Excellent academic performance is not a guarentee of entry to medical school

Editor - Gordon Brown's cheap attempt to restart the class war last month with the case of comprehensive pupil Laura Spence's rejection by Oxford smacked of political opportunism, although it has brought the subject of education and university admissions into the spotlight once more.

The real crux of this issue is Brown's assumption that Spence's brilliant academic performance should guarantee her a place at Oxford's medical school. The fact that all students who consider applying to Oxford and Cambridge will be just as academically gifted did not seem to enter the equation. More importantly, it would be fair to say that all medical applicants accept that admissions are a competitive process. The hard fact is that if there are enough people who are better than you, they are the ones who will be offered the places. The idea of assuming that excellent academic performance automatically equals a good potential doctor is just as ridiculous as the idea that the case of one comprehensive school pupil can be used to denounce the whole Oxford admissions process.

When I attended countless open days and read every prospectus and book available about medical school entry before applying to university three years ago, the one fact that was endlessly repeated was that the selection process put an emphasis on evidence of a real motivation to study medicine, as well as extracurricular activities that would contribute to the life of the school. The issue of GCSE and A level grades is even slightly downplayed in favour of such factors. Gordon Brown seems to have ignored this fact, suggesting that academic performance alone is enough to merit entry to medical school.

Brown's comments are at best worrying and at worst dangerous. The idea of socially engineering university applicants with positive discrimination could lead to an atmosphere of resentment within Britain's universities and the worrying prospect of certain social factors being used as criteria for deciding who should be offered places. Is this not exactly the situation that the government is trying to avoid?

It could even be said that Oxford's interview system worked perfectly in this case. Despite having offers from other excellent medical schools in Britain, Spence has decided to pursue biochemistry at Harvard, with the option of taking up medicine later on. This raises the question of just how committed she was to medicine in the first place.

Maya Basu, third year medical student, Imperial College School of Medicine, London SW7 2AZ
Email: maya.basu@ic.ac.uk


studentBMJ 2000;08:259-302 August ISSN 0966-6494