I'm posting an entire article from the Boston Globe that my premed advisor emailed to me about the drop in applicants due to paperwork, etc. My interviewer actually asked me specifically about this on my interview, 2 days after it was published.....we better keep up in the news
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Medicine's fading call
The burdens facing doctors are reflected in a drop in medical school applications
By Andrea Useem, Globe Correspondent, 12/2/2001
Michael Gilbert had wanted to be a doctor since he was 10 years old. And until last spring he was on the fast track, a Harvard biochemistry major neatly ticking off his requirements for medical school.
But at the end of his junior year - when his pre-med classmates began studying for entrance exams - Gilbert took a hard look at the profession and decided he didn't want to be a doctor after all.
''I want to help people,'' said Gilbert, ''and I'm not sure being a doctor is the best way to do that.''
Turned off by the looming burdens of managed-care paperwork, Gilbert changed his major to biology and now hopes to work for an international relief agency when he graduates.
Gilbert is not alone. According to figures released last month by the Association of American Medical Colleges, the number of applicants to medical schools for the current academic year dropped for the fifth year in a row, falling by 6 percent to just under 35,000.
The drop was sharpest among men, down 8.4 percent from the previous year. Female applicants dropped by 3.2 percent. Applications from underrepresented minority populations fell by 4.5 percent.
For now, officials say the drop is far from a crisis. Applicants nationwide still outnumber available spaces by more than 2-to-1, and local schools are even more competitive.
At UMass Medical School in Worcester, the ratio of applicants to spaces in the incoming class is 6-to-1 - although that's down from a ratio of 10-to-1 several years ago. At Tufts, the ratio is 30-to-1, and at BU, it's 80-to-1. At Harvard Medical School, a ratio of 35 applicants per space two years ago fell to 32 applicants per space this year.
Still, educators are searching for explanations.
''Everybody speculates, but nothing is documented. It's very hard to get data on people who decide not to apply,'' said Barbara Barzansky of the Council on Medical Education, an arm of the American Medical Association. She noted that application numbers are cyclical. During the mid-1980s, applications dropped alarmingly low before increasing to record levels in the
mid-1990s, peaking in 1996.
In response to the recent slide, some are directing their concern less at medical schools than at the profession itself.
''If medicine ceases to be attractive to the best, the brightest, and the most idealistic and public-spirited of our young people, we have a lot to worry about not just as medical educators but as future patients,'' said Jordan Cohen, president of the Association of American Medical Colleges.
He would like to see doctors ''broadcast to the world'' - and to would-be students such as Gilbert - that changes brought by managed care ''are not destined to victimize doctors.''
Others, however, are less worried about medical bureaucracy than about the crushing debt load that medical school can impose on students, many of whom are forced to take out loans to pay for four years of tuition and living expenses.
At Tufts medical school, where the average student graduates with a $145,000 debt, Robert Sarno, the dean of admissions, worries that potential students from lower- and middle-income backgrounds will be scared away permanently from medicine.
''The costs of medical education won't go down. At some point it's going to become so expensive that most people just won't be able to afford it,'' said Sarno, predicting that private schools like Tufts may go back to asking for state and federal assistance to reduce costs.
John O'Connors, associate dean for admissions at Boston University School of Medicine, speculated that the strong economy over the last few years has made med school look less attractive to potential students. ''When students face a choice after college of either starting a job right away and earning $90,000, or borrowing $100,000 for eight years of training, it's hard to
compete.''
O'Connors and others expect the number of applications to rise over the next few years if the economy languishes in recession. Yet while the dot-com bust has already led to an uptick in law and business school applications, medical schools have yet to see such an upturn, either in applications or the numbers of students taking the MCAT entrance exam.
Amidst the uncertainties, Barzansky suggests that the most successful strategies for attracting new students will not be quick fixes. Rather, they should take the long view.
''Many medical schools reach out to high school science programs, trying to interest students early on,'' said Barzansky. ''Once that applicant pool is developed, they tend to stay in the pipeline. It's a slow process, but it's been shown to work.''
This story ran on page C1 of the Boston Globe on 12/2/2001.
? Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company.
