Program at Penn for Underrepresented Students

On March 28th the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania is hosting an event for “students underrepresented in medicine.” This is a wonderful opportunity to network and learn more about the medical school admission process. Here’s the link to get more information and register:


http://cu2000.med.upenn.edu/hps/penndayregistrati o…


Cheers,


Liza

Wonder what they consider “under represented” …

from AAMC website:


Underrepresented in Medicine Definition


On March 19, 2004, the AAMC Executive Committee adopted a clarification to its definition of “underrepresented in medicine” following the Supreme Court’s decision in Grutter.


The AAMC definition of underrepresented in medicine is:


“Underrepresented in medicine means those racial and ethnic populations that are underrepresented in the medical profession relative to their numbers in the general population.”


Adopted by the AAMC’s Executive Council on June 26, 2003, the definition helps medical schools accomplish three important objectives:

  • a shift in focus from a fixed aggregation of four racial and ethnic groups to a continually evolving underlying reality. The definition accommodates including and removing underrepresented groups on the basis of changing demographics of society and the profession,

  • a shift in focus from a national perspective to a regional or local perspective on underrepresentation, and

  • stimulate data collection and reporting on the broad range of racial and ethnic self-descriptions.


    Before June 26, 2003, the AAMC used the term “underrepresented minority (URM),” which consisted of Blacks, Mexican-Americans, Native Americans (that is, American Indians, Alaska Natives, and Native Hawaiians), and mainland Puerto Ricans. The AAMC remains committed to ensuring access to medical education and medicine-related careers for individuals from these four historically underrepresented racial/ethnic groups.

This enrages me!!! So now you can go to an Ivy League medical school, and the oldest one in the country at that, and with markedly lower performance and/or achievements than your fellow (ie " more diverse") applicants. Disgraceful!!! I’m all for “diversity”, but I’m also in favor of fairness. Either we all meet the same mark, or we don’t. There are no “variable standards”.

  • kfa4303 Said:
This enrages me!!!!! So now you can go to an Ivy League medical school, and the oldest one in the country at that, and with markedly lower performance and/or achievements than your fellow (ie " more diverse") applicants. Disgraceful!!!! I'm all for "diversity", but I'm also in favor of fairness. Either we all meet the same mark, or we don't. There are no "variable standards".



1) While I can understand feelings of rage, I prefer that these forums remain with a tone of professionalism and civility,unlike other sites where the vehemence and outrage leads to toxic shouting, not useful dialogue.

2) The mission of a medical school is produce physicians best able to serve the medical needs of the population. No where is a mission of a medical to be fair to applicants. It is not their purposes nor is it anybody's right to go to medical school. With the upper levels of socioeconomic status (SES) grossly overrepresented in the applicant pool for medical school and lower SES grossly overrepresented in the demographics of the medically under-served,having a mechanism to help promote those applicants who may be more motivated to serve this needy population is what has been deemed an appropriate path by the medical education community.

3) With 200 medical schools (MD and DO) having thousands of admissions committee members review tens of thousands of applications, each representing a unique and different individual with a myriad of strengths, weaknesses,etc, all having to be considered with the ever changing representations across the applicant pool, there is no magic formula of standards that can be calculated to make the perfect candidate.