Effects of Basic Science Courses and Associated Factors on the Academic Status of Medical Students in Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences

The academic status of students makes up an essential component of educational assessments.

The present study was conducted to evaluate the effect of basic science courses on the academic status of medical students in Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences (KUMS), Kermanshah, Iran.

The demographic information of the medical students collected in the present cross-sectional study over a three-year period included age, gender, quota for the Iranian university entrance examination (UEE), interval between receiving high school diploma and admission to university, type of high school diploma, high school GPA and score of specialized and general courses in the UEE. Moreover, the academic data included scores of courses, GPA of the basic science courses and score of the comprehensive basic sciences exam were collected using a questionnaire, and analyzed in SPSS V. 16 using descriptive statistics, one-way ANOVA, Tukey’s test and the chi-square test.

The majority of the students (94.7%) had a high school diploma in experimental sciences and belonged to regions 2 (51.6%) and 3 (37%) of the UEE. Significant differences were observed between different groups of the students admitted to university in terms of age (P < 0.05), although no significant differences were identified in terms of gender, type of high school diploma, UEE quota and high school GPA. The highest scores of specialized courses in percentage in the UEE were associated with biology and chemistry. Significant correlations were also observed between the GPA of basic science courses and high school GPA in all the three groups of students admitted to university (P < 0.05).

The academic status and related factors were found to be nearly the same in the medical students of KUMS in three successive years of admission, and they were affected by constant factors, including high school GPA and GPA of basic science courses.