As a graduate of 2000 and a participant in Goldacre et al's survey, I was keen to reflect on which influences led me towards psychiatry and how these compared with those of others. Interestingly, the paper reports that only a small percentage of those entering the specialty had intentions to do so before medical school (18%). Thus major influences on career choice are the curriculum, clinical experience and inspiring teachers. My own experience would be consistent with this, along with an interest held by my peer group at medical school. As an Edinburgh graduate I was interested to find that Edinburgh had the highest percentage of doctors choosing psychiatry, after 3 years, of all UK medical schools. Edinburgh has a notable academic department through which the curriculum is conducted but other medical schools with large academic units do not appear to attract as many candidates into the discipline. If recruitment into psychiatry became a problem, at what point should the curriculum at medical schools be reassessed at a national level or by the Royal College of Psychiatrists? Surely the future of psychiatry is dependent on the engaging of prospective students with the corpus of academic and clinical excellence.