The recruitment and selection process in nursing and midwifery education has traditionally been focussed on prior academic attainment and success at interview. There is a growing consensus in academia that personal qualities beyond academic ability might be more helpful in predicting student success, particularly in programmes that seek to prepare individuals to work in professions that recognise the importance of relationships and interactions. The business world has advocated the use of measures of emotional intelligence to aid with recruitment and selection and educators and health professionals are beginning to recognise the potential benefits of introducing similar models when selecting suitable undergraduate students. This study applied a measure of emotional intelligence to discover whether there is indeed a significant predictive relationship between emotional intelligence, attrition and attainment in nursing and midwifery education.