"Underrepresented in Medicine" Definition Question

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Beta Cell

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It seems to define "Blacks, Mexican-Americans, Native Americans, and mainland Puerto Ricans," but ignores Central American Americans (which can be from as far as five feet south of Mexico) and South American Americans.

Anyone know if Medical Schools still consider specifically Central American Americans to be URMs? The reason I ask is that I cannot imagine more people from any country in Central America (even collectively, possibly) to be more represented than Mexican Americans in medicine.
 
Come on OP, you won't need the URM status anyways. Why you care?
 
It seems to define "Blacks, Mexican-Americans, Native Americans, and mainland Puerto Ricans," but ignores Central American Americans (which can be from as far as five feet south of Mexico) and South American Americans.

Anyone know if Medical Schools still consider specifically Central American Americans to be URMs? The reason I ask is that I cannot imagine more people from any country in Central America (even collectively, possibly) to be more represented than Mexican Americans in medicine.

I'm not exactly sure, as I obviously didn't write the URM rules for AMCAS, but here's my 2 cents:

I would think that a person from Central America of, say, White European ancestry is not a URM. However, if your ancestry includes Native American lineage (as is true of many people from Central and South America), then you are covered, verbatim, in AMCAS's description of URM.

It's not so much about where you live, but rather what your history is, in my understanding.
 
I think the idea behind this, however shaky, is that Mexican-Americans make up by far the largest percentage of the US "Hispanic" population, and a large percentage of the general US population. Relative to their representation in the overall population, they are underrepresented in medicine.

People of Central and South American ethnicity do not comprise a large enough percentage of the US population to be considered "underrepresented." But it is up to you to check the box; I actually don't imagine adcoms will make the distinction between Central American/South American/Mexican ethnicities. It takes too much time to tease apart the complexities of a last name, and honestly I think it's all silly anyway 🙂

I was thinking that would be the reason too.

Come on OP, you won't need the URM status anyways. Why you care?

It's just something I'm curious about.
 
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