There is an increasing interest in the selection of future medical students on the basis of non-cognitive skills such as communication skills, professional behavior, and ethical decision-making. An example is the use of the multiple mini-interview (MMI) in admissions test. The MMI consists of a series of short structured clinical interviews and tasks where test takers show their interpersonal skills and ethical standards. Another example is the use of (video-based) situational judgment tests (SJT) that contain social doctor-patient and doctor-colleague interactions and where candidates have to say how they would respond to a situation. The central idea of using these measures on top of cognitive measures like high school grade point average and Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) scores is that these measures improve the selection procedure of future medical students. That is, through the use of interviews, MMI, or SJT’s candidates are selected that will perform better as a doctor than those who are selected on the basis of cognitive measures alone. Although some studies show that the MMI and SJT may be useful instruments, it is also clear that possessing or acquiring professional skills is not independent of cognitive skills. In the present paper presentation, we discuss this topic from a utility approach that originates from the personnel selection literature. The advantage of this approach is that it immediately shows the practical effect of using different selection instruments. On the basis of a systematic literature review our main message is that in many medical student selection situations the incremental validity and utility of the use of professional and non-cognitive instruments seems to be small as compared to the use of cognitive tests and that the recent trend to use these instruments needs a more solid empirical basis.