The average for the group was much affected by a few outliers, that is, women who received very high admissions interview scores and very low ratings by clinicians. The 22 men in the study received, on the average, similar scores from clinical supervisors as from their interviewers four years earlier, but the range of scores was greater as seniors than it had been for them as applicants. A small number of men with mediocre interview scores had very high ratings by clinicians, based on their senior-year work in the hospital. Admissions interviewers for both men and women tended not to deviate much from the average score, whereas clinicians had a larger standard deviation for their ratings. This difference between the two sets of raters was especially pronounced in assessments of men in the Class of 1992.
Analysis of variance suggests a gender effect in accuracy of rating.
Clinicians also used a wider range of scores in making their evaluations, possibly feeling more confident in their ratings, because they had observed a much larger sample of behavior than the interviewers. During the 1992-93 academic year, clinicians were asked to rate seniors on the same interview forms formerly used by the admissions committee in evaluating applicants, though these students had not been interviewed as applicants. Averages were calculated for the 77 seniors with 3 or more ratings in the Class of 1993. Overall averages for the Class of 1992 were compared with those of the Class of 1993. Summary Two separate, but related, studies conducted over a 2-year period at the College of Veterinary Medicine at Cornell University confirmed findings of several earlier studies that interviewing may not be a valid assessment tool in making admissions decisions.