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Objective: To understand and address students’ concerns about attending one of the new Commonwealth-funded Rural Clinical Schools. Design: Analysis of students’ reported reasons for clinical school selection from 2003 to 2004. Setting: The School of Medicine and the Rural Clinical School, University of Melbourne. Participants: Data were obtained from de-identified preference documents submitted by the medical student cohort assigned to the University of Melbourne clinical schools to begin in July, 2004. Results: Thirteen categories of student concerns (social) were identified from written student preference documents. Conclusions: Evaluation of the students’ concerns about social dislocation if they were assigned to a rural clinical school has provided important information about perceived barriers to rural training. These issues must be systematically addressed at the school, university and community level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]