2013-2014 Washington University in St. Louis Application Thread

BU Medical Sciences
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DermViser said:
3-4 schools when compared directly are rarely equivalent in terms of prestige, curriculum, grading, scholarships, etc. There are usually sizable differences.

What I am saying is I don't think you can extrapolate your observations to directly saying that URMs are "not a priority" for WashU as you just have. That's quite an accusation to make. Something tells me though next year, WashU will be investing in the biggest sign on the med school campus. LOL.
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You betcha. I'd put money on it. 😀
 
Asperphys said:
Thank you for sharing the above @Espadaleader. Clearly, Harvard is ahead of the curve on URM recruitment and it would benefit WashU to follow suit. What I'm hearing is that they were ahead in generating URM leaders in academic medicine, which started the "virtuous cycle" (credits to Robert Reich) of drawing URMs to Harvard who then became leaders in medicine and so on.

On a side note, Dermviser and a number of people already tread a lot of ground in the URM discussion but we will have a little less hand-waving if we do a chronicidal-style data analysis. So I took a stab at it and I got the following:
View attachment 180114The schools are identical to those in chronicidal's original list. The %URM is also what he reported. Among the issues raised are whether the strict GPA/MCAT criteria limit the %URM at WashU, how much better peer institutions are in recruiting URMs etc. So I went back to the publicly available data. MCAT and GPAs were obtained from findthebest.com website (after a Google search) and the rest were from AAMC again (data aggregated from TWO years-- so if you want annual numbers, mentally divide by 2). What is immediately evident is that WashU MCAT cutoff being higher than other schools cuts the pool of considered URMs from 1845 to about half (835). Ditto for non-URMs.

DISCLAIMER: This table is not meant to imply any kind of med school ranking. There is obviously a LOT more that goes into med student admissions than stats.

I then calculated the projected %URM = (#URM in the range considered by the school)/(#total in that same range). If you divide the school's %URM with this value, you get a sense of the effectiveness of URM recruitment (recruitment yield). WashU aside, in the (yellow) block that considered the 1845 top students, Penn and Vanderbilt were the standouts. This is where we'd like to hear feedback about what they are doing-- nice big office? premed recruitment a la Harvard? more financial aid? URM faculty as mentors? better URM representation at interview events?

Now keeping in mind the size of the URM pool that is being considered by each school (URM pool = #URM in range for each school / # total URM applicants), I wondered if it would be more fair to correct the value of the recruitment yield based on the size of the URM pool being considered (ie corrected yield = %URM/URM Pool). So in a way, would WashU getting 11.5% URM from a pool half the size that Penn etc were considering be comparable to getting double that URM% that was chosen from a pool twice as big as WashU's? Just a thought. Being a basic scientist, I'm not very good with this kind of analysis.
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That spreadsheet is so badass. 😍
 
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Top tier medical schools provide an environment for URM students that other medical schools cannot provide. This table makes that clear. Wash U is only 11% URM. That's paltry. Remember that 11% is including Blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans. This supports what @ChemEngMD was saying. There is no way Wash U can provide a good URM experience to its peers. They simply don't have the numbers. If I was an admitted student, why would I go there when I could go to so many other schools with better numbers. Schools like Penn, Stanford, Vandy etc. do much more to recruit than Wash U. Out of the private schools in the US News Top 10, Wash U has the lowest percentage of URMs. Trust me, a visit to Wash U is like night and day to its peers and these numbers show it. Personally, I don't think its an excuse. UCLA, UCSF, Harvard, Penn, Hopkins, Stanford, Yale, Columbia... All of these schools have different goals and challenges. Some don't even have affirmative action and they still recruit well.

Penn is legendary in the URM circles for its support. Its been called the clearinghouse. They give a lot of merit aid and for the past 5 years they have been at the top of recruitment.

@Asperphys I think the ratio of %URM/%URM Pool gives an idea of how willingly a school recruits outside of its range. Wash U ratio would be high, which means that Wash U likely doesn't limit itself to only recruiting URM students within their reported range.

I do think Wash U is trying. From the data, it appears that they are recruiting out of their pool but that may not be enough. Students are not even applying to Wash U. In order to increase their numbers, they will have to aggressively amp up recruitment.

Lets look what another leader in URM recruitment did in order to do just that: http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/dome/0704/top_story.cfm

Its Wash U's turn.
 
