Rafeeq Ahmed Habeeb
University of Cincinnati College of Medicine
Background: Since the introduction of MMI starting in 2006 as one of the criteria for admission into University Of Cincinnati College Of Medicine (UCCOM) along with undergraduate GPA and MCAT scores, there is a need to investigate the extent to which each of these scores predict success in medical school at UCCOM. This report is a comprehensive summary of the relationships between MMI, GPA, and MCAT scores and 1) medical school grades and 2) United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) scores.
Aim: The aim of the current study is to find correlation between admission criteria and medical student performance
Methods: This study followed students admitted into UCCOM from the year 2006 to 2015. Correlation studies using R were used to predict association between MMI, GPA, and MCAT socres with student performance in year1, year 2 , year 3 of medical school and USMLE steps. We considered BCPM GPA for our analysis and for MCAT we used scores at individual sections, namely, Biological Sciences (BS), Physical Sciences (PS), and Verbal Reasoning (VS).
Results: We identified a positive correlation between BCPM GPA and student performance during first year, second year and third year of medical school and with all 3 USMLE steps. Similarly BS had a weak to moderate but positive correlation with all three years of medical school, as well as during USMLE steps. However PS and VR had a weak to moderate correlation only during year 3 and all USMLE steps. Even though we did not see any positive correlation with MMI and student performance either during medical school or with USMLE steps, to be conclusive data needs further transformion as MMI scoring scales were modified across the years.
Conclusions: Our results identify BCMP-GPA score to be a better predictor of medical school performance and USMLE step results, this was followed by MCAT scores. Within MCAT BS predicts overall performance druing medical school, and PS and VR scores are better indicators of performance in third year courses.
