The Realities of Agism (Applicants 40 Over)

I’ve reviewed these threads extensively and was hoping someone might provide tangible insight with respect to a 40 yr old aspiring preventive & behavioral medicine doctor who is about to begin a “high end” post-baccalaureate program…


We all know that the allopathic schools of medicine practice “agism” (and, quite frankly, I’m surprised no one has tested this legally based on the undeniable void in numbers of students at the higher end of the age range and the horrific stories I’ve heard of admissions panels being openly critical as to life stage from the very few who have gotten interviews – multiple posters on this site have even professed that they were berated inappropriately on this topic during their in person interviews).


I do recognize that the total pool of qualified applicants over 40 is probably quite low although I couldn’t find an approximate number from the AAMC and even called them seeking this information with no success. However, the total pool is not low enough to justify the fact that the Class of 2014 at all allopathic schools (according to a review of all of their websites) had less than 5 matriculating students equal to or greater than the age of 40. Something just doesn’t add up.


It is supposed to be against the law to factor age in the equation YET the application requires a birthdate, the resume and school history requires dates of attendance and year of graduation, etc., etc. … if the process were truly blind the AAMC should take the formal records from the schools to verify but not share birthdates or graduation dates etc. with the schools until offer acceptance. At least then you are limiting potential bias to how old someone appears in a personal interview. I literally had one medical admissions officer feed me the blind process perspective but when I pressed her regarding all of the objective and subjective data available to bias an opinion as well as pointed out the fact that no one over 35 had been accepted at her school in the past 10 years…she admitted that there tends to be a bias against older applicants and most of the reviewers can pick them out based on graduation date and length of resume, etc.


My questions are:


(a) Niney nine (99%) of the applicants on your thread appear to go to osteopathic schools of medicine (or overseas) which is understandable but for those of us who only want to attend allopathic schools…can any of you point to any friends, colleagues, etc. who received acceptances to allopathic schools with a GPA > 3.6 and an MCAT > 30 where work or other academic relationships at that university didn’t come into play?


(b) Is it possible that the majority of individuals that reach out to this discussion board are not the best barometer for the allopathic admissions process?


Thanks in advice for any objective and straightforward insights that all of you can shed.


Regards,


J.R.

A health advisor at the university I am starting in Spring-2011 states(exactly): “As much as some people feel their internal clock ticking and saying “get on with it!” Ignore that clock unless you’re 35 or older when you begin working on your bachelor’s degree.”


This probably means that you have a higher chance of getting into med school before you turn 40! I have not discussed this with him, so I cannot comment more!

  • J.R. Said:
...Ninety nine (99%) of the applicants on your thread appear to go to osteopathic schools of medicine (or overseas)...



Forgive me, I'm a bit lost. Which thread are you talking about? Could you please post a link?

The 99% was a subjective impression looking at the acceptance thread for on this site for 2010-2011 and 2009-2010. I could only find one or two that either explicitly mentioned receiving an offer of admission (as opposed to simply an interview) to an allopathic school of medicine or implied it.

  • J.R. Said:
I've reviewed these threads extensively and was hoping someone might provide tangible insight with respect to a 40 yr old aspiring preventive & behavioral medicine doctor who is about to begin a "high end" post-baccalaureate program...



Welcome aboard and lets hope we can shed some light.

  • In reply to:
We all know that the allopathic schools of medicine practice "agism" (and, quite frankly, I'm surprised no one has tested this legally based on the undeniable void in numbers of students at the higher end of the age range and the horrific stories I've heard of admissions panels being openly critical as to life stage from the very few who have gotten interviews -- multiple posters on this site have even professed that they were berated inappropriately on this topic during their in person interviews).

I do recognize that the total pool of qualified applicants over 40 is probably quite low although I couldn't find an approximate number from the AAMC and even called them seeking this information with no success. However, the total pool is not low enough to justify the fact that the Class of 2014 at all allopathic schools (according to a review of all of their websites) had less than 5 matriculating students equal to or greater than the age of 40. Something just doesn't add up.