Espadaleader said:
Top tier medical schools provide an environment for URM students that other medical schools cannot provide. This table makes that clear. Wash U is only 11% URM. That's paltry. Remember that 11% is including Blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans. This supports what @ChemEngMD was saying. There is no way Wash U can provide a good URM experience to its peers. They simply don't have the numbers. If I was an admitted student, why would I go there when I could go to so many other schools with better numbers. Schools like Penn, Stanford, Vandy etc. do much more to recruit than Wash U. Out of the private schools in the US News Top 10, Wash U has the lowest percentage of URMs. Trust me, a visit to Wash U is like night and day to its peers and these numbers show it. Personally, I don't think its an excuse. UCLA, UCSF, Harvard, Penn, Hopkins, Stanford, Yale, Columbia... All of these schools have different goals and challenges. Some don't even have affirmative action and they still recruit well.

Penn is legendary in the URM circles for its support. Its been called the clearinghouse. They give a lot of merit aid and for the past 5 years they have been at the top of recruitment.

@Asperphys I think the ratio of %URM/%URM Pool gives an idea of how willingly a school recruits outside of its range. Wash U ratio would be high, which means that Wash U likely doesn't limit itself to only recruiting URM students within their reported range.

I do think Wash U is trying. From the data, it appears that they are recruiting out of their pool but that may not be enough. Students are not even applying to Wash U. In order to increase their numbers, they will have to aggressively amp up recruitment.

Lets look what another leader in URM recruitment did in order to do just that: http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/dome/0704/top_story.cfm

Its Wash U's turn.
Click to expand...

Someone should tell Hopkins that Berkeley doesn't have a medical school.
 
Espadaleader said:
Top tier medical schools provide an environment for URM students that other medical schools cannot provide. This table makes that clear. Wash U is only 11% URM. That's paltry. Remember that 11% is including Blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans. This supports what @ChemEngMD was saying. There is no way Wash U can provide a good URM experience to its peers. They simply don't have the numbers. If I was an admitted student, why would I go there when I could go to so many other schools with better numbers. Schools like Penn, Stanford, Vandy etc. do much more to recruit than Wash U. Out of the private schools in the US News Top 10, Wash U has the lowest percentage of URMs. Trust me, a visit to Wash U is like night and day to its peers and these numbers show it. Personally, I don't think its an excuse. UCLA, UCSF, Harvard, Penn, Hopkins, Stanford, Yale, Columbia... All of these schools have different goals and challenges. Some don't even have affirmative action and they still recruit well.

Penn is legendary in the URM circles for its support. Its been called the clearinghouse. They give a lot of merit aid and for the past 5 years they have been at the top of recruitment.

@Asperphys I think the ratio of %URM/%URM Pool gives an idea of how willingly a school recruits outside of its range. Wash U ratio would be high, which means that Wash U likely doesn't limit itself to only recruiting URM students within their reported range.

I do think Wash U is trying. From the data, it appears that they are recruiting out of their pool but that may not be enough. Students are not even applying to Wash U. In order to increase their numbers, they will have to aggressively amp up recruitment.

Lets look what another leader in URM recruitment did in order to do just that: http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/dome/0704/top_story.cfm

Its Wash U's turn.
Click to expand...

I guess it depends how you define a "good URM experience" --- being around many other URMs, or certain extra resources (tuition support, tutoring, faculty mentoring) that are afforded to URMs.

WUSTL does give full-merit based 4 year scholarships, which URMs can get. I have no idea whether they give full-URM only based 4 year scholarships. Mind you this costs a lot of money - which WUSTL may not have, without cutting something else out of the budget (which students would then complain about). It's a balancing act for universities as to how badly they want URMs without ostracizing/ignoring the rest of the medical school population.

Places like Harvard are rolling in ridiculous amounts of money to begin with. Hence their ability to roll out the red carpet (per say) to URMs. Also as far as Penn - their student body has a high rate (60%) of students who are non-traditionals to begin with, so their prowess in the URM recruitment game, and not your typical medical student recruitment is not surprising.
 
DermViser said:
Someone should tell Hopkins that Berkeley doesn't have a medical school.
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Actually they do. It's a separately accredited program (MD/MS) where they only do the clinical part at UCSF.
 
