Interviews take off from these responses, focusing as much as possible on students' actual deeds. With particularly promising candidates, interviewers shift to more stressful questioning. The new approach to medical education begins with the admission procedure at BGU, for student selection is the very first step in training a new kind of physician. Believing that doctors need compassion at least as much as a high grade point average, at BGU emphasis is placed on interviews designed to reveal the applicant's personality, motivation and sensitivity.
Competition is keen.
Over 1,000 candidates vie each year for the 50 available places in the Medical School. The unique approach to medical education is symbolized at each commencement ceremony. When the time comes for the recital of the Physicians' Oath it is not the graduates who take the pledge. Instead, the freshmen rise to pledge themselves as new practitioners of medicine. The graduates stand with them, reaffirming their own pledge taken seven years earlier, and saluting the new generation of students who are about to begin their medical careers.