nontrad quota

[Captain Sisko]

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I was talking to a traditional classmate last night and she mentioned that at a particular school they have a quota for nontraditional students that they try and keep relatively constant from year to year. Is that kind of policy commonplace? Are nontrads competing with each other for spots in med school? For the record she said this was at Cincinnati and she found out they have quotas by age brackets at her interview there. Is this legal? Anyone hear of any other schools doing this?

 

[wholeheartedly]

I know of another school in the midwest that seems to do this to some extent, but I don't think it's a hard and fast rule for them to put x number of 26-28 year olds or whatever into their acceptance pool.

 

[QofQuimica]

I'm very skeptical about this hearsay being true. I'm not sure if quotas based on age are illegal like for race/ethnicity, but they would not likely be received very well if publicized, and I'd be surprised if a med school went out of their way to advertise that they openly discriminate based on age. But in general, no, you are not competing against other nontrads. You are competing against the entire applicant pool. Unfortunately, nontrads tend to be less competitive in terms of stats compared to trads, and so it's not surprising that there tend to be fewer nontrads at schools that are more stats-focused.