Letters
General medicine
Volume 195 - Issue 5

Predictive validity of the Undergraduate Medicine and Health Sciences Admission Test for medical students’ academic performance

Author:  Barry N J Walters

Med J Aust 2011; 195 (5): 267-268. || doi: 10.5694/mja11.10565
Published online: 5 September 2011
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To the Editor: The finding of Wilkinson and colleagues1 that the Undergraduate Medicine and Health Sciences Admission Test (UMAT) score and medical school performance are only weakly correlated came as no surprise.

Another shortcoming of the UMAT process has been its inability to recognise the effects that failure in the test can have upon applicants.

The Selection Committee for the School of Medicine at the University of Notre Dame in Fremantle rejected the UMAT from the outset. We considered its content to be arbitrary, and that there was no evidence to suggest that it could predict a medical student’s performance, let alone a medical practitioner’s sensitivity and empathy. My concern with the need for fairness and sensitivity in the selection process evolved from my experience of being approached by applicants to other medical schools who were distressed by their failure to pass the UMAT hurdle. What upset them most was that the UMAT literature claimed that one could not study for the test as it tested “aptitude”. Rejected applicants therefore felt that they intrinsically lacked the necessary personal characteristics to be a good doctor. The truth was that they had not performed as well as others in an idiosyncratic test, which included tests of “spatial orientation” and other arcane matters. At the University of Notre Dame, we recognise the great disappointment that unsuccessful applicants feel and counsel those who contact us. We reassure them that they can try again the next year, and are likely to have a better chance of success then. We never imply that they are not suitable to be a doctor.

Medical educators can only expect students to possess fairness, empathy and understanding of the suffering of others if we demonstrate the same qualities to them. In the case of the UMAT — an experiment that has dominated medical student selection in Australia for more than a decade — those qualities have been lacking. I believe that the UMAT has left a scar on many unsuccessful applicants and on the perception of the Australian selection process that was used in many universities over those years. Let us remember that doctors’ responsibility to be caring, sensitive and humane extends beyond the consulting room.

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