DermViser said:
Yes, but their MD diploma is from UCSF's medical school, hence the UC Berkeley-UC San Francisco Joint Medical Program.
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But they attend three years on campus at Berkeley and must be accepted at Berkeley. (and as I already mentioned it is separately accredited). I'm sure none of this matters to you and that you are much smarter than the folks at JHU and their student who reported a UCB acceptance. So go ahead and argue the point, it's what you do, right?
 
plumazul said:
But they attend three years on campus at Berkeley and must be accepted at Berkeley. (and as I already mentioned it is separately accredited). I'm sure none of this matters to you and that you are much smarter than the folks at JHU and their student who reported a UCB acceptance. So go ahead and argue the point, it's what you do, right?
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I'm sure the student reporter just transcribed it wrong or the article wouldn't make sense:
  • Now it seemed as though once again, sheer economics, not personal preference, would determine her choice of medical school. More and more, it was looking like a toss-up between Berkeley and UCSF.
  • When Maria Garcia applied to medical school, everything seemed to be going her way. On the list of schools offering her admission were Harvard, Hopkins, Columbia, UCSF, and UC Berkeley.
The LCME accredits individual med schools, not joint programs: https://www.lcme.org/directory.htm (see California)
 
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There has been some great communication between Asper and Chem. Even with their differences of opinions on certain things.

It would be great if others can take a little from that to show that while we all wont agree, there are ways to convey without shoving their ideas down other's throats.

It seems that if a patient were to walk in to said poster's office bleeding profusely through their noses, a certain poster would try to convince the patient that he/she was not bleeding at all.

For patients, classmates sake, I have much hope that this poster only acts this way as an anonymous person on a forum and not in real life.

On another note, re LCME- http://jmp.berkeley.edu/about/program-history Seems that the program is accredited by LCME. Oh wait, I'm sure this too will be shot down.
 
Espadaleader said:
@Asperphys I think the ratio of %URM/%URM Pool gives an idea of how willingly a school recruits outside of its range. Wash U ratio would be high, which means that Wash U likely doesn't limit itself to only recruiting URM students within their reported range.
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I agree that WashU has to amp up recruitment. What I don't follow is how you got to your assertion based on the data I showed. Please explain. Because I thought the ratio of %URM/%URM pool indicated WashU did get to recruit a larger ratio of desired URM students from a more selective pool than say NYU which had the same %URM but had a much bigger pool of students to choose from. I don't think that ratio indicated WashU lowered the bar to let more URMs in.

If WashU recruited a significant number of URMs outside the GPA and MCAT range that it set for non URMs, would it not lower the reported GPA or MCAT range?
 
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Espadaleader said:
Top tier medical schools provide an environment for URM students that other medical schools cannot provide. This table makes that clear. Wash U is only 11% URM. That's paltry. Remember that 11% is including Blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans. This supports what @ChemEngMD was saying. There is no way Wash U can provide a good URM experience to its peers. They simply don't have the numbers. If I was an admitted student, why would I go there when I could go to so many other schools with better numbers. Schools like Penn, Stanford, Vandy etc. do much more to recruit than Wash U. Out of the private schools in the US News Top 10, Wash U has the lowest percentage of URMs. Trust me, a visit to Wash U is like night and day to its peers and these numbers show it. Personally, I don't think its an excuse. UCLA, UCSF, Harvard, Penn, Hopkins, Stanford, Yale, Columbia... All of these schools have different goals and challenges. Some don't even have affirmative action and they still recruit well.

Penn is legendary in the URM circles for its support. Its been called the clearinghouse. They give a lot of merit aid and for the past 5 years they have been at the top of recruitment.
Click to expand...
WashU for sure wants to get on the virtuous cycle of recruiting quality URM students who will be shaped into future leaders in medicine who can later contribute to a richer URM experience at WashU. I've already seen my URM professors here encouraged to take on more prominent administrative positions to engender the impression that URMs are taken very seriously. It's a slow trickle however and the next step requires a brilliant marketing strategy so that URM students come here to help push this cycle forward despite us not yet having the %URM numbers at goal for either students or faculty. Things like a facelift for the Office of Diversity is in order, and also stronger URM presence during interviews (which surely can be easily arranged even if students are busy bc we have plenty of URM MSTP students who are more flexible).

In short, better ideas than just recruiting URMs with your high %URM is in order.

Giving preferential aid to URMs (is this really what Penn does??) might work, but given WashUs high tuition, this might be viewed as kinda discriminatory against non-URMs.

So thank you for your input. I learned a lot about elements of URM recruiting and would like to tap the think tank here for more ideas that can be acted upon ASAP.

For example, how important is it for URM students to have URM faculty as mentors? Do they really feel that non-URM faculty cannot relate with them or would be unsupportive?
 
Asperphys said:
I agree that WashU has to amp up recruitment. What I don't follow is how you got to your assertion based on the data I showed. Please explain. Because I thought the ratio of %URM/%URM pool indicated WashU did get to recruit a larger ratio of desired URM students from a more selective pool than say NYU which had the same %URM but had a much bigger pool of students to choose from. I don't think that ratio indicated WashU lowered the bar to let more URMs in.

If WashU recruited a significant number of URMs outside the GPA and MCAT range that it set for non URMs, would it not lower the reported GPA range?
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What was the MCAT range? 1sig?

