Simulated minority admissions exercise at Louisiana State University School of Medicine: an evaluation.

The Louisiana State University (LSU) School of Medicine-New Orleans has been active in recruiting minority students to create a diverse medical student body. Recognizing the need to explore ways to assess minority applicants, over the past 10 years, LSU has offered Stimulated Minority Admissions Exercise (SMAE) workshops to its admission committee members. Participants in six of LSU's SMAE workshops were asked to respond anonymously to an evaluation form immediately following the workshop. Sixty of the 64 participants responded. The overall evaluation of the workshops was positive. More than 80% of participants indicated that due to their participation in SMAE, they knew how to locate and assess application data particularly relevant to minority applicants. The results suggest that identifying variables that enhance minority student admission and retention is desirable.

Predicting minority students' success in medical school.

Despite recent attention to minority student recruitment and retention, data on predicting the success of minority medical students are scarce. Traditional predictors (college grades and scores on the Medical College Admission Test) have modest correlations with medical school grades and scores on the National Board of Medical Examiners examination for minority students. Nonetheless, admission committees also consider nontraditional variables when selecting minority students. Measures of nontraditional variables seem to assess types of intelligence not covered by traditional means. A system of organizing nontraditional or noncognitive variables into eight dimensions is proposed. The dimensions are self-concept, realistic, self-appraisal, understanding and dealing with racism, long-range goals, having a strong support person, showing leadership, having community involvement, and nontraditional knowledge acquired. Further, assessment should place more emphasis on recognizing and defining problems and on performance rather than knowledge. Combining traditional and nontraditional methods is best in selecting minority students, and sufficiently well developed measures exist in each area to make this a practical recommendation for any admission program.