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. 2022 Nov 14;14(11):e31496.
doi: 10.7759/cureus.31496. eCollection 2022 Nov.

Impact of High School Quality on Academic Performance Throughout Medical School

Lina J Chan  1 , Deepal Patel  1 , Arbab Khalid  1 , Kencie Ely  1 , Gemma Lagasca  1 , Edward Simanton  1   2
Affiliations

Impact of High School Quality on Academic Performance Throughout Medical School

Lina J Chan et al. Cureus. .

Abstract

Introduction: Numerous studies currently evaluate medical school success and performance using college Grade Point Average (GPA) and Medical College Admissions Test (MCAT) scores. These studies demonstrate that students who score low on the MCAT will continually perform worse than their peers on medical school exams and board exams. We investigated where a student attended high school and how that factor can affect medical school performance because most studies evaluated performance based on college attendance.

Methods: Our retrospective study evaluated 184 students at Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine (KSOM) and showed higher-quality high schools, in comparison to lower-quality high schools, affected medical school performance. We categorized two groups for high school quality based on the U.S. News scorecard for programs within Nevada: those students with a high school reading proficiency (HSRP) >50% and those with an HSRP <50%. These two groups were then standardized based on percentile within the school and averaged using HSRP, MCAT, pre-clinical, step 1, clinical, and step 2 scores. A line chart was graphed to demonstrate the difference between the two groups.

Data/results: As might be expected, our results showed significantly higher MCAT scores from students who attended high-quality versus low-quality high schools. Our results also showed that although students from low-quality high schools performed worse for the first part of medical school, by step 2, students will score similarly in both groups.

Conclusion: Students who performed poorly on the MCAT and attended lower-quality high schools will score as competitively as their peers by step 2.

Keywords: correlation; reading proficiency; secondary education; step 1; usmle.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Exam performance trends by high school quality
Figure 2
Figure 2. HSRP group performance for MCAT compared to national distribution
Figure 3
Figure 3. HSRP group performance for USMLE step 1 compared to national distribution
Figure 4
Figure 4. HSRP group performance for step 2 compared to national distribution
Figure 5
Figure 5. Low-quality and high-quality group exam percentiles standardized to national performance
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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