Also, would you care to comment on the very low % of women in the MSTP?
 
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plumazul said:
Also, would you care to comment on the very low % of women in the MSTP?
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I'm a woman in the MSTP and even I wasn't aware that the % of women was "very low". Are we gonna have to amp up recruitment for women into MSTP too?
 
Asperphys said:
I'm a woman in the MSTP and even I wasn't aware that the % of women was "very low". Are we gonna have to amp up recruitment for women into MSTP too?
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Perhaps, it appears last year in particular was a disaster. Will you be involved with the MSTP revisit? I'd very much like to talk to you IRL.
 
plumazul said:
Perhaps, it appears last year in particular was a disaster. Will you be involved with the MSTP revisit? I'd very much like to talk to you IRL.
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Not officially gonna be there for all the activities because I would need to hire a nanny for my child (they're expensive!). But I'll be happy to meet with you. 🙂 I don't recall when MSTP revisit is though. Hopefully not April 12-13 or 18-21 bc I'm scheduled to do something else. In any case PM me.
 
Asperphys said:
Thank you for sharing the above @Espadaleader. Clearly, Harvard is ahead of the curve on URM recruitment and it would benefit WashU to follow suit. What I'm hearing is that they were ahead in generating URM leaders in academic medicine, which started the "virtuous cycle" (credits to Robert Reich) of drawing URMs to Harvard who then became leaders in medicine and so on.

On a side note, Dermviser and a number of people already tread a lot of ground in the URM discussion but we will have a little less hand-waving if we do a chronicidal-style data analysis. So I took a stab at it and I got the following:
View attachment 180114The schools are identical to those in chronicidal's original list. The %URM is also what he reported. Among the issues raised are whether the strict GPA/MCAT criteria limit the %URM at WashU, how much better peer institutions are in recruiting URMs etc. So I went back to the publicly available data. MCAT and GPAs were obtained from findthebest.com website (after a Google search) and the rest were from AAMC again (data aggregated from TWO years-- so if you want annual numbers, mentally divide by 2). What is immediately evident is that WashU MCAT cutoff being higher than other schools cuts the pool of considered URMs from 1845 to about half (835). Ditto for non-URMs.

DISCLAIMER: This table is not meant to imply any kind of med school ranking. There is obviously a LOT more that goes into med student admissions than stats.

I then calculated the projected %URM = (#URM in the range considered by the school)/(#total in that same range). If you divide the school's %URM with this value, you get a sense of the effectiveness of URM recruitment (recruitment yield). WashU aside, in the (yellow) block that considered the 1845 top students, Penn and Vanderbilt were the standouts. This is where we'd like to hear feedback about what they are doing-- nice big office? premed recruitment a la Harvard? more financial aid? URM faculty as mentors? better URM representation at interview events?

Now keeping in mind the size of the URM pool that is being considered by each school (URM pool = #URM in range for each school / # total URM applicants), I wondered if it would be more fair to correct the value of the recruitment yield based on the size of the URM pool being considered (ie corrected yield = %URM/URM Pool). So in a way, would WashU getting 11.5% URM from a pool half the size that Penn etc were considering be comparable to getting double that URM% that was chosen from a pool twice as big as WashU's? Just a thought. Being a basic scientist, I'm not very good with this kind of analysis.
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I think the biggest problem with that table is the way that the AAMC parses the data.

The idea that WashU with a median GPA of 3.93 and average MCAT of 38 has half of the pool to recruit from as UChicago that has a median GPA of 3.9 and an average MCAT of 37 is just not true.

The problem is that they group people into these GPA blocks. So the people who are borderline between two GPA or MCAT ranges may actually fall into WashU's range and be unaccounted for in the data.

I agree that WashU probably has a smaller recruitment pool, but it can't be 1/2 the size of those other top schools. I would wager it's more like 3/4 - 7/8 the size.
 
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Pretty much every other top tier school gives out merit to URMs. JHU, Harvard, Columbia, Yale etc. This is why URMs go there. @Asperphys URMs do finance scholarships but they finance them at the schools they went to (not Wash U).


Asperphys said:
WashU for sure wants to get on the virtuous cycle of recruiting quality URM students who will be shaped into future leaders in medicine who can later contribute to a richer URM experience at WashU. I've already seen my URM professors here encouraged to take on more prominent administrative positions to engender the impression that URMs are taken very seriously. It's a slow trickle however and the next step requires a brilliant marketing strategy so that URM students come here to help push this cycle forward despite us not yet having the %URM numbers at goal for either students or faculty. Things like a facelift for the Office of Diversity is in order, and also stronger URM presence during interviews (which surely can be easily arranged even if students are busy bc we have plenty of URM MSTP students who are more flexible).

