The limitations of traditional variables in predicting the progress of nontraditional students

The traditional preadmissions variables of GPA's, MCAT scores and recommendation decisions of a group of nontraditional medical students who enrolled from 1978-1983 were examined to determine 1) the degree to which a classification model derived from the variables to predict whether they would graduate on schedule, graduate off schedule or not graduate would be applicable to a second group of nontraditional students who enrolled from 1984-1987, and 2) which variables would predict whether the students would graduate on schedule, graduate off schedule or not graduate. The discriminant model correctly classified only 33 percent of the students in the second group; the MCAT Reading score, the only significant predictive variable, accounted for 26 percent of the variance in the progress of the students in the first group.