Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Discerning Applicants' Interests In Rural Medicine: A Textual Analysis Of Admission Essays, Carol L. Elam, Anthony D. Weaver, Elmer T. Whittler, Terry D. Stratton, Linda M. Asher, Kimberly L. Scott, Emery A. Wilson

Medical Student Education Faculty Publications

BACKGROUND: Despite efforts to construct targeted medical school admission processes using applicant-level correlates of future practice location, accurately gauging applicants' interests in rural medicine remains an imperfect science. This study explores the usefulness of textual analysis to identify rural-oriented themes and values underlying applicants' open-ended responses to admission essays.

METHODS: The study population consisted of 75 applicants to the Rural Physician Leadership Program (RPLP) at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine. Using WordStat, a proprietary text analysis program, applicants' American Medical College Application Service personal statement and an admission essay written at the time of interview were searched for …

A Holistic Review Of The Medical School Admission Process: Examining Correlates Of Academic Underperformance, Terry D. Stratton, Carol L. Elam

Behavioral Science Faculty Publications

Background : Despite medical school admission committees' best efforts, a handful of seemingly capable students invariably struggle during their first year of study. Yet, even as entrance criteria continue to broaden beyond cognitive qualifications, attention inevitably reverts back to such factors when seeking to understand these phenomena. Using a host of applicant, admission, and post-admission variables, the purpose of this inductive study, then, was to identify a constellation of student characteristics that, taken collectively, would be predictive of students at-risk of underperforming during the first year of medical school. In it, we hypothesize that a wider range of factors than …