<p>I think that it is a more practical or prudent solution to allow for more PA’s to meet the higher demand of the health care system. </p>
<p>I am also wondering if an IS medical school may be putting more weight on the GPA/MCAT for their own state school UG students? I thought someone posted something like that a while back. It makes sense to me since the average state school may get more lower-tier students. If they are too loose on the admission stats, it looks bad and the board examination passing rate may be uglier.</p>
<p>"all really bad college students should pursue political careers to make us all well and happy. Is not my conclusion in the same zone as most of our government - “logic free” zone? I had tried very hard… "</p>
<p>My conclusion is that rick perry got weeded out in organic chemistry and anatomy during the prevet classes which seems to be the main thrust of this thread - people getting Cs so they don’t pursue a career in medicine (or can’t). However, he would have been fine if he chose a major appropriate for his calling. President’s bio does say he got a degree in political science. However, no one has access to his grades - must be the only one who got away without releasing them in the last 30 years.</p>
<p>It’s pretty hypocritical that after all the talk of how awful it is that engineers get stereotyped, you turn around and do the exact same thing to students of any major, including engineering, from one of the top schools in the country.</p>
<p>There are too many things to address here and too much to read in the very short breaks that I take, but I will say that I noticed that you mentioned that schools reject students because they are not qualified. While certainly some of the applicants to a given medical school are not qualified, even the admissions committee themselves will admit that a very, very large percentage of their rejection lists are perfectly qualified to get into the school. For even as nebulous and multidimensional as “being qualified” is, it’s still common knowledge that when there’s a limited resource, there will be people who are qualified who do not get it. This is in no way unique to medicine. It is just that medicine is more limited and thus more competitive so it’s more obvious.</p>
<p>I would also like to point out that medical education is not only limited by the ad com’s desires to keep salaries down (which I won’t pretend isn’t playing SOME role - but keep in mind how high the debt of medical school is for so many doctors. Surely sakky you aren’t saying that medicine should be a field only for the rich, but the sweeping overhaul of the medical system you are calling for is a separate discussion), but other factors limit the size of schools as well: there is insurance for medical students, there is opportunity costs by the fact that teaching earns the hospital/school less money than procedures, the infrastructure, the equipment necessary to educate (cadavers, human sims, standardized patients), and hopefully I can find the article sent out by my classmate, because surprisingly, hospitals actually lose money on medical students despite the high tuitions.</p>
<p>My bottom line is: medical school admissions is less numbers focused than say law school, and I don’t really see a problem with not boosting the GPAs of people who study irrelevant material nor do I see a problem with that fact that good grades and good MCAT do not guarantee one a spot in medical school. From my understanding of your complaints, the only way to appease you would be to completely overhaul the entire medical system, not just medical schools and that is a separate discussion.</p>
<p>Actually, why is that terrible? What you would call ‘stereotypes’, I would simply note as statistical truths that - while clearly not highly informative of individuals, do provide useful information about the average behavior of groups. For example, would it be a ‘stereotype’ to say that engineering students, on average, tend to know a lot about engineering? </p>
<p>But even if you still find that to be wrong, I would point out that statistical analysis - or what you would call ‘stereotyping’ - happens as an integral part of the admissions process. The reason why adcoms prefer applicants with high grades and MCAT scores is because grades and MCAT scores are (supposedly) statistically correlated with future performance as a physician. I therefore wouldn’t really object if engineers were not preferentially admitted if engineering was indeed linked to poorer performance as a physician. I am simply asking that the link be statistically well-founded. </p>
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<p>And also more crucial for society. Let’s be honest - if we produce one less art history graduate, or even one less lawyer, it probably doesn’t really matter. But given that millions of Americans lack reasonable access to health-care, I think it’s hard to make the case that we don’t need more physicians. </p>
<p>Look, at the end of the day, the US suffers from an embarrassingly mediocre health-care system for such a rich nation. To be sure, rich Americans have access to the best health-care in the world. But like I said, millions of poor Americans have minimal access to any health-care at all. Nor will their plight be improved through either Obamacare or any Republican alternatives, for what does it matter if you have access to health insurance if physicians lack the capacity to take you? </p>
