Preparatory courses for applicants for medical studies

: From 1991, the First Medical Faculty of the Charles University arranges for applicants for the medical study two-semester preparatory courses paid by the applicants. Their purpose is to improve knowledge of high-school physics, chemistry and biology with orientation to model questions published by the faculty [1, 2, 3]. Variants of 100-questions sets for the examination are generated by a computer and they are altered every year [4]. Two types of preparatory courses are available. Type A--every Monday and Tuesday between 17.00 and 18.45, physics and chemistry in odd weeks, biology and Latin in even weeks. Latin is not a discipline considered during the admission examination, however, managing of its basic knowledge facilitates not only understanding problems considered in the other disciplines, but it is particularly useful for learning the special terminology in the first year of the study of medicine. Course of type B is held once a month, on Saturdays between 8.30 and 14.00 and it is particularly designed for applicants residing beyond the capital city of Prague. In the course of 10 semesters implemented, 980 and 1,410 students passed through courses of type A and B, respectively [5, 6]. The purpose of our analysis was to evaluate the difference between results of admission procedure of applicants who participated and of those who did not participate in the preparatory course. Basic data were yielded by the Department of Students of the Deans Office. We considered the number of applicants, their results in the course of their four years of study at high schools and the number of points acquired in physical, chemical and biological tests. We furthermore obtained applications for preparatory courses in school years 1993/94 and 1994/95. The results were processed with the help of data base programs Access and Excel (Microsoft). In each of the years of interest, the applicants were divided into four groups depending on the type of the study: 1--medicine (L) and 2--stomatology (S) or depending on whether 3--they were registered in preparatory courses or 4--not. The analysis carried out resulted in the following conclusion: a--both groups of applicants (registered and not registered in preparatory courses) had comparable study results during the last four years of their high-school study; b--in the admission procedure, students, who passed through preparatory courses, achieved undoubtedly better results in comparison with those who did not pass through these course, which holds in medicine as well as stomatology; c--there was about the same improvement of knowledge of physics, chemistry and biology in both types of the preparatory courses.