What Engineering Admissions Can Learn from Medical School Admissions

Medical school admissions have undergone a drastic change in the past decade with increasing awareness about issues of professionalism and a lack of diversity among physicians. These problems are also arising among engineers, where issues of communication, ethics, and cultural competency are beginning to be identified across the profession. Over the years, the traditional admissions process into medical school has been identified to be particularly problematic, as it places a strong emphasis on the cognitive competencies of incoming students, but frequently neglects their non-cognitive competencies or professionalism. The same parallel can be drawn for admission into engineering programs, where the process strongly focuses on cognitive abilities (GPA, standardized test scores) and less so on the non-cognitive skills. In this paper, we suggest various tools to promote the shift to the assessment of professionalism in engineering admissions to ensure that the profession will keep up with the future needs of the population.