Daily News

Posted on April 2: McMaster medical students chosen by innovative bell-ringer interviews

McMaster University has developed a new way to select its medical students that has the applicants doing 12 short successive interviews instead of a traditional panel interview. This week, 384 potential students are at McMaster for bell-ringer interviews that have them attending individual 10 minute sessions with a consecutive series of interviewers over two hours. Each interviewer asks the same questions of each candidate on a topic in the areas of ethics, communications, collaborative work or critical thinking. A bell is sounded when students should rotate to the next interview. The change is the result of three years of study on ways to improve the student selection process, and is unique among Canadian medical schools. "This new process is far better than other methodologies for being able to differentiate between candidates on the basis of their personal qualities," said Harold Reiter, chair of admissions for the medical school. "Research has found that the reliability of measuring those qualities through traditional interviews is weak."