Should New Zealand medical schools use a lottery system to select their students?

Abstract

Over the years, entry into New Zealand medical programmes has become increasingly difficult and controversial. Many worthy candidates are rejected from medical school despite having a strong academic background and excellent non-academic attributes. Medical schools’ obsession over choosing the most “outstanding” applicants has created great concern over the fairness and predictive ability of current medical school selection procedures, with some scholars pro- posing the use of a lottery admission system to select future medical students. This paper examines the issues related to the current selection system and evaluates the potential feasibility for a lottery to become a more neutral, inclusive, and fairer admission system.