Do the criteria of resident selection committees predict residents' performances?

To further the understanding of what factors residency selection committees consider when rating candidates and how well these ratings predict residents' performances.

The authors analyzed the application and residency files of 123 physicians who completed the internal medicine residency at the University of Michigan from 1989 through 1992; they also reviewed all 308 applications for 1993-94. Applications to the residency were reviewed by an intern selection committee (ISC) and given scores ranging from 0 (best) to 450 (worst). Multivariate analyses were used to evaluate the influences on ISC scores of seven factors: gender, internal medicine clerkship grade, number of honors in non-medicine clerkships, Alpha Omega Alpha (AOA) status, number of publications, score on the National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME) Part I examination, and medical school reputation. Each resident's performance was evaluated using the final overall evaluation score submitted by the program to the American Board of Internal Medicine.

The most significant predictors of ISC score were internal medicine clerkship grade, AOA status, medical school reputation, and NBME I score (all four at p < .01; R2 = .66 for the full model of seven factors). The residents' final evaluation scores were moderately correlated with ISC scores at the time of application (r = -.52). In a multivariate analysis, the final scores were significantly associated only with internal medicine clerkship honors (p < .01) and graduation from the University of Michigan Medical School (p < .05), and there was a trend associating them with junior-year AOA election.

The findings suggest that the intern selection committee overemphasized the predictive value of AOA election in the senior year, NBME I scores, and medical school reputation.