The relation between the broad availability of great high school education and the quality of higher education at institutions from the same area is not a necessary one.
Every state has a number of good high schools, which churn out students capable of succeeding in college and being qualified applicants to professional school. The percentage of schools that are doing a great job will no doubt vary from state to state. However, In most cities you are likely to find a mix of some great schools and many mediocre to lousy.
In some communities, these great high schools are likely to be private. In other communities, they may be public. Now, public schools in Alabama tend to come in two flavors: Lousy and Great. City life in Alabama is divided nicely by socioeconomic status. Middle class people live in certain townships within the metro areas, upper class people live in other townships, and lower class people live in still other townships.
IN the Birmingham Metro area, we have like 15-20 different school systems & police forces, based on which township you live in. THe history of education in Birmingham (and much of the south, I suspect) is such that middle class and rich people live in neighborhoods that incorporated so that their kids didn't have to go to school with poor (typically non-white) students. Their schools are run better, have better teachers, better resources, etc. Students from these schools get rockin educations and go to good colleges and either become proffessionals, businesspeople, or the idle rich. The rest of the students go to mediocre (if they are lucky) or ****ty schools. So Southern education isn't bad per se; it is stratified, and unegalitarian.
There are plenty of bright men and women available to apply to our local professional schools, since a good fraction of our population has access to great schools & resources. The average MCAT scores for both Alabama med schools is 29-30. This is despite the fact that the % of accepted out of state applicants varies between 28% to 15% (last year).
The fact that general public education is sketchy in an area bears little relation to that area's ability to generate smart people or well educated people. It does, however, make it harder for poor and disadvantaged individuals to achieve. Even so, I am dubious about whether or not this is a unique problem for the south. Have any of you ever looked at the socioeconomic background info in the AAMC's matriculant questionaire? Most successful med school candidates are coming from money or from the upper half of the middle class. There's plenty of middle and upper class folks, even in the South, and parents of middle and upper class kids always try to find good education for their kids, even in the South.
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Despite the quality of education at a med school such as UAB, I admit that it might be fair to say that it is relatively "easy" to get into, as long as you are an in-state student with acceptable stats and you aren't a social freak. But "relatively easy" is still misleading. The truth is that truly weak candidates are never chosen (except by accident) at any southern allopathic school. (And I say allopathic here not because I doubt the quality of osteopathic schools, but because I really know nothing about osteopathic schools, or how they select candidates.)
