Jeff Milem, Dean and Professor at UC Santa Barbara’s Gevirtz School, co-authored one of the 2015 Charles F. Elton Best Papers as chosen by the Association for Institutional Research (AIR). Milem – along with co-authors Diana B. Sesate of Arizona State and Kadian L. McIntosh and W. Patrick Bryan, both of University of Arizona – were honored for the article “Coupling Admissions and Curricular Data to Predict Medical Student Outcomes” that appeared in Research in Higher Education in July 2016. (The article can be read here.)
The AIR Charles F. Elton Best Paper Award celebrates the scholarly papers presented at the AIR annual conference (Forum) that best exemplify the standards of excellence established by the award’s namesake and that make significant contributions to the field of IR. The purpose of the award is to promote scholarship and to acknowledge that AIR members make a wide variety of scholarly contributions to the field, ranging from theory to practice. Understanding that acceptance of a paper for a scholarly journal can take time, AIR allows up to two years in order to provide proof of publication (hence the announcement of the 2015 awards now).
The Association for Institutional Research (AIR) is the world’s largest professional association for institutional researchers, providing educational resources, best practices and professional development opportunities for more than 4,000 members. Its primary purpose is to support members in the process of collecting, analyzing, and converting data into information that supports decision-making in higher education.
The paper examined the relative impact of admissions factors and curricular measures on the first medical licensing exam (United States Medical Licensing Exam [USMLE] Step 1) scores. The inclusion of first-year and second-year curricular measures nearly doubled the variance explained in Step 1 scores from the amount explained by the combination of preadmission demographic characteristics and admissions factors. In addition, the relationship between the Medical College Admissions Test (MCAT) and Step 1 scores becomes counterintuitive in models that include curricular measures, where students with the lowest combined admissions metrics (MCAT, grade-point average) score higher, on average, than those with some of the highest admissions metrics. Overreliance on traditional metrics in admissions decisions can exclude students from medical school who have the ability to succeed.