MEDICAL SCHOOL

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26311, 16 November 1946, Page 6

MEDICAL SCHOOL

SECOND YEAR CLASSES

EXCESS OF APPLICATIONS

Applications for admission to the second-year classes in medicine in 1947 closed with the registrar of the University of Otago (Mr H. Chapman) yesterday, and up to 5 o’clock a total of 310 applications from all over the Dominion were received.. The quota for the second-year of the course at the Otago Medical School is 120, so that a considerable number of the students applying will not gain entry next year. This year a different method of selection will be followed. Preference will be given to 35 ex-servicemen, an ex-serviceman being defined as a serviceman whose university course has been seriously interfered with by war service overseas.* From the candidates applying for admission the following will be accepted:—(a) Registered medical students who have completed one year’s attendance in the second-year classes in the Medical School but have not passed the annual terms examinatoin, provided they are approved for re-admission by the council on the recommendation of the Medical Faculty, after full consideration of the students’ whole academic record; and (b) graduates of the University of New Zealand who have passed the necessary qualifying examination. An innovation in the selection this year is that each college is being asked to assist. Apart from the candidates mentioned previously, the names of other applicants will be forwarded to the colleges to which they were formerly attached, and each college will place these applications in order of merit. Each college will be assigned a quota,, so that each one will be assisting this year in making the final selection of those entering the secondyear classes. Included in the 310 candidates will be - students who in the past have passed the interrriediate examination and are waiting for the chance to proceed with their medical course and a number who have just sat their intermediate examination, the result of which is not yet known. In the latter class, therefore, will be a number who will fail the examination and will) automatically be excluded from this selection.

At the end of last year, 129 of those applying were unsuccessful in gaining admission, so that it would appear that again this year there will be a large number of students whose hopes of commencing the - second-year medical classes in 1947 will not be fulfilled.