Editor—In their article on medical school admissions Seyan et al pay no attention to the three major determinants of academic aptitude for any career—IQ, EQ (emotional quotient), and education.1 Testing for aptitude for a career as broad as medicine is challenging, but certainly an adequate IQ as well as an adequate EQ (in my view almost more important), is necessary.
They give no data on the ethnic and sex distribution of these variables in applicants. Neither is any attention paid to the distribution of those who have had an education to the standard required for medicine. Medical schools can hardly be expected to make up for a poor education.
The claim in the title that the article deals with sex is not fulfilled. It is mentioned only in the second half of one paragraph which, in view of the major effect it has on lifetime working hours per doctor qualifying, is not doing it justice. Is not our goal to produce more doctor-hours of the highest standard possible, irrespective of a person's race, sex, or origin? If applicants are not coming forward for selection in an even distribution, that is an educational problem at school level. The real test of discrimination would be the acceptance to medical school of “academically apt” applicants. It would be most unfortunate if the standardised admission ratio as published were to be accepted as politically correct and therefore desirable.
Competing interests: None declared.
References
- 1.Seyan K, Greenhalgh T, Dorling D. The standardised admission ratio for measuring widening participation in medical schools: analysis of UK medical school admissions by ethnicity, socio-economic status, and sex. BMJ 2004;328: 1545-6. (26 June.) [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]