Preliminary data indicate that University applicants to medical schools continue to fare well in gaining admission to the nation's top-ranked schools despite increasingly tough national competition.
For the second straight year, a record 155 University seniors were accepted to medical school, compared with last year's record of 148, according to the University's Health Professions Advising Center.
This is a strong showing for University students in light of the greater competition they face nationally, said Kay Singer, assistant dean for health professions advising and director of the center. Because the past four years have witnessed a steady increase in the number of University students who apply to medical school, however, the rate of acceptance has fallen from about 95 percent seen in the late 1980s and early 1990s to a range of 71 to 82 percent.
In 1995, 80 percent of the 193 senior applicants were accepted to at least one medical school, Singer said.
The national picture mirrors trends at the University. Applications hit an all-time high this year when the nation's 124 medical schools saw 46,312 applicants for the approximate 17,000 spaces available. Since 1988, the number of applicants has increased nationally by 73 percent. As a result, the national acceptance rate to medical school has plummeted in recent years from 64 percent in 1988 to the projected rate for 1995 applicants of about 37 percent. During those same years, the number of University applicants to medical school--seniors and past graduates--increased by more than 50 percent.
Despite the more turbulent waters, University students and past graduates apply to and are accepted at top-ranked schools, Singer said. About 60 percent of these accepted applicants, however, matriculate at either public or private medical schools in their home state, she added.
There are no conclusive studies to indicate why the number of applicants to medical school keeps increasing each year, Singer said. Some studies, she said, have speculated a number of reasons--economic stability, heightened altruism and focus on service, encouragement over the success of medical school applicants in the late 1980s and more female and minority applicants--but no one knows for sure.
University pre-med seniors offered some plausible explanations for the trend. "In light of all the health-care reform, you'd think the opposite [would be happening]," said Trinity senior Mike Go. But the increasing press coverage of the medical profession may have exposed more students to the traditional respect for the profession and the emotional rewards of helping heal the sick, he said.
Trinity senior Amy Toth disputed the influence of health reform and said that the growing pool of applicants at the University stems from increasing pre-professionalism and angst about the job market in other fields. "I really feel a lot of people here apply to med school on the chance of getting in because... [they] are scared they're not going to be able to find a job," she said.
Dan Blazer, dean of medical education at the University, agreed that more students may be pursuing health careers because of the job market. "Despite the health-care problems our country faces, in 1995, virtually all physicians can find employment and receive a reasonable compensation for their work," Blazer said.
One benefit of the increasing number of applicants is that higher caliber students may pursue careers as primary-care physicians. "This is because the number of students accepted into medical school and post graduate training is not increasing, and overall post graduate slots will most certainly decrease," Blazer said. He added that an increasing percentage of primary care slots, which provide training to future primary care physicians, will decrease the number of specialty slots due to market forces.
When asked if the current emphasis on the need for more primary care physicians affected the admissions process, Singer said that several studies have shown that applicants who have demonstrated their altruism by contributing significantly in the service arena are more likely to pursue a career in primary care medicine. Therefore, if medical schools are seeking to increase the number of their graduates who go into primary care, they will likely put emphasis on that record of service.
Despite changes in the nation's health-care system, students may not be well-informed of the current changes. "Undergrads [at the University] don't think about it because they're so focused on their own directions that they don't understand the whole road map is going to change," Toth said.
It is uncertain how this map's new detours will affect the number of applicants to medical school, Blazer said. "The horizon changes so rapidly that no one can really predict what will happen even a couple of years ahead... In a few years, medicine may not appear nearly as attractive a profession as it does now. I certainly hope not, but it could happen, leading to fewer applicants."
But for now, about 12 percent of each senior class apply during their senior year, while another 2 percent apply one or more years after graduation, Singer said. The latter number is growing, Singer said, as some applicants decide to take time off to pursue other interests before committing to medical training. Others may delay their application to strengthen it by taking additional coursework or completing another activity such as working in a patient care setting or doing significant service work.
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