Help for the gatekeepers: comment and summation on the admission process.

The author comments on articles that discuss the roles of demographic variables, qualitative variables, and the interview in making sound selection for medical school admission; analyze the effectiveness of traditional predictors in selecting successful students; and examine the predictors that best identify minority students likely to succeed in medical training. Together, the articles review the literature, analyze the findings, and recommend sound practices and areas of future research germane to selecting students. The discussions highlight the predictor role, initial importance, and relatively short half-life of academic criteria in physicians' total careers, and emphasize that academic predictors must be complemented by other factors in the applicant's background. Because selection for medical school leads in almost all cases to eventual practice as a physician, the admission decision has far-reaching impact. Those concerned with the admission process should use the distilled information in these articles to improve the assessment of applicants and the selection process.