While I certainly have spoken to and heard from many older applicants who have had horror stories of ageism questions at interviews, there have only been tangential legal actions around this. Partly is that the statistics do not seem to support any class-wide ageism factor. The complete data sets from AAMC are available (for a fee now I believe) but I received them by simple request in a few years back. The summary data by percentile ( Link to summary age data: see last table) does exist and shows approximately 6% of are age 30 and above with 1% being approximately 40 and above. For the nearly 20,000 matriculants to MD schools in 2010, this would mean just under 200 were over 40. The DO data, which releases raw numbers each year for its applicant and matriculant pools, gets nearly the same ratios (I have these detailed in previous postings which I search for later)

  • In reply to:
It is supposed to be against the law to factor age in the equation YET the application requires a birthdate, the resume and school history requires dates of attendance and year of graduation, etc., etc. ... if the process were truly blind the AAMC should take the formal records from the schools to verify but not share birthdates or graduation dates etc. with the schools until offer acceptance. At least then you are limiting potential bias to how old someone appears in a personal interview. I literally had one medical admissions officer feed me the blind process perspective but when I pressed her regarding all of the objective and subjective data available to bias an opinion as well as pointed out the fact that no one over 35 had been accepted at her school in the past 10 years...she admitted that there tends to be a bias against older applicants and most of the reviewers can pick them out based on graduation date and length of resume, etc.



While many schools seem to have a subtle to strong bias, others see to strongly embrace and support non-trads. For example, last year University of Pittsburgh Medical College paid for one of their non-trad students to attend OPM conference in order to bring back ideas and info to assist UPMC in attracting older students.

  • In reply to:
My questions are:

(a) Ninety nine (99%) of the applicants on your thread appear to go to osteopathic schools of medicine (or overseas) which is understandable but for those of us who only want to attend allopathic schools...can any of you point to any friends, colleagues, etc. who received acceptances to allopathic schools with a GPA > 3.6 and an MCAT > 30 where work or other academic relationships at that university didn't come into play?



There is roughly a half-and-half split on US-MD to US-DO acceptances on OPM, with an apparent decrease in Off-Shore MD schools. Part of the reason for that latter is the glaring decline in residency placement rates for IMGs when compare to MD and DO. Another reason that DO does attract many students is the difference in application mechanics. The MD schools will count every grade ever earned where as the DO process allows grade replacement for repeated courses. This makes it quite attractive for older students with poorer original undergraduate records.

  • In reply to:
(b) Is it possible that the majority of individuals that reach out to this discussion board are not the best barometer for the allopathic admissions process?



The majority of schools applied for by OPM members is undoubtedly allopathic by the simple fact that there are 5 times the number of those in the country as compared to osteopathic. In either case, since a centralized application service is used for both, I would dare to say that OPM is probably the best source of accurate information on how the process works, on the real attitudes and perceptions of adcoms, and are helping non-traditional students apply their atypical backgrounds to the process. While the discussions boards on SDN offer much good advice, the primarily younger students often deal with conjecture, hearsay, and plain guess work. When once boasted that they were most MD students over there, I had to point out to him/her that SDN started life under OSTEOPATH.COM and was founded by an Osteopath, Dr. Lee Burnett (who should be home from his THIRD tour of Iraq.

  • In reply to:
Thanks in advice for any objective and straightforward insights that all of you can shed.

Regards,

J.R.



My questions to you are:

1) is your goal to be a practicing physician or someone who simply earned an MD degree. If the former, then dismissal of earning a DO may be premature. If the later, than the off-shore schools do offer that degree, even with a serverely reduced chance of residency acceptance.

2) No matter what accurate information is provided, getting into medical school is difficult. Since you have already made it passed a big hurdle by getting into a competitive post-bacc, you may be better served by focusing your time, energy and resources on doing well in the program. While all the other issues you raise have some valid points, expanding energy in angry, worry, or simply trying to put down odds does not help you move forward in your goal to become a physician.

