AOA Election Process for Students at Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth

There are two parts to AOA Selection
Part I – Establishing academic eligibility & inviting eligible students to apply
Part II - Application review, scoring and final election of candidates

Part I

Establishing academic eligibility

Background: AOA distinguishes itself from other awards, like Gold Humanism Honor Society, because academic performance is a factor in selection. In 2020-2021, we changed our threshold to the top 40% academically.

1) Pre-clinical

Phase I dean will review student performance across all of Phase 1 and generate a list of 1–10, 11–20, 21–30, and 31–40 students and submit in groups to AOA councilor.

Points will be assigned as follows:

Phase 1 Points
  • Top 10: 4
  • Top 11–20: 3
  • Top 21–30: 2
  • Top 31–40: 1
 

2) Clinical

Phase II dean will generate a list of highly achieving students based on the number of honors in 5 of the 6 Phase 2 required clerkships. These will be reported to AOA councilor as the #/5 (i.e., 5/5, 4/5, 3/5).

  1. Only clerkships that have been graded by June 24th will be included.
    1. If a student only has grades in 5 clerkships, these 5 grades will be used.
    2. If a student has grades in 6 clerkships, the lowest grade will be dropped and the other 5 used.
Phase 2 Points
  • 5/5 honors: 5
  • 4/5 honors: 4
  • 3/5 honors: 3
  • 2/5 honors: 2

The AOA councilor will tabulate points for above to generate a list of the 40% of the class with the highest academic achievement.

**ONLY the AOA Councilor will have access to both of the above data sets. This information will not be shared with other individuals.

**This is not a class ranking. Please refer to the Geisel Student Handbook if further clarification of use of grades in awards is needed.

Professionalism

The list of the academically eligible students will be submitted to the Associate Dean of Student Affairs and the Chair of the Professional Standards & Conduct Board to identify any validated professionalism issues. **Validated professionalism issues negate eligibility for AOA.

Part II

Application process for eligible students

  • Students fill out a standard application, designed to highlight activities that fulfill AOA national criteria (scholarship & research, community and school service, leadership, professionalism and ethics)
  • Students will fill out a standard application, designed to highlight activities that fulfill AOA national criteria (scholarship & research, community and school service, leadership, professionalism and ethics).

Application Review and Election of Students

  • All applications are de-identified and reviewed in blinded fashion
  • All applications are reviewed by two AOA Election Committee members and scored independently using a standard scoring rubric. Final score for each applicant is then determined by consensus of the two committee members.
  • AOA Councilor reviews all applications and scoring to ensure interobserver consistency in application of the rubric.

Final Election

  • Final list based on scores from the application
  • 20% of the Geisel graduating class can be elected each year
  • Final list to be vetted by AOA executive board
 

Expectations

Election to AOA is recognition of a students’ academic excellence and their demonstrated commitment to improve medicine and health care via immersion in the community, leadership, scholarship and/or professionalism.

There are expectations of elected student members, including planning & execution of a community service event, updating the AOA Guide to Applying to Residency, and assisting in hosting an AOA Visiting Professor. Students who accept their election to the Geisel chapter of AOA should anticipate this.