In short, better ideas than just recruiting URMs with your high %URM is in order.

Giving preferential aid to URMs (is this really what Penn does??) might work, but given WashUs high tuition, this might be viewed as kinda discriminatory against non-URMs.

So thank you for your input. I learned a lot about elements of URM recruiting and would like to tap the think tank here for more ideas that can be acted upon ASAP.

For example, how important is it for URM students to have URM faculty as mentors? Do they really feel that non-URM faculty cannot relate with them or would be unsupportive?
Click to expand...


I'll answer some of your concerns.

Giving preferential aid to URMs (is this really what Penn does??) might work, but given WashUs high tuition, this might be viewed as kinda discriminatory against non-URMs.

As I stated before, many schools give merit to URMs and the world hasn't ended. JHU, Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Sinai etc. These scholarships are not specifically for students of color, but since disadvantaged students are more likely to be a student of color, these scholarships attract URMs.

For example, how important is it for URM students to have URM faculty as mentors? Do they really feel that non-URM faculty cannot relate with them or would be unsupportive?

It is absolutely important to have URM faculty has mentors. non-URMs have trouble with this but just imagine if you were a White or Asian student and your school only had one White or Asian surgeon. It would be weird right? URM faculty are important because they understand how to get to where they are as a URM. Medicine is a very different culture, language, and lifestyle for some and having a URM faculty mentor helps. Second, the number of URM faculty is a proxy for the culture the school provides for URMs as a whole. So, the number of URM faculty is good in itself, even if I wasn't going to work with with one. Also this is the most important. How open is the school as a whole to diversity. How much non-URM faculty are committed to diversity. Some schools make it clear that they are. Some don't. Diversity and inclusiveness means that the administration is invested in the mission and believes it helps everyone. I think people on SDN don't understand this and thats okay. When URMs look at the number of URM faculty we're not saying "We only want to be educated my URM faculty". That's silly. Being a URM doesn't make you a better faculty member. We're saying "Oh, this school has URM faculty. Cool, I will be supported by all faculty because there is a precedent of educating and supporting people like me" Of course this isn't always the case, but this is the ideal.
 
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ChemEngMD said:
I think the biggest problem with that table is the way that the AAMC parses the data.
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I agree. It's even too analog for my taste. I welcome you to provide better data and I'll rerun the calculations.

The idea that WashU with a median GPA of 3.93 and average MCAT of 38 has half of the pool to recruit from as UChicago that has a median GPA of 3.9 and an average MCAT of 37 is just not true.
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That's why I also reported the GPA ranges, which is what I used as reference to get numbers from the AAMC charts. WashU range being 3.71 to 4.0 vs UChicago range being 3.64 to 4 indicates that the former is not willing to accept many students whose GPA is below A- (3.67) while the latter will still welcome A- students and some who had B+ (3.33)--who will be unlikely to be accepted in the former. It might not be as low as 45% but they can't be equal.

The problem is that they group people into these GPA blocks. So the people who are borderline between two GPA or MCAT ranges may actually fall into WashU's range and be unaccounted for in the data.

I agree that WashU probably has a smaller recruitment pool, but it can't be 1/2 the size of those other top schools. I would wager it's more like 3/4 - 7/8 the size.
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I agree that the only clear thing is that WashU has a smaller recruitment pool. As for the size of this pool relative to others, well... this is where we hit the realm of conjecture again. We don't have ideal data to answer this question but we're not getting any clarity with more hand-waving, opinions and guesses.
 
I just want to say that I think WashU is awesome and there's a 75+% chance I'll go there. But I think it's legitimate to pressure the institution to up its diversity game.
 
Asperphys said:
I agree. It's even too analog for my taste. I welcome you to provide better data and I'll rerun the calculations.



That's why I also reported the GPA ranges, which is what I used as reference to get numbers from the AAMC charts. WashU range being 3.71 to 4.0 vs UChicago range being 3.64 to 4 indicates that the former is not willing to accept many students whose GPA is below A- (3.67) while the latter will still welcome A- students and some who had B+ (3.33)--who will be unlikely to be accepted in the former. It might not be as low as 45% but they can't be equal.



I agree that the only clear thing is that WashU has a smaller recruitment pool. As for the size of this pool relative to others, well... this is where we hit the realm of conjecture again. We don't have ideal data to answer this question but we're not getting any clarity with more hand-waving, opinions and guesses.
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LOL obviously I cannot personally provide better data. I just think it's silly to presume because the GPA range is 0.07 different and the average MCAT is 1 point different that somehow this DOUBLES the size of the URM population open to the schools.

