ArticleMedical education2018
Does selection pay off? A cost-benefit comparison of medical school selection and lottery systems.
Article in Medical education, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Pooled it
- The association between how medical students were selected and their perceived stress levels in Year-1 of medical school.BMC medical education · 2023Article
- BMAT's predictive validity for medical school performance: A retrospective cohort study.Medical education · 2022Article
- "You can't always get what you want…": economic thinking, constrained optimization and health professions education.Advances in health sciences education : theory and practice · 2020Article
- Exam performance of different admission quotas in the first part of the state examination in medicine: a cross-sectional study.BMC medical education · 2020Article
- Opening the black box of selection.Advances in health sciences education : theory and practice · 2020Article
- Increasing value in research: cost evaluations in health professions education.Medical education · 2019Article
- Bachelor completion and dropout rates of selected, rejected and lottery-admitted medical students in the Netherlands.BMC medical education · 2019Article
- Selection into medicine: the predictive validity of an outcome-based procedure.BMC medical education · 2018Article
- Selection and lottery in medical school admissions: who gains and who loses?MedEdPublish (2016) · 2018Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
contextResources for medical education are becoming more constrained, whereas accountability in medical education is increasing. In this constrictive environment, medical schools need to consider and justify their selection procedures in terms of costs and benefits. To date, there have been no studies focusing on this aspect of selection.
objectivesWe aimed to examine and compare the costs and benefits of two different approaches to admission into medical school: a tailored, multimethod selection process versus a lottery procedure. Our goal was to assess the relative effectiveness of each approach and to compare these in terms of benefits and costs from the perspective of the medical school.
methodsThe study was conducted at Maastricht University Medical School, at which the selection process and a weighted lottery procedure ran in parallel for 3 years (2011-2013). The costs and benefits of the selection process were compared with those of the lottery procedure over three student cohorts throughout the Bachelor's programme. The extra costs of selection represented the monetary investment of the medical school in conducting the selection procedure; the benefits were derived from the increase in income generated by the prevention of dropout and the reductions in extra costs facilitated by decreases in the repetition of blocks and objective structured clinical examinations.
resultsThe tailor-made selection procedure cost about €139 000 when extrapolated to a full cohort of students (n = 286). The lottery procedure came with negligible costs for the medical school. However, the average benefits of selection compared with the lottery system added up to almost €207 000.
conclusionsThis study not only shows that conducting a cost-benefit comparison is feasible in the context of selection for medical school, but also that an 'expensive' selection process can be cost-beneficial in comparison with an 'inexpensive' lottery system. We encourage other medical schools to examine the cost-effectiveness of their own selection processes in relation to student outcomes in order to extend knowledge on this important topic.
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