The whole emphasis of this book is to aid and encourage potential medical students to examine properly the career they are considering. This chapter deals in more detail with some of the practical “nuts and bolts” of the process of applying to and being selected by a medical school. All too often careers advice concentrates too much on these practicalities, implying the only criteria for choosing future doctors are whether they can fill out an impressive application form and get themselves selected. This detracts from the more important process of your addressing medicine's suitability as a career for you, and your suitability to be a doctor. Only after giving this serious consideration should you consider the details of application and selection set out in this chapter.

Are the clearly specified and hence readily defensible criteria those most likely to yield a wise and cultivated doctor – a person capable of dealing with uncertainty, of compassionate understanding and wise judgment? Can an ideal physician be expected from an intellectual forme fuste who has spent his college years only learning the “right answers”?