It was reported that around 40 per cent of incoming freshmen to the National University of Singapore's Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine this year are from junior colleges that are not among the top-ranked (NUS medical school sees greater diversity in intake, July 17).

Professor Chong Yap Seng, dean of Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, was quoted as saying that selecting students for medical school should not be just about grades, but about whether they have the right skills and values to be good doctors.

That is well and good. But how can one judge whether an applicant fresh out of school has the right skills and values for a medical career?

It must be a vague and very subjective test, guesswork at best.

What is wrong with the meritocratic old ways of judging by the quality of the candidate's academic results, further refined through an interview?

We tell our children to work hard academically to get the relevant results for the course they wish to pursue in university, only for them to be denied a place by some populist policy. Their parents will have to cough up a fortune to send them overseas.

I don't think those who are unfairly rejected, especially those who do not have the means to go overseas to study, would think very kindly about their country and its professed meritocracy.

If the university and the Ministry of Education wish to be more charitable and populist in their policy, they should allow for not more than 25 per cent of candidates with less than stellar results, whether they are from the polys or less well-known junior colleges.

The reported 40 per cent in my opinion is just too much and unfair to those who had worked hard for a place in the medical course.

Anthony C. H. Leong