The influence of admission qualifications on the performance of first and second year medical students at the International Medical University
- Author:
Ammu Kutty Radhakrishnan
;
Nagarajah Lee
;
Mei-Ling Young
- Publication Type:Journal Article
- Keywords:
pre-university, entry qualifications, examinations, criteria for entry
- From:International e-Journal of Science, Medicine and Education
2012;6(2):10-17
- CountryMalaysia
- Language:English
-
Abstract:
Background: Medical schools have long been
concerned with establishing a suitable process of
admission. The criteria used to select students have
traditionally focussed on high academic achievement.
Method: The International Medical University (IMU)
accepts students from a wide range of pre-university
entry qualifications for admission into the medical
programme. The criteria for the various pre-university
entry qualifications used by the IMU were agreed and
accepted by the IMU Academic Council (AC), which
consist of deans of the IMU’s partner medical schools
(PMS). In this study, the various entry qualifications
were first grouped into five categories based on the
educational pedagogy. Then, this was aligned with
the entry qualification data of all students who had
been admitted into the IMU medical programme for
the period of December 1993 to March 2000. During
this period 1,281 students were enrolled into the IMU
medical programme. The relationship between the
five groups of pre-university entry qualifications and
the students’ academic achievement in three end-ofsemester
(EOS) examinations namely EOS 1, EOS 3,
and EOS 5 were analysed.
Results: Students with better grades in their preuniversity
examinations showed better performance in
their EOS examinations, regardless of the subjects that
they took at the pre-university level. Cluster analysis
revealed that students who came in with certain preuniversity
qualifications generally performed poorly
than the more conventional qualifications. However,
after their first year in medical school, there were no
significant differences in the clustering of the students.
Conclusion: Students with better grades in their preuniversity
examinations showed better performance
in their EOS examinations, regardless of the science
subjects that they took at the pre-university level.
- Full text:W020151005522793552078.pdf
