Correlation of admissions criteria with academic performance in dental students

Our purpose was to compare admissions criteria as predictors of dental school performance in underachieving and normally tracking dental students. Underachieving dental students were identified by selecting ten students with the lowest class grade point average following the first year of dental school from five classes, resulting in a pool of fifty students. Normally tracking students served as a control and were randomly selected from students who had completed their first year of dental school not in the underachieving group. Admission measures of college grade point average (GPA), science grade point average (SGPA), academic average (AA), Perceptual Ability Test (PAT), college rigor, and academic load in college were evaluated with descriptive statistics, correlation, and regression analysis with first-year and graduating GPA as the dependent variables. Admissions criteria were generally weak predictors of first-year and graduating GPA. However, first-year dental school GPA was a strong predictor (R(2)=0.77) of graduating GPA for normally tracking students and a moderate predictor (R(2)=0.58) for underachieving students. Students who completed the first year of dental school having a low GPA tended to graduate with a low GPA. Therefore, remediation and monitoring would be important during the dental school experience for these students.