Investigation of the first year students enrolled at the Faculty of Medicine, Fırat University, in terms of some factors in relation to the nationwide student selection examination points

2. ABSTRACTIt is know that school graduation grade in high school has important impact onenrolment to university. This thesis study was carried out to determine 1) demographicaland socio-economical status 2) the level of impact of high school graduation grade onenrolment to the university, in first year students who enrolled at Firat University, facultyof Medicine during the 2005-2006 academicals years.Mean high school graduation point was 4.86 ± 0.19 and mean test scores for thenationwide examination was 355.210 ± 2.150 but no relationship was detected betweenthese two parameters (r = 0.114; p > 0.05). Of the students, 70.6 % were 18 or 19-year-old,94.2 % were entered that faculty during the first (49.3 %) or second (44.9 %) year, 84.1 %lived in a city center before enrolling at the faculty and 71.0 % were from other provincesrather than Elazığ. Only 14.5 % of the students placed Firat University Faculty ofMedicine as the first choice and 40.6 % placed it in their first 5 choices. Mean monthlyincome of their families were 948 ± 82 YTL and 5.2 ± 0.2 persons were dependent on thatincome. Of their fathers 59.4 % could not complete university education and this values waseven higher for their mothers (88.4 %). Daily smoking habit was 10.1 % among thesestudents. In conclusion, both high school graduation points and university entrance pointsoccurred in a narrow window and this resulted no significant relationship between these twoparameters. Additionally, most of the students enrolled at Fırat University Faculty ofMedicine had had a successful high school background without habbit of smoking and afamily with medium income.Key words: Firat University, Faculty of Medicine, high school graduation point,nationwide selection examination, socioeconomic status.