Personality Testing for Med School Admission
Acceptance to med school has traditionally been based primarily on MCAT scores; however, some universities are now requiring personality testing as well as scholastic aptitude and knowledge testing.
One such med school is the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine at McMaster University in Ontario, where every applicant is required to complete the computer based test CASPer (Computer-Based Assessment for Sampling Personal Characteristics). CASPer assesses interpersonal skills, decision-making skills, and other personal characteristics, which are seen as important for understanding how someone will perform as a doctor. The test requires short-answer responses to questions, and takes about 90 minutes. The CASPer score makes up 32% of McMaster’s pre-interview applicant rank, making it equal in weighting to both the candidates MCAT score and the candidates undergraduate GPA.
The concept of using personality testing to help determine med school admissions is relatively new, but it has been met with largely positive feedback. This positive reception is based primarily on the concept that personality characteristics are important contributors to how successful someone will be as a physician, because aspects like good decision making and strong interpersonal skills are important qualities for a doctor. Other important characteristics for medical students that are tested in personality tests are concienciousness, openness, agreeableness, and extroversion, all of which are helpful in predicting how well a student will perform in school and in the field. On the other hand, characteristics such as neuroticism or an individual’s likelihood of becoming upset are predictors of poor academic performance in med school, and even attrition.
In fact, the concept of evaluating applicants’ personalities is actually not new; interviews have always been one of the most important parts of the med school application process. In this sense, formal personality testing simply provides a more objective and standardized way of evaluating characteristics that have always been evaluated in interviews. Objectivity and standardization are seen as very positive characteristics of formal personality testing, as interviews are extremely subjective and inconsistent, which some people take issue with.
However, the use of personality testing is also somewhat controversial, because it can be argued that a good personality is not actually vital for making a successful doctor. In fact, certain professions within the field of medicine require very little interpersonal contact or extroversion, and require instead just a strong knowledge base and intellectual capacity. Personality testing could also be seen to discriminate against people with psychological or psychiatric conditions, many of whom could still be very successful doctors. One example of this is individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder, who may have shortcomings when it comes to interpersonal skills, but who also may be extremely intellectually gifted. I have a friend in med school who fits this category: her ASD makes her somewhat socially inept, but her intellectual brilliance makes me sure that she’ll be a fantastic doctor.
As the chips fall, personality testing, like undergraduate requirements, may just become another contributing factor to how students choose which med schools to apply to; if someone has strong interpersonal and reason skills they may apply more to schools who require personality testing, whereas someone knowingly lacking these skills may chose to apply somewhere else instead.
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