Background:

In higher education institutions, the analysis of academic trajectories is key to evaluating training, which can generate interventions to promote regularity and improve terminal efficiency.

Objective:

To analyze the differences in the academic trajectories of the student body of the 2001 to 2018 generations of the medical degree at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).

Material and methods:

A longitudinal comparative study was conducted with 18,739 UNAM Faculty of Medicine students, integrated by real cohorts from 2001 to 2018. Survival functions were adjusted with the Kaplan-Meier method and a Cox proportional hazards model was adjusted to evaluate the effect of sex and high school of origin. Failure in first-year students was also analyzed.

Results:

The study demonstrated that sex and baccalaureate history are variables that impact failure and consequently regularity and terminal efficiency.

Conclusions:

Due to a lower failure rate, there is a higher regularity and terminal efficiency in men compared to women, and in those that were admitted from external baccalaureates or the National Preparatory School, compared to those from the College of Sciences and Humanities.