First, thank you for the informed response and the. The recent acceptance threads on this site do not appear to indicate MD acceptances but the DO acceptances appear to be plentiful…which is great!


In response to your questions:


(1) This isn’t about the merits of an MD vs. DO nor do I want to turn the inquiry into that kind of a discussion. I only have the deepest respect for anyone with a medical degree (whether MD or DO).


(2) You may be mistaking the focus of my energy. There is a distinct difference between an applicant in their 30’s and an applicant 40 or over. I am not the least bit concerned with attaching a “probability” to my chances. The road-less-traveled will be much more difficult as all of us on this site can attest to. However, there is a difference between a 0% chance at an MD program and a >0% chance. I was unable to find and still don’t have tangible evidence of an acceptance offer by a single applicant over 40. I thought on this site I might find at least one, if not more, who could say that they are 40 or over and got offers from XYZ MD schools. But thus far that doesn’t appear to be the case. So if they are a good barometer and the acceptance rate at MD schools is “0” then there is a problem (including a legal one).


A lot of subscribers on OPM are in their 30’s and the age range data at MD programs is quite supportive to their cause. The University of Pittsburgh’s oldest student in its most recent class is 39 (and prior year entering data as well is clearly south of 40) so they may be interested in more students over 30 but I would highly doubt that you could extrapolate (with confidence anyway) their interest to also wanting to expand “older” applicants to over 40. In fairness, maybe they haven’t received competitive applications or none at all from students over 40 in these past admissions cycles.


The 200 number (for total applicants over 40) that you presented from the AAMC is telling in and of itself; especially if you reduce that number by those applicants that only focused on DO schools.


Anyway, it would be interesting if we could find out from AAMC what % of the 200 were accepted.


It would also be great if anyone 40 or over when they applied to MD schools could share their specific successes.

I wouldn’t pursue an MD degree offshore under any circumstances and certainly recognize the merits of pursuing a DO degree instead.

J. R.


I was waitlisted at one MD school (and withdrew my application when I accepted admission to my first choice school which is a DO school. I was informally given to understand that I would be admitted to Univ. of Kentucky’s school. I found out at the interview about their rural physician leadership program which required a second, separate application. If not accepted there, then they would return to processing my general application to the medical school. I submitted that separate application and, again, withdrew prior to my scheduled interview date for that program due to my other accepance. I do, however, feel confident I would have been accepted there because of my strong public health /free health clinic background. I’m 53.


Did my age factor against me? Perhaps at some institutions. The only one where I KNOW someone on the admission committee considered it was at an osteopathic medical school (where I caught a glimpse of my birthdate circled on my application with “52!!!” written next to it). However, much of what I have been DOING in these years is medically related -working as a nurse-practitioner, setting up a non-profit organization to provide health care and education, working at a free clinic, teaching nursing students. So I believe the CONTENT of the years weighed heavier than the NUMBER of the years at most institutions.


Kate

Hi there


while I can’t really bring anything concrete to the table, I was a researcher at a medical school (MD). I can recall on two occasions people older than 50 graduated with an MD degree (I can’t really speak for their GPA and MCAT). But this is certainly not the norm.


Perhaps we should have a thread with stats for accepted applicants (and a sticky) with some info:


1- GPA


2- MCAT


3- Age


4- DO/MD school (and which one)


5- Number of schools applied to and interviewed


That wouldn’t be a bad idea. What do you guys think?

  • J.R. Said:


The 200 number (for total applicants over 40) that you presented from the AAMC is telling in and of itself; especially if you reduce that number by those applicants that only focused on DO schools.

Anyway, it would be interesting if we could find out from AAMC what % of the 200 were accepted.



