There is a growing awareness that assessing  medical school applicants for non-cognate attitudes and values, in addition to the traditional knowledge and skill set, is important.  Values that are frequently highly desirable in applicants include but are not limited to: professionalism, altruism, commitment to service and the ability to work as part of a team. Traditional measures of these values rely heavily on the admission day interview and letters of recommendation.  Many schools are looking at innovative and more standardized approaches to evaluate these qualities.   An on-site interview day essay was introduced as a new component in the review of applicants.

The objectives were:

1.  To determine if an essay written on professionalism topics would be useful in assessing  non- cognate values and attitudes

1.  To determine if the essay provided insight  into applicants’ values that were not obtained from interviews and letters of  recommendation

  Each applicant was required to write a handwritten  essay on an situational judgement issue on the day of interview

•Essays were initially assessed by an admissions  committee member who reviewed the entire applicant file but did not do the interview.

•Essays were scored on a three point scale - exemplary, acceptable or of concern 

•Each applicant file was presented to the Admissions Committee but only essays with low or high scores were discussed

•The essays were used as one component in the decision making process by the Committee