On the predictive value of entry-level skills for successful studying in medical school

Abstract

How to select medical students who will be successful during different study phases as well as later in their profession is a difficult problem. This study focuses on the predictive value of students' entry-level skills measured by three multiple-choice science tests, the secondary school matriculation examination, and 'Learning-from-text' (LFT) tasks which were designed to measure critical thinking skills. The subjects (N = 109) were those medical students who were accepted in the University of Helsinki Faculty of Medicine in 1988. The results showed that the three science tests predicted the medical course grades. Further, a LFT task intending to measure the ability to pull together the essentials of a text predicted the pace of studying during both basic and advanced studies. LFT tasks intending to measure the deepest level of learning, i.e., the application of knowledge, predicted the grades obtained for the advanced courses. © 1999 Kluwer Academic Publishers.