Multiple mini interviews for selection of dental students: influence of gender and starting station

Multiple Mini Interviews (MMI) are an increasingly popular tool for selecting entrants to undergraduate degree programs in dentistry in the United Kingdom. This article reports on the use of MMI to select dental students at the University of Bristol, United Kingdom, over two successive admissions cycles (2011-12 and 2012-13). MMI provided an efficient means to discriminate between the performance of applicants who were all academically highly qualified, with total scores ranging from 35 percent to 87 percent of the maximum possible score. Female candidates performed significantly better than male candidates when assessed by total score (p=0.011; mean score 94.4 for female applicants and 91.9 for male applicants) and by outcome (offer/decline; p=0.016; 58.6 percent of female and 46.4 percent of male interviewees received an offer of study following interview). There was no statistically significant effect of starting station on candidate performance (p=0.359), indicating that a candidate's overall chance of success in the MMI was not influenced by which station he or she experienced first. Stakeholder acceptance was good, with 75 percent of candidates and 95 percent of assessors preferring MMI over traditional interviews.