Entry tests for graduate medical programs: is it time to re-think?

To the Editor: Whatever the method used to select medical students (whether academic, psychometric, or interview), the basic problem in assessing the method’s predictive capability is that only candidates who perform at the higher levels in the assessment will be admitted. The only way to test the predictive validity of an assessment is to admit candidates from a much wider band of performance, creating a much less compressed score range for comparison. By definition, candidates with lower scores are excluded, thus making this analysis impossible.