Selection of medical students: Philosophic, political, social, and educational bases

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Abstract
The task of selecting a cohort of medical students from a pool of well‐qualified applicants is complex and fraught with ethical dilemmas and organizational difficulties. In this article, we identify and attempt to formalize the constraints on the task. In response to a range of pressures (or influences) a medical school creates a selection policy, in which selectors define the “necessary characteristics”; of medical school entrants, such as their personal qualities, aptitudes, demography, and so forth. Implementation of that selection policy then involves choosing a range of selection processes or techniques which can be used to find those candidates within the pool of applicants who satisfy a range of “selectable characteristics.”; Evaluation of the success of the selection policy involves comparison of the selectable characteristics with the necessary characteristics; this essential step can be used iteratively to achieve eventual congruence between selection policy and selection process. Also in this article, we give specific examples of the pressures that school may be subject to, the characteristics that are selectable, and the processes that may be used, and we consider the implications of various selection processes for those selection policies.