@ChemEngMD is making very valid points. The absolute first thing I did when making a list of schools was go to there SNMA/LMSA pages and diversity offices. The top tier medical schools tend to have the best diversity offices for a number of factors. Location near urban centers, resources that support diversity and inclusion, and successful alumni. I don't think Wash U is necessarily against diversity, I just think it is very hard to recruit URM students to Wash U over Harvard, Yale etc. Wash U is a great school but it does not have the track record in URM communities that its peers have. These schools go through unbelievable lengths to recruit URM students because the pool is so small and top tier schools have rigid academic requirements. There are only 300 Blacks with over a 30 less than 100 over a 33/3.6 so you have 140+ MD schools attempting to recruit from this small pool of applicants with credentials good enough for admission into these schools. 9/10 unless the URM student is from the midwest or has ties there he/she will pick the top 10/20 east coast school if possible because its a safer choice. Latino/Latina numbers are not far off.
Wash U also is in the midwest, which prevents it from getting to URM-dense areas like NYC, Chicago, Philly, DC etc. I know the diversity people on a first-name basis at most of these schools because they travel. They legit get on the bus/plane and travel. From NYC, you can reach a disproportionate amount of URMs in a 4 hour radius.
http://www.hms.harvard.edu/dcp/
http://ecommons.med.harvard.edu/ec_vqp.asp?name_GUID={400FCB06-3487-4108-8209-14FFA40875F0}
http://medicine.yale.edu/education/omca/diversity/history.aspx
http://ps.columbia.edu/education/student-life/office-diversity
From Harvard:
Forty-two years ago the Black American enrollment at Harvard Medical School (HMS) was less than one percent. HMS was not alone in being a predominantly white institution: in 1968, only four percent of all first year medical students nationwide were from minority groups (2.8 percent were Black). Until the early 1970’s, most Black American doctors were educated at Howard and Meharry medical schools.
However, the social climate of the late 1960’s sparked the first nationwide efforts to bring minority students into medical schools. After the 1968 assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., close to 300 HMS students signed a petition urging the school to comprehensively review its ability to train Black physicians and to assess its relationship to the Black community in Boston. That same year, HMS Dean Robert H. Ebert created the Committee for Disadvantaged Students, charging it with increasing the number of disadvantaged students at HMS and Harvard School of Dental Medicine (HSDM). The new committee recommended to the faculty that 15 slots be created for disadvantaged students.
These efforts by HMS have produced impressive results.
In 1969, HMS accepted 16 Black students for the class of 1973. Since that time, HMS has graduated over 1,100 minority physicians. Many of our alumni have assumed leadership roles in different fields of medicine. The Medical School currently has 172 (24%) students from underrepresented groups (89 African Americans, 29 Chicanos/Mexican Americans, 6 Native Americans, 6 Puerto Ricans, and 42 Hispanics)
From Yale:
The Yale University School of Medicine has made a strong commitment to training underrepresented minority physicians and scientists. Over the past 30 years, over 300 African American students have graduated with MD's or with combined MD/PhD degrees; African American graduates comprised 9.5% of the MD's graduating from the School during this period.
Beginning in the mid-1980's, Hispanic/Latino and Asian American students began to comprise an increasing proportion of the classes admitted to YSM. In 1999, the minority student entering class included 24 Asian American, 13 African American, and 11 Hispanic/Latino student in a class of 104. These three ethnic/racial groups now comprise 40% of the Yale medical students: (Asian Americans 21%, African Americans 11% and Hispanic/Latino student 8%).
Approximately 12 students each year are accepted into Yale's MD/PhD program. Currently, 12 of the 75 MD/PhD students are African American or Hispanic/Latino students. Participants in the program are selected from already enrolled Yale medical students and from new applicants.
@DermViser - I would say that amongst the top 20/30 schools when compared directly are equivalent in terms of prestige, curriculum, grading etc. The big difference comes in the diversity office and scholarships, which usually separates the top 10 and the top 20 from a URM perspective. The top schools have low unit loans and disadvantaged scholarships. Even if I wasn't disadvantaged, just the fact the the school has them says something about its character. Wash U isn't known to be strong in institutional support for URMs and scholarships. I never even heard of Wash U until my junior year of college. In contrast, Harvard sends fliers on official crimson red letter to ever pre-medical committee recruiting URMs. I went to a totally unknown, no prestige, small liberal arts college and guess what fliers were hanging up on the pre-med bulletin in the BIO dept. You bet, Harvard.
I will make an analogy to football. Its like patriots vs. 49ers. If I am coming out of college and want to make a super bowl, I will probably want to sign with patriots over the 49ers - even though the 49ers are really good. Wash U is really good and has great programs but it doesn't have the track record of its peers. Harvard is like the Patriots of diversity and inclusiveness.
