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[peterockduke]

http://www.usatoday.com/usatonline/20030903/5464118s.htm

Medical schools see a drop in applicants
By Robert Davis
USA TODAY


The number of medical school applications fell for the sixth straight year last year, though the number of new medical students has remained constant, and the caliber of would-be doctors has improved slightly, according to a study out today.

Some experts predict the slide in applications, from 42,806 in 1993 to 33,625 last year, will stop this year. Figures for this academic year are expected next month. But nobody can say why interest has waned.

''There has been lots of speculation about these ups and downs, but not a lot of data,'' says Barbara Barzansky of the American Medical Association, who was the lead author of the study, appearing in today's Journal of the American Medical Association. ''You don't know what the real reason is. Is medicine becoming less attractive? Are there factors like concerns of reimbursement or the malpractice environment causing people to think otherwise? There is no way to know what any individual person is thinking.''

Of particular concern is the downward trend for minorities, who accounted for 11.6% of the students in last year's entering class.

Adam Aponte, associate director of minority affairs at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, says the number of applications from black and Puerto Rican males has dropped the most. ''And when they do get to us, many are coming to us ill-prepared. It has us asking what is going on in the undergrad level to promote the sciences.''

To combat the problem, Mount Sinai has developed a ''pipeline program'' that tries to support younger students who are interested in medicine. ''We're working with younger and younger students. We have seventh-, eighth-, ninth-graders who are interested in medicine,'' Aponte says. ''We try to keep them on track because they are the ones who can fall through the loopholes.''
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actually kind of wondered if it was fake (you know.. too good to be true)

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[Aptamer]

I read the JAMA article this morning; I like the 1.9 to 1 odds for acceptance...you can't get that in Vegas.

 

[Street Philosopher]

Originally posted by peterockduke
http://www.usatoday.com/usatonline/20030903/5464118s.htm

Adam Aponte, associate director of minority affairs at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, says the number of applications from black and Puerto Rican males has dropped the most. ''And when they do get to us, many are coming to us ill-prepared.

So much for the "omniscient admissions committee" myth, the "everyone meets a certain level of ability" myth, and the "schools do not use quotas" myth. All bow before the diversity idol.

 

[hoping2004]

aptamer - are you serious about those odds? do you have a link to the article? thanks!

 

[Aptamer]

Well, they're not odds...just the ratio of applicants to those accepted. I attached the pdf of the JAMA article.

 

[swampfox]

All I have to say is "Wow!". A 22% drop in the number of medical school applicants is astounding (42,806 in 1993 to 33,625 last year).

With the slight dip in the economy, maybe people just couldn't afford to apply.

 

[Robz]

I think it is more than a dip in the economy cause the economy was strong in the 90's. I think there are multiple reasons including the cost of schools, the health care system, dealing with manged care/HMOs, and rising malpractice insurance. I know when I lived in Florida physicians were/are really upset at not having a limit on malpractice suits thus causing the price of premiums to rise fast. They started to leave the state to find better avenues. I just think there are many resons less people apply....i dunno

 

[....]

""All I have to say is "Wow!". A 22% drop in the number of medical school applicants is astounding (42,806 in 1993 to 33,625 last year).

With the slight dip in the economy, maybe people just couldn't afford to apply.""

Silly rabbit.

22% is meaningless unless you consider the time frame. 22% in a year is huge. over 10 years? not so impessive.

And applications have gone down because of the booming ecomony and in response to malpractice publicity.

THe market only tanked 2 years ago, none of the past decade of applicants saw hard times while making their decision. People who were chosing medince while the ecomony was tanking are JUST now starting to apply.

Apps for medschool go up when the economy is bad because med is somewhat lucrative and very stable. But it takes 2-3 years between seeing the bad ecomomy and going through the pre-reqs to apply, so you have a lag.

Apps will most definitly be going up in the coming years if the economy stays down.

 

[umass rower]

I think hightrump had the right of it, there was a huge boom in technology areas in the last decade, and so a lot of people started turning their interests toward that. It offered the potential for people to make a killing if they were somewhat innovative. Now there are highly qualified people who can't even find work in the tech industry. So now more people will gravitiate toward things where there is more certainty of employment, e.g. medicine (assuming they can even get into med school).

 

[Zweihander]

No one has commented on the "caliber of would-be doctors has improved slightly" line. what does that mean exactly, and why is that occurring alongside a drop in applications? I find the downward trend surprising, because at least two of the schools that I applied to last year said they had a record number of applicants.
Go figure...

 

[....]

I think the phase "record #" is BS. They throw that phrase around alot. Its either just lying for the sake of peoples feelings when they get rejected, or it more of the half truths that come from statistics based on the fact that people submit multiple apps.
For instance......40K people all send out 10 apps in 1993 but 30K people all send out 16 apps in 2003. A school could say "we recived a record number of apps" which would be literaly true. But the total applicants would be lower.

And quality of applicants is probably based on average #'s. MCAT and GPA. Both of which could inflate over time but more likely.....the 10-15K difference bettween 1993 and 2003 may have been 10-15K of the lesser qualified applicants.

hehe....reminds me of the cooling effect of evaporation. the hot molecules are the ones to get up and out of there, so the av temp drops. not because any individual molecules lost energy but just because the top of the bell curve got cut off. Maybe the reverse is happening in med apps.......or people are just getting smarter ect....either one may be true.