<p>I was just curious as to how much of an impact what race/ethnicity an med school applicant is has on the application process. Is it significant or more minor?</p>
<p>Kind of along those lines, I'm a white male but in terms of ethnicity I am also "legally" hispanic. I say that because my mom and both of her parents were born in Central America; however, I do not have a Spanish name, and although I can hold a decent conversation, I am by no means fluent in Spanish. </p>
<p>Basically, my concern would be if I marked myself down as hispanic, how the admissions committee would look at it when I don't "appear" to be hispanic or that I can't speak spanish fluently, etc. Would they think I was just trying to gain an advantage, or am I over-thinking it?</p>
<p>Go to the Hispanic Students forum (under College Admissions, Specialty Topics) to see how Hispanic is defined by the US Census. It is by self-identification, so surname, physical appearance, and even Spanish language competency are not relevant in the definition of Hispanic. Hispanics can be, and are, of any race(s).</p>
<p>Of course within the pool of Hispanics there is a very wide range of factors that may affect med school admissions, including: SES, country of origin, overcoming adversity, association with the Hispanic community.</p>
<p>IMO admissions staff are aware of the varied backgrounds of applicants, so if you answer the question honestly, then you should not fear the appearance of gaming the system. And when you fill out AMCAS, you will give information about Hispanic country of origin, race(s) and language proficiency, so there shouldn’t be any surprises when you interview. </p>
<p>Here is the AAMC definition of underrepresented in Med, note the difference between the current and previous definition:</p>
<p>I suspect part of the reason why Puerto Ricans get such a boost in because there are 4 (yes, 4) medical schools in Puerto Rico and all of them are heavily biased in favor of island residents. One is 100% island resident while the other 3 have 85% island resident enrollment. With population of ~4M, that’s 4 medical schools to serve a population just half of that of NYC.</p>
<p>^That makes sense, while PR are two of the most underrepresented Hispanic groups, I wondered why the stats show them with such a large difference from other Hispanics.</p>
<p>I don’t think that’s the reason. NYC has 5 medical schools (Columbia, Cornell, NYu, Sinai, downstate) and none of them have strong in city biases. If anything, that explanation would argue against a PR boost. Doesn’t that speak to a high density of opportunities for PR students and thus no boost needed? Has to be something else</p>
<p>It looks like the previous posters were trying to say that there apparent boost for Puerto Rican students may really by a boost for students in Puerto Rico applying to medical schools there.</p>
<p>My interpretation of WOWmom’s post was that since so many PRs attend med schools in PR (relatively high number of med schools relative to the population size), there are a dearth of PR candidates to US med schools, making them extremely underrepresented and therefore leading to the MCAT/gpa differential.</p>
<p>I have same situation as you. Half of my family is from Peru, yet I have an Italian last name. I’ve always listed myself as Hispanic however. It definitely helps with admissions/scholarship opportunities etc. I’ve never had any problems of having to prove that I was Hispanic enough haha</p>