More boys opting for medical careers as ‘safe option’

Boys who get top results in the Leaving Certificate may be applying in higher numbers for medical degrees because they see it as a safer career in a downturn.

A study in the Irish Medical Journal found no definite impact of the HPAT (Health Professions Admission Test) on the gender of entrants to medical schools since its introduction in 2009.

Siún O’Flynn, Anne Mills, and Tony Fitzgerald from University College Cork’s school of medicine analysed Leaving Certificate and HPAT results of boys and girls who applied for undergraduate medicine and success from 2009 to 2011. They also looked at success rates by gender in Irish students gaining places at the five undergraduate medicine degrees, of which just 490 were offered in August.

They were surprised to find that male applicants did better in the Leaving Certificate, because females generally do better overall.

“We wonder whether external factors such as the prevailing economic climate may have influenced applicant behaviour. It is known that male applicants to medicine tend to increase in times of economic uncertainty,” they wrote.

“Perhaps the apparent security offered by a career in medicine has made such an option more attractive to high-academic-performing males in Ireland.”

Females had predominated in entry to medical schools here, a trend mirrored internationally, but they fell from 59% to 49% of entrants the first year that HPAT was used. This sparked concerns about an unfair advantage for boys but the previous trend reverted in 2010, only for boys to increase their entrant numbers to 54.5% in 2011.

The authors said differences between average scores of boys and girls at HPAT were minimal and the system is still weighted to favour candidates who do strongest in the Leaving Certificate.

HPAT was introduced to remove the pressure of needing almost perfect grades in all six Leaving Certificate subjects counted for college entry. Anybody with over 480 out of a maximum 600 CAO points is eligible to have their results combined with scores in the aptitude test.