:hello: but I guess that's just hand waving :hello:

For what it's worth I think the chart you made is a really good idea. I just think it's hard to actually glean much from it due to the way the data used to construct it was set up. It's not the chart's fault, it's the AAMC's publications fault.
 
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Espadaleader said:
Pretty much every other top tier school gives out merit to URMs. JHU, Harvard, Columbia, Yale etc. This is why URMs go there. URMs do finance scholarships but they finance them at the schools they went to (not Wash U).
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That's kinda what I was getting at. There aren't many URM graduates from WashU who have started endowments for scholarships for URMs. Also, the scholarships are straight-up merit (i.e. who is the biggest premed gunner) designed to attract the students with the most impressive CVs regardless of URM status

As I stated before, many schools give merit to URMs and the world hasn't ended. JHU, Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Sinai etc. These scholarships are not specifically for students of color, but since disadvantaged students are more likely to be a student of color, these scholarships attract URMs.
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You might have pointed out already that WashU is a Midwestern school with less name recognition than JHU, Harvard, Yale and Columbia. And is in a less desirable city than Sinai. My impression that that the fragile reputation that WashU has is built on getting the students with the HIGHEST stats, regardless of URM status. There is a concern that the moment this distinction is gone, WashU's reputation can go down the toilet. That's why the merit scholarships have been given out to the superstars (regardless of URM status) who would have gone elsewhere if not for the money.

It seems it's time to draw up or find money for merit scholarships for URMs only. That observation/fact is duly noted. That would have been easier if we had a lot of URM alums in the past who are willing to put this up (we don't have that many yet) so it'll be a work in progress.

It is absolutely important to have URM faculty has mentors. non-URMs have trouble with this but just imagine if you were a White or Asian student and your school only had one White or Asian surgeon. It would be weird right? URM faculty are important because they understand how to get to where they are as a URM. Medicine is a very different culture, language, and lifestyle for some and having a URM faculty mentor helps. Second, the number of URM faculty is a proxy for the culture the school provides for URMs as a whole. So, the number of URM faculty is good in itself, even if I wasn't going to work with with one. Also this is the most important. How open is the school as a whole to diversity. How much non-URM faculty are committed to diversity. Some schools make it clear that they are. Some don't. Diversity and inclusiveness means that the administration is invested in the mission and believes it helps everyone. I think people on SDN don't understand this and thats okay. When URMs look at the number of URM faculty we're not saying "We only want to be educated my URM faculty". That's silly. Being a URM doesn't make you a better faculty member. We're saying "Oh, this school has URM faculty. Cool, I will be supported by all faculty because there is a precedent of educating and supporting people like me" Of course this isn't always the case, but this is the ideal.
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I gotcha. URM students feel that a URM faculty might have additional insight that could help rising URM med students and junior trainees. That's totally fair. Now the question is how do we draw more top URM faculty to WashU? We've tried growing our own and it's slow going. 😉

As an assurance to minority students about the quality of mentoring here, let me share this. In my time here, I've met only 2 other students who are of my ethnic background, and NO faculty (that's from a pool of 960-1000 over the years). Despite this, I've had among my very supportive advocates: 1 URM faculty mentor, 2 non-UR minorities, 8 who are Caucasian-- the ones who were MOST active in promoting my career were Caucasian. Assuredly we're working on the URM status of WashU, but I'm hoping this singular issue isn't overwhelmingly distracting people from the other wonderful things WashU can provide. Obviously, if an 11.5% URM is enough to make you hate WashU, then you're not a fit here and far be it from me to force you to come here.
 
termitechips said:
I just want to say that I think WashU is awesome and there's a 75+% chance I'll go there. But I think it's legitimate to pressure the institution to up its diversity game.
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Absolutely! I hope it's obvious to you that we have not been dismissive of this particular concern.

This reminds me of my experience as a course liaison. I've had to understand the concerns of the students (especially if they HATE the course) so I can articulate it to the coursemaster and at the same time see the situation from the coursemaster's perspective so that I can assure my classmates that they care. It's not enough to b*tch about the problem. I've had my classmates draw up actionable items and great ideas to make the course better instead of just relaying "Oh, they hate you and your course sucks" to the coursemaster. That's what we're all doing here. 🙂
 
Asperphys said:
Absolutely! I hope it's obvious to you that we have not been dismissive of this particular concern.

