For those having difficulty accessing the articles–here are. the highlights:
– Proportion of URM students entering medical school has fallen over last 20 yrs (15 to 13% of total enrollment) and rate of medical school attendance among urm groups has fallen by 20%. URM students are more likely to practice in underserved areas and come from communities facing challenges related to health disparities.
– Black and Hispanic medical students are 3x as likely as white students to come from families making less than 50k annually.
–Academic health centers can increase the number of URM and rural students entering the medicine pipeline by targeting and investing in specific communities and building programs to both tackle health disparities and train up healthcare professionals to serve the community. Gives example of ba/md at UNM, and others.
– Admissions committees implementing a greater number of “holistic” admissions policies tend to have more diverse classes. Further, there are policies outside the review process which med schools can pursue to increase diversity: “training committee members in implicit bias, blinding interviewers to applicants’ academic metrics, conducting multiple mini-interviews, and involving diverse groups of patients or community members in the admissions process.” Medical schools can also adopt more sophisticated tools for measuring advantages and disadvantages related to SES. Authors give example of a continuous grading scale for this used at UC Davis.
Yes, and that’s why the article was highly critical of medical schools that refuse to accept CC credits.
AMCAS offers low income students a Fee Assistance Program (FAP) that gives free access to MSAR, provides fee access to MCAT study materials and practice exams, reduced MCAT registration fees, and free or reduced secondary fees for up to 12 school each year. Student may be awarded fee assistance up to 5 times in their lifetime.
Which is why academic centers are encouraged to get involved in pipeline issues and develop programs such UNM’s BA/MD which enrolls students from low income/low achievement areas and give them special opportunities and support through undergrad. Students also receive scholarships to help minimize their undergrad debt.
Cost of applications, interviews and medical education may not be the biggest issue. I believe many are getting weeded out much earlier in the process. They don’t receive enough support at the undergrad level to make them successful in their pursuit. We need a lot more programs like JAMP in Texas.
Also, they just can’t compete with all the shadowing and volunteering that wealthy ungrads can do, because they have to work. Just looking at my friend’s kid who is at a LAC - he does shadowing routinely, has done multiple foreign medical humanitarian trips, paid big money for EMT training, has done research at school with a small stipend, has tons of support in the for of MCAT prep, it goes on and on. No actually job because Mom and Dad foot all the bills and will continue to do so. On the non volunteering side of the process, mom and dad have made sure to make the right connections and donations at the LAC and kid has gotten advice and exposure to MDs in powerful positions.
How can a middle income or low income kids compete with that? They can’t. The system stinks.
It is a rigged game. I learned this 3 years ago when my D was a senior in HS and considering a pre-med track.
I started looking at the cost of medical school and I saw horror stories of kids coming out of medical school with $300K+ in debt, and I thought this made no financial sense whatsoever. I told my D that we were willing to pay for 4 years of college, and she could decide whether to spend it on undergrad, or instead get merit scholarships for undergrad (at Alabama and other places) and we would then fully pay for medical school. She chose not to do pre-med and attend her first choice undergrad college, and has no regrets.
It became pretty clear to me that medical school is really best suited for children of financially secure families.