Sorry if I was confusing, but calculating from the 2010 AAMC data there were approximately 180 people age 38 or older who MATRICULATED to allopathic medical schools. This represents the age group in 99th percentile of applicants or oldest 1% (Link to AAMC age percentiles) . I reached this conclusion by extrapolating back from the actual 2010 AAMC numbers:

42,742 total applicants

31,834 first time applicants

19,641 acceptees

18,665 matriculants

186 = 1% of total matriculants. This would roughly suggest about 427 applicants over 38 years of age. However, the percentile tables indicate the average age of 99th percentile of applicants split into two distinct groups. The average age of applicants in 99th percentile who applied but who did not matriculate was 40 while the average age for those who did matriculate was 33 for women and 35 for men. Noting that average age for both groups was 38, suggests that there were some significantly older individuals providing outlying data points, particularly for women.

While your question relates to 40 year old, statistically using the 95th percentile, giving us 5% of the total population typically presents a more stable view. While this is for the 30 year old and above group it does allow us to compare this the Osteopathic medical school applicant/matriculant pool (here I am using 2009 data). In latter approximately 6% of applicants were 31 years old and above and 5% of matriculants were 31 years old and above. My point with all this dry data is that for both groups about 5% of the applicants were over 30 and about 5% of the matriculants were over 30. This gross data analysis does not indicate a strong bias against age.

My perception is that much smaller applicant pool of older students, the likely higher percentage of this older applicant pool having poorer academic overall records (usually from their original undergraduate work), and the difficulty in re-preparation for older students with family and employment obligations makes this a higher reach for older students.




  • Kate429 Said:
So I believe the CONTENT of the years weighed heavier than the NUMBER of the years at most institutions.



I'll now have to agree with this, although I initially thought the opposite based on a few ageist institutions I've spoke with over the past few years.

What I'm noticing among a lot of older applicants especially those NOT in medically relevant fields, is what I feel is likely being interpreted as "mid life crisis" applicants, those who for one reason or another want to pursue medicine. I know how hard is it/was for me to convince folks of my sincere interest in medicine given my work in the field for most of the past 25+ years. It must be that much more difficult for an applicant over 40 who doesn't have much medically relevant experience to convince an adcom of their "sincerity" as it relates a to a career in medicine.


For what it’s worth, I was accepted at the Medical College of Wisconsin at the age of 42 without any special connections there at all.



  • J.R. Said:


(b) Is it possible that the majority of individuals that reach out to this discussion board are not the best barometer for the allopathic admissions process?



I don't believe this forum is SUPPOSED to be a barometer for the allopathic admissions process. Or the DO admissions proccess, for that matter. It's supposed to be a place where OPMs can come together for support and to share information, advice, etc. And I think it's quite good at that mission.
  • terra_incognita Said:


It's supposed to be a place where OPMs can come together for support and to share information, advice, etc. And I think it's quite good at that mission.



And the fact that there are admits to both MD AND DO programs is just icing on the cake, IMHO!!!!

see below

Kind of off topic…?!


The point was to discuss, share information, etc.


But I SUPPOSE you missed that aspect


The site serves many purposes and advocating on behalf of “older” medical school applicants should be included in its mission.

Thank you for sharing that information…


We have at least one person > 40 who was admitted to an MD program.


Not quite a quorum but good news none-the-less!

Thank you for the clarification. For the most part the calculations appear to make sense.


Where are you pulling the average age of “38” from…?

Thank you! It is a great idea but people don’t seem overly comfortable sharing that information unfortunately.

Hi Kate. Thanks so much for sharing…


There have been posts to this site in the past describing similar, and in many cases more egregious, examples of people misunderstanding the concept of a blind admissions process with respect to age.


It’s too bad there isn’t an avenue for identifying those schools with descriptions of the situation and funneling through the AAMC for follow-up and training.


It is, in fact, illegal to be highlighting a person’s age as you described and one female poster on this site described an interview panel in which she was outright told she was too old. These examples appear to be far too common and something needs to be done about it. No one ever accused doctors, or admissions committees, of being sophisticated in their business, legal, and/or people skills but part of the problem lies in a lack of training with respect to how to handle issues…


At least they aren’t circling “african-american” and writing “black!!!” next to the ethnic identification on their admissions files. Or let’s hope not.