Agreed with the first paragraph. But regarding the last two, don't you think that drive and passion played a role in the person obtaining a 3.8/38? How much drive did the 3.0/26 have then? Also, I'd like to refer to what I said previously: A policy like the one I'm proposing shouldn't have any conflict with ensuring that minorities be included in a medical school class, since like many have pointed out, many times race and socioeconomic status are intertwined. For example, an underprivileged African American applicant will still have the benefit of an even playing field--it simply wouldn't be because of his/her race, but because of the obstacles he/she had to overcome.
Yeah, I know your thoughts...You already posted that. Said in another way
it's not about us, it's about the system.
Let's say we do what you propose and went solely based on SES instead of looking for Black or Hispanic physicians. There will be some that get in as you're right about the proportions, but not as many as the nation needs. Even right now when medical schools openly seek out minorities despite lower performance, there is still a low enrollment. For example, at my school which is in the center of a city with a majority black population, less than 1% of 300-person class was black?!?! This school also puts a decent amount of its applicants in Detroit. That's a huge problem! The reason? We had an metric-based filter that excluded most of them, but more importantly
the interest was low. It was funny because when LCME came and asked questions, some administrators who are now replaced were like, yo we couldn't find high achieving African Americans and Hispanics. If we impose a pure SES system, we probably won't get enough black applicants because
not many apply because there weren't programs in place to encourage them to
. There may be some people that don't get the scores they want and think....oh look at all these sneaky black people trying to steal our spots...That's not the case at all. There are just too many blacks who don't even see medicine as something for them. When someone in my friend circle wants to do medicine, their parents usually have them give me a call and I give them the word on the street about everything because that's what I had done for me.
If a poor black student wants to do medicine, who in his families friend circle can he shadow so he can even understand what medicine is? There are certainly a few now, but still not enough. Also, I'm not sure what your background is OP but there's been a lot of talk on why Asians are successful as a minority and many who watch Fox News champion that. I myself come from of family of Indian origin and my dad worked hard to come here, and he wouldn't have been able to get clearance to unless he demonstrated his ability to have means for to pay for adequate living, etc. In essence, there seems to be a filter that selects for the cream of the crop from such nations so to directly compare them to minorities in our country just coming off segregation is just poor form (
not saying you're doing this, OP.
The problem at this point is that if you go out and talk to lots of African Americans (not ones in medical school who come from middle class families like perhaps yourself and I), a lot of them are really distrustful of the system and will say flat out they won't see a doctor. It's only been 50 years since outright discrimination was commonplace. That's like 1 or 2 generations...We as American healthcare providers have the collective choice to either take the harder path and implement realistic policies that bring everyone up in a
timely manner so we can move forward with the potential of all people behind us...or we can simply refuse to do it and rationalize it as trying to promote a meritocratic system.