This reminds me of my experience as a course liaison. I've had to understand the concerns of the students (especially if they HATE the course) so I can articulate it to the coursemaster and at the same time see the situation from the coursemaster's perspective so that I can assure my classmates that they care. It's not enough to b*tch about the problem. I've had my classmates draw up actionable items and great ideas to make the course better instead of just relaying "Oh, they hate you and your course sucks" to the coursemaster. That's what we're all doing here. 🙂
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Also, you're awesome. Taking all this heat with complete poise, understanding, and willingness to listen. Speaks volumes of WashU students' caliber with respect to their character.
 
termitechips said:
Also, you're awesome. Taking all this heat with complete poise, understanding, and willingness to listen. Speaks volumes of WashU students' caliber with respect to their character.
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Thanks... that's very kind of you. 🙂
 
termitechips said:
Also, you're awesome. Taking all this heat with complete poise, understanding, and willingness to listen. Speaks volumes of WashU students' caliber with respect to their character.
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I concur that Asper's postings here is just Awesome! I dont believe, however, that she is taking heat. Instead, it's just that she tries to understand the conversation from both angles and addresses it accordingly. WashU should be very proud of your advocacy.

@ Termite, good luck to you if you decide to enroll at WashU, undeniably a great school. I am sure you will help to champion some change. Congrats!
 
Espadaleader said:
Pretty much every other top tier school gives out merit to URMs. JHU, Harvard, Columbia, Yale etc. This is why URMs go there. @Asperphys URMs do finance scholarships but they finance them at the schools they went to (not Wash U).




I'll answer some of your concerns.

Giving preferential aid to URMs (is this really what Penn does??) might work, but given WashUs high tuition, this might be viewed as kinda discriminatory against non-URMs.

As I stated before, many schools give merit to URMs and the world hasn't ended. JHU, Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Sinai etc. These scholarships are not specifically for students of color, but since disadvantaged students are more likely to be a student of color, these scholarships attract URMs.

For example, how important is it for URM students to have URM faculty as mentors? Do they really feel that non-URM faculty cannot relate with them or would be unsupportive?

It is absolutely important to have URM faculty has mentors. non-URMs have trouble with this but just imagine if you were a White or Asian student and your school only had one White or Asian surgeon. It would be weird right? URM faculty are important because they understand how to get to where they are as a URM. Medicine is a very different culture, language, and lifestyle for some and having a URM faculty mentor helps. Second, the number of URM faculty is a proxy for the culture the school provides for URMs as a whole. So, the number of URM faculty is good in itself, even if I wasn't going to work with with one. Also this is the most important. How open is the school as a whole to diversity. How much non-URM faculty are committed to diversity. Some schools make it clear that they are. Some don't. Diversity and inclusiveness means that the administration is invested in the mission and believes it helps everyone. I think people on SDN don't understand this and thats okay. When URMs look at the number of URM faculty we're not saying "We only want to be educated my URM faculty". That's silly. Being a URM doesn't make you a better faculty member. We're saying "Oh, this school has URM faculty. Cool, I will be supported by all faculty because there is a precedent of educating and supporting people like me" Of course this isn't always the case, but this is the ideal.
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WashU does give aid to URMs... Distinguished Faculty Scholarships are mostly for URMs (correct me if I'm wrong)
 
lalax said:
WashU does give aid to URMs... Distinguished Faculty Scholarships are mostly for URMs (correct me if I'm wrong)
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Yeah there is. But most everyone says that's not enough. If WashU is to hit decent numbers in the next few years, we need to draw an additional 10 URM superstars a year. By my calculation, that's gotta come out to an additional 2.5 million bucks we have to find in the budget or get endowments for every year.
 
I just looked at some of these charts, and the fact that Penn takes more URMs than Asians combined, is pretty ridiculous, considering how many Asians apply relative to URMs.
 
Asperphys said:
You might have pointed out already that WashU is a Midwestern school with less name recognition than JHU, Harvard, Yale and Columbia. And is in a less desirable city than Sinai. My impression that that the fragile reputation that WashU has is built on getting the students with the HIGHEST stats, regardless of URM status. There is a concern that the moment this distinction is gone, WashU's reputation can go down the toilet. That's why the merit scholarships have been given out to the superstars (regardless of URM status) who would have gone elsewhere if not for the money.
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It has to do this, bc if it doesn't, it won't be able to compete well for top applicants who have acceptances at schools in Boston, Chicago, NYC, etc., which isn't something WashU can change.
 
ranson said:
I just looked at some of these charts, and the fact that Penn takes more URMs than Asians combined, is pretty ridiculous, considering how many Asians apply relative to URMs.
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They also take 60% nontraditionals in each class, so their entire admissions system is quite different than most schools.
 
plumazul said:
Actually they do. It's a separately accredited program (MD/MS) where they only do the clinical part at UCSF.
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safgafy said:
On another note, re LCME- http://jmp.berkeley.edu/about/program-history Seems that the program is accredited by LCME. Oh wait, I'm sure this too will be shot down.
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I think we're in agreement more than you think. The joint program is accredited, I agree (just like other joint programs: JD/MD, MD/PhD). The MS comes from UC-Berkeley and the MD is granted by UCSF (with UCSF being an accredited medical school).
 
