FUTURE MEDICAL STUDENTS TO TRY APTITUDE TESTS

Undergraduates planning to enter a medical school in 1931 should plan to take on Friday, February 13, at 3 o'clock an aptitude test to be given throughout the country under the direction of the Association of American Medical Colleges. The test, "now one of the normal requirements for admission to a medical school" has been instituted by the association with a view to reducing the heavy scholastic mortality of 20 per cent of students admitted to medical schools throughout the country. It will be of two hours duration; plans for giving it at Harvard will be announced later.

A communication from the association received at University Hall reads in part as follows:

"During each of the last two years approximately 15,000 men have applied for admission to the various medical schools in the United States and Canada. Of this number only slightly more than 7,000 could be admitted on account of lack of facilities for taking care of more. Of the number admitted more than 20 per cent have been forced to drop out of the medical school because of lack of sufficient scholastic ability to master the material of the course. Such being the case the Association of American Medical Colleges appointed a Committee to study this problem with a view to find ways and means of securing students better adapted to the study of medicine, and thus reducing this heavy mortality and the tremendous waste of time and money of those who undertake the study of medicine without the aptitude necessary for the successful pursuit of a medical course.

Revise Aptitude Test

"After two years of careful experimental work, a form of Aptitude Test has been devised, which gives a very high degree of correlation with the success of the students in the medical course. The Association of American Medical Colleges, at its meeting in Denver, voted to recommend this Aptitude Test to its constituent schools as an additional criterion in the selection of medical students; and appointed this Committee to administer the test.

"The Committee was instructed to arrange that the tests be given on the same day in all the colleges and schools, which have students who are applying for admission to a medical school; and to furnish each medical school with the scores of its applicants, and a distribution chart of all the applicants."