The role of personal interview and cognitive abilities at admission to medical school in predicting performance of medical students in internal medicine sub-internship

Admission process to medical school is a complicated task, stemming from the unresolved debates on a set of skills defining an ideal physician. The Goldman school at Ben-Gurion University in Israel is known for weighing a great emphasis on personality domain on top of academic excellence, by administering 1-hour long consecutive interviews embedded into the admission process. We compared the skills evaluated during the admission process with the students’ performance at the internal medicine rotation in their last (6th) year of medical school. Evaluations were administered by medical personnel and included questions prompting to choose those with the most potential to be a good internist.Interview evaluation at admission was associated with higher chances of being evaluated as a good internist 6 years later (Odds Ratio (OR)=9.4, p-value=0.049), independent of the students' gender (OR for male vs female=0.2, p-value=0.025) and age (OR=1.3 per each year, p-value=0.115). Our study shows that a high personal evaluation of a candidate is indicative of high personal evaluation of a student's performance at the internal medicine department 6 years later. These findings strengthen and emphasize the importance of using a personal semi structured interview in the admission process to medical school.