Date Presented 04/12/21
Establishing effective methods for the admissions process for OT programs is vital to ensure future growth and success in the profession. The admissions process provides insight into the applicant’s capabilities and values. This study aimed to evaluate which admissions components are being used most frequently by top-rated OT programs and, of those components, which will produce the strongest OT students.
Primary Author and Speaker: Mallory A. Babin
Contributing Authors: Pamela S. Roberts
PURPOSE: The future leaders of the field are chosen through the admissions process. The overall goal for any allied health program’s admissions process is to assess required criteria and identify the prospective students that have the highest potential for success not only in the program’s curriculum, but also in the field as a practicing clinician (e.g. Bathje, Ozelie, & Deavila, 2014). Although the objective of finding the most suitable applicants is clear in this process, there is still little peer reviewed evidence on which components of the admissions process are successful at including the highest level of students within the program. The purpose of this presentation is to present results of a study evaluating common academic and non-academic criteria utilized in occupational therapy admission processes and determine what criteria are used by programs with high student pass-rates on their National Board for Certification in Occupational Therapy (NBCOT) exam following completion of an occupational therapy program.
DESIGN: This descriptive, correlational study using publicly-available data sought to describe the criteria used in top-ranking entry level masters and doctoral occupational therapy programs in their admissions processes.
METHOD: Admissions criteria components and NBCOT pass rates were collected from the top 107 occupational therapy programs, as reported by US News and World Report. Variables were obtained using publicly available websites available for each program and the NBCOT webpage. Descriptive statistics were recorded regarding the frequency of utilizing academic and nonacademic admissions criteria components for the entry-level OT programs. Correlational statistics were utilized to examine the relationship between each admissions criteria component and the NBCOT pass rate outcome variable.
RESULTS: Analysis of the data showed that the admissions criteria frequently utilized by the top OT programs included a bachelor degree prior to matriculation (90.99% programs), minimum undergraduate GPA (55.86%), personal statement (90.09%), letters of recommendation (97.30%), observation hours (74.77%), and an interview (61.26%). Meanwhile, few programs required applicants to submit a minimum math/science GPA (11.71%) or a writing sample (40.54%). Though differences were observed between admissions criteria requirements of programs which had 100% NBCOT pass rates and those which had less than 100% NBCOT pass rates, these differences were not statistically significant.
CONCLUSION: This study aimed to evaluate the association of academic metrics and nonacademic metrics used to identify successful students defined by passing their NBCOT exam. This study successfully identified these admissions criteria, however there was no statistical difference between those with and without 100% NBCOT passing rates on any specific admissions criteria. As a result, it can be concluded that prerequisite requirements represent the minimum standards set by a program for student inclusion, and it is likely that NBCOT pass rates are impacted by other factors that were not publicly available or included in this study. Future research is needed to investigate the relationship of these criteria to specific program curriculums or measurements, such as number of students passing fieldwork or performance on skills assessments within the program courses. It is beneficial for the growth of the occupational therapy profession to examine alternative variables, outside of the scope of admissions criteria, that could affect the development of students that are successful both in the classroom and in practice.