Quick update you guys... I typed up your concerns and wonderful suggestions for recruiting more URMs to WashU, then sent that to Dean Ross and Asst. Dean Stevenson (Office of Diversity). Dean Ross himself responded conceding that the criticisms were on point and they are already working to address the issues raised.

See how easy it is for an "ordinary citizen" like me to access the admin? 😉 I hope a number of you will take up this cause and continue working on pushing that virtuous cycle towards greater diversity at WashU. We look forward to having you join us!
 
DermViser said:
It has to do this, bc if it doesn't, it won't be able to compete well for top applicants who have acceptances at schools in Boston, Chicago, NYC, etc., which isn't something WashU can change.
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Oh definitely... WashU is like an upstart trying to attract great students away from the more established institutions-- in more attractive locations to boot. And because it's relatively new, the reputation (geeky as it is) has to be guarded fiercely because it does contribute to how well we do in the Match year after year-- to some degree. I also believe this limitation is also the reason why the curriculum is undergoing change so gradually.

Reminds me of the time, about a decade ago now, when Yale first changed their curriculum and the Step 1 scores dropped. Sure, people snickered. But it barely made a dent on Yale's reputation and the students eventually adapted to the new curriculum. If the same misstep happened at WashU, I don't think it can shrug off such a setback easily-- at least not yet.

At WashU, changes in the curriculum are introduced as experiments that are rigorously tested before they are implemented widely. The most recent one is the Capstone course (residency preparation) that just became mandatory for 4th year. They first introduced it as an elective for 4th years about 3 years ago, tested the students pre and post the course in terms of knowledge and skills needed in common scenarios as interns before they were convinced that it was good enough. And it is so f*$&ing good, we as 4th years voted to make it a requirement. Don't worry, we b*tched about it too, so incoming students will get a far better product. 🙂
 
Asperphys said:
Oh definitely... WashU is like an upstart trying to attract great students away from the more established institutions-- in more attractive locations to boot. And because it's relatively new, the reputation (geeky as it is) has to be guarded fiercely because it does contribute to how well we do in the Match year after year-- to some degree. I also believe this limitation is also the reason why the curriculum is undergoing change so gradually.

Reminds me of the time, about a decade ago now, when Yale first changed their curriculum and the Step 1 scores dropped. Sure, people snickered. But it barely made a dent on Yale's reputation and the students eventually adapted to the new curriculum. If the same misstep happened at WashU, I don't think it can shrug off such a setback easily-- at least not yet.

At WashU, changes in the curriculum are introduced as experiments that are rigorously tested before they are implemented widely. The most recent one is the Capstone course (residency preparation) that just became mandatory for 4th year. They first introduced it as an elective for 4th years about 3 years ago, tested the students pre and post the course in terms of knowledge and skills needed in common scenarios as interns before they were convinced that it was good enough. And it is so f*$&ing good, we as 4th years voted to make it a requirement. Don't worry, we b*tched about it too, so incoming students will get a far better product. 🙂
Click to expand...

I could tell, as at the St. Louis airport, there were ads for WashU's hospital, Barnes-Jewish, everywhere.

Medical schools (usually the private ones) are more sensitive to backlash from it's students in changing the curriculum too sudden or without knowing the effects in Years 1-2, bc they know students highly value the USMLE Step 1 score (and I don't blame them at all). Some PDs in certain specialties perseverate on this score. Medical students as a group tend to be very risk-averse.

I agree, I think the level of rigidity and inertia to change (i.e. curriculum, admissions, etc.) is very much rooted in the belief of destroying what took so long to build, kind of like the game Jenga, and thus affecting the match list. WashU doesn't have name-dropping prestige that Harvard or Yale have (yet) where they can changes like Yale did. That being said, other schools have also adopted student-friendly policies in order to give their students an advantage when it comes time to apply for the match, so it does largely depend on the culture of the school.
 
Last edited:
Asperphys said:
Reminds me of the time, about a decade ago now, when Yale first changed their curriculum and the Step 1 scores dropped.
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😱 One of the schools I'm seriously considering is introducing a major curriculum change next year. I do like the new curriculum a lot, but it's new! 😱 Scary.
 
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