<p>That’s why I continue to believe that plenty of med-school applicants comparable to kristin’s qualifications or better (30+/3.8+) - including the engineering students - could have improved the overall health condition of the nation had they been allowed to become medical students, and by extension, doctors. Maybe they wouldn’t have become the best doctors, but hey, that’s still better than nothing at all.</p>
<p>Perhaps. But what we don’t know is if those 3.8/30 never get into med school. What we only have is data for one year. It may be that some/many/all of those students worked on the ‘weakness’ in their app and were accepted the following year. Or, maybe they went MD instead of MD/PhD, or DO instead of MD.</p>
<p>It is possible that they do in fact become doctors. </p>
<p>(btw: some of those apps maybe international and never be accepted into US med school, but the Caribbean beacons.)</p>
<p>I heard a bigger issue is how many slots in the residency programs the government/society is willing/able to fund, rather than the sizes of medical schools.</p>
<p>Looking at the issue from a different point of view, this is about who has the power to control/influence the policy and the funding. Just take an extreme (unrealistic) example to help illustrate this. Suppose that the policy is mostly controlled by a group of 1000 elites, and assume that they care about their own interests only. If there are enough best-trained doctors to serve them, they will be happy and they will lack the motivation to set up the policy to use a lot of tax money to train more doctors. They would rather spend the tax money on medicine or drug research. (This was actually happening in most of our history.)</p>
<p>From this point of view, the healthcare issue may be just the tug war between those who have “good” jobs (meaning company-provided having health insurance) and those who do not have such good jobs (i.e., no healthcare benefit) – this also assumes that everybody only cares about his/her own interest. Then those who have the insurance accuse those who do not: “Why aren’t you working hard in order to get what I have, Mr./Mrs. Jealousy.” When shareholders’ interest in the healthcare insurance industry is taken into consideration, it becomes even more complicated. I think we can rely on those who failed in the organic chemistry class when they are young (who know who he is!) help all of us to sort this out :)</p>
<p>"improved the overall health condition of the nation " in case of this nation unfortunately has little to do with MDs. It is out of their control because of wide spread epidemic of very preventable deseases (primarily diabetese, hypertension, heart) that are sole responsibility of each citizen. No MD in a world can make us eat less and move more, I see it very well first hand watching my own family members. MD can only communicate certain info, they cannot control behavior of each individual. Having med. isurance will not do it either. The situation is dire and getting worse and it pulls resources and focus of whole medical field.<br>
Sorry for sidetrack and being politically incorrect.</p>
<p>Indeed true. But it’s still a waste of time and effort, and hence of overall efficiency in the system. After all, if the adcoms were going to admit somebody a year later after he ‘remedied his weaknesses’ anyway, why not admit him immediately rather than waste everybody’s time? It’s not like he’s going to become a radically different person after one year’s time. </p>
<p>Or if he truly has certain deficiencies that give an adcom enough pause to cause the adcom to desire more information, then why not offer him deferred contingent admission - the contingency predicated on him completing certain tasks (e.g. retake the MCAT and score above a certain value). Lest anybody find that to be a radical notion, I would point out that that’s not significantly different from the deferred contingent admissions offered by many med-schools by their combination BS/MD programs which are generally contingent upon that student maintaining a certain GPA and/or MCAT within the BS program to remain eligible. If med-schools already offer such deferred contingent admissions to high school seniors, would it really be so radical to also offer it to current premeds?</p>
<p>I would argue that, just as important as the war that you cite, is the ‘second-front’ war between those with guaranteed-access to insurance that is not only guaranteed by the government to be renewable for life but also never invokes medical underwriting and therefore never any exclusions or premium increases for preexisting conditions, vs. those who can only dream of having access to such a policy. The former group is of course a reference to the millions of Americans on Medicare. </p>
<p>One of the great ironies of the health-insurance debate characterizes those who have Medicare who wanted to preserve it for themselves while also ensuring that access to the program was not widened to others. If a government-operated health insurance system such as Medicare is so effective, then why not give it to everybody? On the other hand, if it’s not effective, then why not abolish it entirely for everybody? How is it logically consistent for only certain people (that is, the old or those with certain specified disabilities) to have access to Medicare, but not others? </p>
<p>But I also agree with your sentiments that ultimately it may not be a matter of logical consistency at all, but rather the outcome of the dynamics of social and political power. Old people vote and so they can ensure that they have access to Medicare while also ensuring that others don’t.</p>