A descriptive analysis of medical school application forms

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Abstract
A detailed analysis was conducted of the application forms for the 1992-93 and 1993-94 entering classes at all 126 U.S. medical schools, with the expectation that knowledge of the types of information that admission committees and their institutions solicit through these materials would help to illuminate the little-understood nature of the medical school admission process. Although application forms are only one component of the admission process, these documents are key sources of information about the character and/or mission of individual medical schools as well as about prospective students. The analyses began with a detailed inventory of the information requested by the American Medical College Application Service (AMCAS) form. Then each medical school was grouped by the type of application form(s) it used, and an analysis was conducted of the application forms of schools that used their own primary (i.e., non-AMCAS) forms or combinations of the AMCAS form and their own supplemental forms. Finally, some of the additional types of biographical and behavioral information that schools sought through their own forms were examined and clustered. The analyses provided a detailed picture of the various application forms that medical schools use in their application processes and the ways in which those forms are used, either singularly or together, to obtain information from applicants. Another major finding concerned variations among schools in the use of questions requiring in-depth responses.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

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