UKCAT

[Amber]

There was an article in the Sunday Times on Sunday (kindly sent to me by an EPE friend- thank you ) which reported two unreferenced studies into UKCAT. These had demonstrated what OH had suspected, along with many others I am sure, that these tests were a bad way to choose trainee doctors. Such was the extent of the evidence (seems that those who did well on them actually did worse on medical school exams) that they don't work that, it was reported, 3 universities had already decided to drop them.

I am unable to find out any more about these studies, nor about which medical schools are dropping UKCAT. I will write and ask the newspaper about the sources if I can't track them down but I wondered if anyone on here knows any more?

Thanks.

[hermanmunster]

I was aware that some unis weren't using it anyway and others didn't give it great waiting it in the selection. Quite glad to hear that it is being questioned. DH and I couldn't make any sense of it when we looked at the books - we just put that down to age and maybe we would have been able to do it when we were teenagers ....

PS - here is one study that seems to headline that it is a good test... hmm

A widely used aptitude test has successfully predicted how most students will fare in medical school, according to a major study published yesterday.
The UKCAT test is now used by 26 of Britain's 32 medical and dental schools.

The latest study says it is particularly effective at identifying how mature students will fare in medical school.

The analysis, published in BMC Medicine, showed the test was marginally better than A levels at predicting how well students will do in medical school.

Researchers studied the fate of some 4,811 students at 12 medical schools using the test from 2006 to 2008 - linking test results to first year medical school exams.

The research found UKCAT was better at predicting the results of female students than of male students.

And while academic achievement at school was also linked to first-year exam results, the researchers found that students from schools with high average A level results, such as grammar schools and some private schools, fared overall less well than those from other schools.

Out of the students in the study, some 109 left their medical course. About half of these had failed their exams.

A spokeswoman for Nottingham University, which developed the test, said it was a "powerful indicator of performance of medical students in their first year examinations."

The UKCAT-12 study: Educational attainment, aptitude test performance, demographic and socio economic contextual factors as predictors of first year outcome in a cross-sectional collaborative study of twelve UK medical schools. BMC Medicine 14 November 2013, 11:244; doi:10.1186/1741-7015-11-244 [abstract]