Medicine is a profession with a long history of research and high standards of methodological rigour and evidence-based decision making. These standards are being transferred into medical education. Universities are starting to collect high-quality data on their admissions systems. This has not been a short-term proposition. Medical courses are long and the ultimate aim is to produce effective members of the profession rather than effective medical students, although one must precede the other. Deciding whether selection processes have "worked" is not a question which can be answered quickly. In the past, selection was based on academic merit and, in some cases, a relatively unstructured and informal entry interview. In the last ten years this situation has changed. The reasons for these changes, the nature of the procedures currently employed and the consequences of the changes are explored in this study. Methods of selection of students into the undergraduate medical course at The University of Western Australia (UWA) and the contextual issues surrounding this serve as a case study of modern practice in this complex and often controversial area. This case study develops in detail the issues which precipitated change at UWA, the response of the university to these issues and the methods which were employed to implement change. Non-Australian Universities--An Overview of Selection Processes is appended. An appendix contains a brief description of the selection processes used in the medical schools in the universities of Cambridge (UK), McMaster (Canada), Manchester (UK), Otago (NZ), Harvard (USA) and Auckland (NZ), and some general comments about them. [This issue is devoted to a modified and updated doctoral study on new ways of selecting students for medical school.]