.

CONCLUSIONS

Focused and successful applicants for preclinical medicine and dentistry are more likely to be from higher social classes and a minority ethnic background than applicants to higher education in general. Dentistry attracts twice the level of Asian applicants as medicine and four times that of universities in general. Controlling for other factors, there is evidence that gender, ethnicity, maturity, and school type are associated with probability of acceptance for medicine and dentistry. Higher social status is particularly associated with acceptance for medicine. The implications of these findings are discussed in terms of widening access and social justice.