Name: Affirmative Action & Medical School Admissions | The Uncomfortable Truth
Uploaded: 2022-05-04T17:40:28.000Z
Duration: 10 min 46 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Every year, tens of thousands of premeds apply to U.S. medical schools.

Every one of them has spent years studying, researching, and volunteering to get to this

point, and yet, most of them don’t gain any acceptances.

As these students prepare themselves for the next application season, they start looking

Affirmative action is a hotly debated topic in the United States with strong opinions

In fact, the debate spans far beyond medical school admissions and extends to all forms

of higher education - from high schoolers applying to college to master’s students

Today we’ll cover what affirmative action is, the main arguments both for and against

it, and what it all means for you as a premed trying to get into medical school.

Affirmative action, as it relates to medical school admissions, is a set of policies and

practices designed to decrease systemic discrimination and increase diversity among medical students.

Although we often use the term to refer to race, it can also be used to refer to any

There are two types of affirmative action: indirect and direct.

Indirect affirmative action includes policies that may on the surface seem neutral; however,

they are aimed at benefiting underrepresented groups.

An example of indirect affirmative action might be giving preference to students who

Although it doesn’t directly give priority to Hispanic students, it is likely to benefit

Hispanic students more so than students from other backgrounds.

More commonly, medical schools employ direct affirmative action - sometimes referred to

as “preferential treatment” or “positive discrimination.”

These types of policies grant an advantage to members of designated groups in final decisions

An example would be a medical school that allocates a certain number of seats each year

In this scenario, an applicant from an underrepresented group may be granted a medical school seat

even if there is an applicant from an overrepresented group with a stronger application.

In short, the race of the applicant helps determine which student receives that spot.

In the United States, White and Asian students are overrepresented in medical schools and

Hispanic and African American students are underrepresented.

Because Asians are a minority in the general population, you can think of them as an “overrepresented

minority” in terms of medical school admissions.

During the 2021-2022 medical school application cycle, 42% of U.S. allopathic medical matriculants

were White, 23% were Asian, 9% were Black and 7% were Hispanic.

Affirmative action in medical school admissions aims to increase racial diversity among medical

students by helping underrepresented Black and Hispanic students get into medical school.

To understand the debate regarding affirmative action, let’s explore both sides of the

The primary argument in favor of affirmative action is that it helps “level the playing

field” for Black and Hispanic applicants.

Historically, these students have had to overcome cycles of social, economic, and educational

According to the U.S. census, Black and Hispanic individuals are between one and a half to

two times more likely to experience poverty than White or Asian individuals.

As such, many live in poorer neighborhoods and attend schools with less funding and fewer

Affirmative action is meant to help these students gain entrance into medical school

Proponents of affirmative action also argue that the negative impact on White and Asian

applicants is relatively small compared to the positive impact on Black and Hispanic

Underrepresented minorities make up only a small portion of the total number of applicants

and receive far fewer medical school positions than their overrepresented peers.

For every 100 medical school spots, roughly 65 of them go to White or Asian applicants

and only 16 of them go to Black or Hispanic applicants.

In this example, if you were to take just 5 seats away from Black or Hispanic applicants

and give them to White or Asian applicants, the number of seats for underrepresented students

would decrease by 31% whereas the number of seats for overrepresented students would only

When schools have stopped considering race in admissions in the past, there have been

significant declines in enrollment of Black and Hispanic students leading to decreased

This is problematic as research has shown that student body diversity is beneficial

for all students - not just underrepresented ones.

Diverse student bodies have been associated with increases in academic performance, retention,

community engagement, cooperation, and openness to different ideas and perspectives.

Research has also shown that diversity among physicians is beneficial for patient care.

When patients have doctors that are of the same race, they are more likely to go for

treatment and more likely to be satisfied with the care they receive.

They are also less likely to use the emergency department and tend to have lower total healthcare

expenditures compared to those with race-discordant physicians.

Underrepresented physicians are also more likely to work in underserved communities

and take care of patients with poor access to healthcare - namely minorities and uninsured

By increasing diversity among physicians, we are also setting an example for future

When children see doctors that look like them, it shows them that they can become doctors

Now, let’s look at the other side of the argument.

The most common argument against affirmative action is that it goes against meritocracy.

Instead of having the most qualified premeds get into medical school, affirmative action

policies allow students with lower metrics to “steal spots” from more competitive

Whenever you provide an advantage to one group, you simultaneously apply a disadvantage to

Although affirmative action helps Black and Hispanic applicants, it comes at the cost

of hurting Asian students, who are also minorities subject to racism and other issues in the

During the most recent 2021-2022 medical school application cycle, White matriculants had

an average GPA of 3.78 and MCAT of 512.7 and Asian matriculants had an average GPA of 3.79

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Affirmative Action & Medical School Admissions | The Uncomfortable Truth

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