Medical School Admissions Committee’s work essential, ongoing
By Lin Lofley
When the Admissions Committee begins to meet soon in order to decide the successful candidates who will make up UT Southwestern Medical School’s Class of 2021, there will be a new face leading those deliberations.
Dr. Kathleen Wilson, Director of the Cytogenomic Microarray Analysis Laboratory, and Professor of Pathology and in the Eugene McDermott Center for Human Growth and Development, recently agreed to become Chairman of the Committee. Dr. Wilson also serves as Co-Director of the PreClerkship Genetics Course. She succeeds Dr. Dennis Burns, also Professor of Pathology, who has led the panel since 2012.
“This is a tremendous undertaking,” said Dr. Wilson, speaking not of her Chairmanship but of the dedicated faculty members who participate each year to interview and take the measure of applicants who are interested in studying at UT Southwestern. “In our pursuit to find the top-notch medical students, we are dependent and appreciative on the faculty members who take the time from their busy schedules to participate in the interview process.”
Dr. Burns, a noted educator, will remain as a member of the committee. A 1978 graduate of UT Southwestern, his interest in the workings of the Committee perhaps were planted when he was himself selected for admission in 1974.
“I have always remembered being interviewed by Dr. Irwin Thal, who died recently, but who was my role model as a committee member,” Dr. Burns said. “I admired his candor, and his enthusiasm, and even though I was inspired by him still I thought he was a friendly, welcoming presence. I remember how gratified I was to receive a letter of acceptance from UT Southwestern, and even today I want our school to always epitomize quality medical students.”
To that end, Dr. Wilson – herself a member of the UT Southwestern Class of 1991 – has strong memories of how she arrived on campus. “I was interviewed by members of the Internal Medicine faculty, and I remember walking out of that meeting quite sure of this school’s strong commitment to teaching.”
The Class of 2021 will have about 230 students when it arrives in the fall of 2017, and it takes a while to get to that total. Admissions Committee members conducted 900 interviews in identifying the Class of 2020, which has now begun classes. The process is labor intensive, and finding more interviewers spreads that load accordingly.
Faculty members Dr. Bruce Beutler, Director of the Center for the Genetics of Host Defense and a Nobel Laureate, and Dr. James Malter, Chairman of Pathology, are longtime interviewers for the committee.
“Like most of the faculty I am busy,” said Dr. Beutler, once a house officer at UT Southwestern and now a Regental Professor of Immunology, who won the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discoveries of how the immune system works. “But all of us feel we are choosing future colleagues, and want them to be the best they can be. We have just minutes to evaluate them and make a choice that will have long-term consequences. Per unit time, it’s one of the most important things we do.”
Dr. Malter, who began working with the Admissions Committee at a previous institution and found that he enjoyed the interaction, said, “Identification of strong candidates is essential of us to maintain our stature as a premier Academic Medical Center. These students graduate with our name and carry our education forever. Many ultimately become our trainees (residents) and in some cases, our faculty. Our process of conducting face-to-face interviews facilitates this selection process and applies human judgment beyond merely assessment of the scores and letters.”
Dr. Wilson said, “We are grateful to Drs. Beutler and Malter for their leadership and the role models they are to our faculty by their consistent participation in interviewing prospective medical students. It’s not a small investment of time, and the number of interviewers involved significantly impacts the time spent by each interviewer.”
That core group of interviewers generally dedicates six or seven weekends each fall, so a doubling of interviewers might mean a halving for the time spent by all involved. Informational sessions are planned for faculty members interested in acting as medical student interviewers. Those sessions are to be held 5:30-6:30 p.m. in the Faculty Club on Aug. 17 and on Aug. 24.
“I believe fatigue is a factor when we look around and begin trying to interview all those college students who have come here to be interviewed in hopes of being accepted,” Dr. Wilson said. “Last year we had more than 100 interviewers. We could use twice that.”
The usual process is that two interviewers conduct a 25-minute interview with the applicant, after which a summary report is written and made available for review. Those evaluations become a part of the applicant’s file, which reflects a great many facets of the person under consideration.
“Academics are important, there’s no question about that,” Dr. Burns said. “It would be very easy to just look at the grades and pick people, but there’s more to it than the grades in the book, so looking at the whole person through the interviews can help keep committee members free from bias when they evaluate applicants.”
Dr. Wilson said Committee members gain much from their interactions with applicants.
“I have seen students who came to UT Southwestern, and who have come back with successful careers,” she said. “It’s very gratifying to have had a role in their admission, and it always reminds me of the oath that we all took, ‘to do no harm.’ I believe that oath works here as well.”
“It’s no small thing, having a hand in deciding who will train the next generation of physicians,” Dr. Burns added. “I’m very cognizant of the fact that they’ll be providing care for the rest of us.”
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Dr. Beutler holds Raymond and Ellen Willie Distinguished Chair in Cancer Research, in Honor of Laverne and Raymond Willie Sr.
Dr. Burns holds the Jane B. and Edwin P. Jenevein, M.D., Chair in Pathology.
Dr. Malter holds the Senator Betty and Dr. Andy Andujar Distinguished Chairmanship of Pathology.
