by tim » Fri May 08, 2026 9:19 am
https://www.compactmag.com/article/med ... out-merit/
Medicine Without Merit
When I applied to medical school in the midst of the pandemic and in the wake of the death of George Floyd, I had reason to think I was a competitive applicant, particularly for my state’s public medical school, which favors in-state candidates with strong academic records. I didn’t assume I was entitled to admission, but I thought I would get in somewhere. I didn’t.
So I did what failed applicants are told to do: I sought feedback. Eventually, I spoke with an admissions officer at one of the schools that rejected me. He told me that I was extremely qualified and had everything the school looked for in an applicant. He said he couldn’t give me a concrete reason I wasn’t accepted, other than that I didn’t fit the demographic the school was prioritizing, and that other applicants were viewed as having “traveled a longer distance” to medicine. My application, he said, was evaluated through that lens.
That conversation unsettled me in a way I didn’t immediately recognize. I was being told I was qualified, capable, and deserving but simultaneously that those qualities were not enough due to certain immutable characteristics. I had spent years learning about discrimination as something that happened to other people. Nothing in my education had prepared me to think that it could happen to people like me.
Then it did.
Perhaps I should have seen it coming. The requirements for admission into medical school vary markedly depending on who the applicant is. According to data from the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), the academic thresholds required for acceptance differ substantially between racial groups. The average MCAT score of a white applicant who is accepted into a medical school is 512.4, approximately the 85th percentile nationally. By contrast, the average MCAT score for accepted American Indian applicants is 502.2 (56th percentile), for accepted black applicants 505.7 (67th percentile), and for accepted Hispanic applicants 506.4 (69th percentile).
The disparities are even more pronounced when we look at the applicant pool as a whole. White applicants overall, including those who are rejected, have an average MCAT score of 507.8, roughly the 73rd percentile. In other words, accepted black, Hispanic, and American Indian medical students matriculate with lower MCAT scores, on average, than white applicants who have not yet been accepted to medical school. The same pattern appears when we turn to undergraduate GPA. White applicants apply with an average GPA of 3.7, but require an average GPA of 3.8 to gain admission, while accepted black, Hispanic, and American Indian applicants matriculate with average GPAs of 3.59, 3.66, and 3.64, respectively.
I ended that phone call with a realization: If I wanted to succeed in medicine, I couldn’t leave room for doubt. So I pursued a NIH research fellowship, received research training, published scientific papers, and obtained letters of recommendation from prominent virologists. When I reapplied, I was accepted to multiple medical schools and received significant scholarship offers to many of them. But once again, my state’s flagship institution rejected me. I don’t claim to know precisely why. But patterns are hard to ignore.
[url] https://www.compactmag.com/article/medicine-without-merit/[/url]
[quote] Medicine Without Merit[/quote]
[quote] When I applied to medical school in the midst of the pandemic and in the wake of the death of George Floyd, I had reason to think I was a competitive applicant, particularly for my state’s public medical school, which favors in-state candidates with strong academic records. I didn’t assume I was entitled to admission, but I thought I would get in somewhere. I didn’t.
So I did what failed applicants are told to do: I sought feedback. Eventually, I spoke with an admissions officer at one of the schools that rejected me. He told me that I was extremely qualified and had everything the school looked for in an applicant. He said he couldn’t give me a concrete reason I wasn’t accepted, other than that I didn’t fit the demographic the school was prioritizing, and that other applicants were viewed as having “traveled a longer distance” to medicine. My application, he said, was evaluated through that lens.
That conversation unsettled me in a way I didn’t immediately recognize. I was being told I was qualified, capable, and deserving but simultaneously that those qualities were not enough due to certain immutable characteristics. I had spent years learning about discrimination as something that happened to other people. Nothing in my education had prepared me to think that it could happen to people like me.
Then it did.
Perhaps I should have seen it coming. The requirements for admission into medical school vary markedly depending on who the applicant is. According to data from the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), the academic thresholds required for acceptance differ substantially between racial groups. The average MCAT score of a white applicant who is accepted into a medical school is 512.4, approximately the 85th percentile nationally. By contrast, the average MCAT score for accepted American Indian applicants is 502.2 (56th percentile), for accepted black applicants 505.7 (67th percentile), and for accepted Hispanic applicants 506.4 (69th percentile).
The disparities are even more pronounced when we look at the applicant pool as a whole. White applicants overall, including those who are rejected, have an average MCAT score of 507.8, roughly the 73rd percentile. In other words, accepted black, Hispanic, and American Indian medical students matriculate with lower MCAT scores, on average, than white applicants who have not yet been accepted to medical school. The same pattern appears when we turn to undergraduate GPA. White applicants apply with an average GPA of 3.7, but require an average GPA of 3.8 to gain admission, while accepted black, Hispanic, and American Indian applicants matriculate with average GPAs of 3.59, 3.66, and 3.64, respectively.
I ended that phone call with a realization: If I wanted to succeed in medicine, I couldn’t leave room for doubt. So I pursued a NIH research fellowship, received research training, published scientific papers, and obtained letters of recommendation from prominent virologists. When I reapplied, I was accepted to multiple medical schools and received significant scholarship offers to many of them. But once again, my state’s flagship institution rejected me. I don’t claim to know precisely why. But patterns are hard to ignore. [/quote]