Informed choice of entering medical school and academic success in Iranian medical students

Abstract

Background: One of the challenges medical education policy-makers confront is matriculants’ informed choice of entering medicine. However, students’ reasons for choosing medicine do not seem rational.

Aim: We compared students who made an informed choice about entering medicine with those who did not, in terms of academic success.

Methods: The study was carried out with a self-administered questionnaire on 220 final-year medical students randomly selected from six Iranian medical schools. Depending on their informed choice of entering medicine or not at the time of application, they were divided into two groups. We compared these two groups’ academic achievement as well as their satisfaction with medicine.

Results: The students who had not made an informed choice had a higher tendency not to choose medicine if they were to start over (p value ≤0.001). The pre-admission scores of students who had made an informed choice of medicine were worse than the other group (p = 0.03). However, their final year scores as well as their satisfaction with medicine were higher than the other group.

Conclusions: Idealistic views of medicine should be replaced by rational and logical ones to help students select the careers best suited to their abilities and talents.

Acknowledgements

This study is based on the MD-MPH dissertation of the first author. The authors are very grateful to the National Organization of Educational Testing for providing the database of all applicants applying for the 2003 Konkoor for “experimental sciences”. Thanks also to Organization of Educational Testing of the Ministry of Health and Medical Education for providing the data on medical school GPAs of 2003 matriculants at public medical schools, the scores of participants and the reliabilities of the CBSE and CPIE from 2005 to 2010.

Declaration of interest: This study was financially supported by Tehran University of Medical Sciences’ Vice Chancellor of Research (project no. 10041, 88-03-76). The authors declare that they have no competing interests.