Wang Weili, a student at Chih-Ping Senior High School in Taoyuan County, is the first student from a private Taoyuan high school to be admitted to National Taiwan University’s medical school. (Chin Hung-hao)

The National Taiwan University School of Medicine participated in the Stars Program for university admissions for the first time in 2012. Unfortunately, that participation gave rise to controversy when the medical school admitted more Stars Program applicants than it had originally proposed. This led to accusations of unfairness as the “stars” crowded out students who would otherwise have been accepted based on their university entrance exam scores.

The NTU medical school’s participation in the Stars Program has prompted another important question: should medical schools incorporate an interview into the Stars process to help ensure that they enroll the kind of empathetic individuals with strong communication skills who make the best doctors?

Every March for the last six years, the public has scrutinized the university admissions rolls to see whether any Stars Program students have gained entrance to Taiwan’s top schools. This year’s introduction of the program to all 11 of Taiwan’s medical schools has garnered particularly close attention.

When the Stars Program posted its 2012 results on March 9, the public learned that the National Taiwan University School of Medicine, one of the most sought-after programs for students of elite high schools, had accepted nine “star” students, two from private high schools and seven from top high schools in central and southern Taiwan.

Among them was Wang Weili, who became both the first student from the 48-year-old Chih-Ping Senior High School and the first from a private Tao­yuan high school ever admitted to NTU’s medical school.

Wang had scored high enough on the Basic Competency Test for Junior High School Students to win a place at Tai­pei’s prestigious Jian­guo Senior High School, but he chose to remain in his hometown instead. Located in Yang­mei City, Tao­yuan County, about a half-hour drive from downtown ­Zhongli City, Chih-Ping is a model small-town school.

Remarking on the relative sophistication of urban high-school students, Eric Yang, dean of the high-school division of Chih-Ping, says that urban and rural areas differ greatly in the amount of available cultural stimulus. “Most of the good universities are in Tai­pei, and faculty members often give lectures at city high schools. There’s also more going on in the arts. Of course Tai­pei’s high-school students seem more worldly; they even speak better-accented English.”

The Stars Program aims to reduce disparities between urban and rural university admissions and foster social justice. During its six years of existence, it has used test scores and class ranks exclusively as its selection criteria. It has not employed any other evaluation standards, such as interviews.

Though the Stars Program is well intentioned, some university programs have been slow to sign on. Top medical schools like those at NTU, National Cheng Kung University, and Fu Jen Catholic University are cases in point. In fact, they only introduced a Star admissions process this year after becoming concerned that the legislature might freeze some of their funding.