Schulische und nicht-schulische Pr diktoren für die Studienplatzzusage an der Universit t Witten / Herdecke - Ergebnisse einer QUEST-Analyse [Academic and non-academic predictors for acceptance to medical studies at Witten/Herdecke University - findings of a QUEST-analysis]

[english] Aims: Changes within the German Higher Education Framework act increasingly attract notice to the fact that the debate on different methods of selecting students lies in the responsibility of german medical schools. For more than 20 years the University of Witten/Herdecke has adhered to its own concept and procedure relating to its choice of students. Since 2005 this application procedure consists of a written and an oral application phase (assessment center). Within this study a retrospective classification of all applicants in the year 2005 was conducted, with the objective of finding academic and non-academic predictors for acceptance at Witten/Herdecke. Methods: All 172 applicants of the assessment center received a questionnaire asking for: age, gender, high school graduation mark, type of school, main school subjects, intended career, attendance at open house, parent graduation and profession. All duly completed questionnaires were classified according to the QUEST model from the viewpoint of acceptance versus refusal to medical studies at Witten/Herdecke. Outcomes: The QUEST model classifies the items of the questionnaire in sequence of declining power and in coherence to the targeted variable (acceptance). Affiliated with an increased probability of acceptance were: high school mark = 1.3, Steiner and Montessori schools, absence at open house, intended career as researcher and natural/social sciences and languages as main school subjects. Predictor sensitivity was 0.53, specificity reached 0.92. The positive predictive value accounted for 0.77, whereas the negative predictive value was 0.83. Conclusions: The high school graduation mark shows to be of high significance for the admission process at the University of Witten/Herdecke. Furthermore factors such as type of school, intended career and main school subjects play a major role. The high negative predictive value points out that the QUEST analysis is not suitable for replacing the existing admission process, but might be used for pre-selecting candidates. Further studies have to show whether the found effects are specific to the investigated group (applicants 2005) or whether they can be seen as representative for other cohorts of applicants at Witten/Herdecke. [german] Zielsetzung: Die Auseinandersetzung mit unterschiedlichen Verfahren der Studierendenauswahl rückt durch die Novellierung des Hochschulrahmengesetzes zunehmend in den Verantwortungsbereich deutscher Fakult ten. Als private Universit t führt die Universit t Witten/Herdecke (UWH) seit 20 Jahren universit tseigene Auswah