As for the head of admissions at a medical school, Dr. Mark Henderson is pretty straightforward when it comes to career assessments.
“Most rich kids go to medical school,” he said.
In his role at the University of California, Davis medical school, Dr. Henderson tried to change that, developing an unorthodox tool for assessing applicants: the socioeconomic disadvantage scale. , or SED
The scale rates every applicant from 0 to 99, taking into account their living circumstances, such as family income and parents’ educational attainment. Admissions decisions are based on that score, combined with the usual catalog of grades, test scores, letters of recommendation, essays, and interviews.
Unfavorable size has helped make UC Davis one of the most diverse medical schools in the country – notably in one state voted 1996 to prohibit affirmative action.
With the Supreme Court Last week’s ruling against racially conscious admissionsmedical schools offer a glimpse into how select schools across the country might revise their admissions policies, as they look for alternative ways to achieve diversity without breaking new laws.
Last week, President Biden called the adversity score “the new standard” for achieving diversity.
Information about the UC Davis scale is available. Dr. Henderson said recently about 20 schools have requested more information. And there are other socioeconomic measurements, including Landscape, released in 2019 from the College Board, the nonprofit organization that administers the SAT. That tool allows college admissions offices to assess each student’s socioeconomic background.
But skeptics question whether such ratings – or any kind of socioeconomic affirmation – are sufficient to replace racially conscious affirmative action. And schools that use the adversity scale could also find themselves lost in a legal quagmire, with conservative groups promising to oppose programs that are simply pro-race.
Over the years, medical schools have made some progress in diversifying their student body, with an increasing number. But just like college admissions, wealth and connections continue to play a decisive role in who gets accepted. More than half of medical students come from families in the top 20% of income, while only 4% come from families in the bottom 20%. data from the American Association of Medical Colleges.
There is also an active family. The doctor’s son is 24 times According to the American Medical Association, are more likely to become doctors than their peers. It is difficult to know why this profession is passed down from generation to generation, but statistics have made the association adopt a policy that opposes inheritance preference in admissions.
Dr Henderson, who was raised from a working class background and is now deputy dean of admissions, said: “There is an incredible economic gap between medical students and the general public.
As a result, the number of Black doctors remains low: About 6 percent the number of physicians practicing in the United States are black, compared with 13.6 percent of American population who is identified as Black.
With the Supreme Court decision, “that number is likely to go down,” said Dr. James EK Hildreth, president of the Meharry Medical College, founded in 1876 in Nashville to train providers provide health care services to Blacks.
Health leaders say training more Black and Hispanic doctors could help close a large gap in American healthcare. Study showed that physicians from racial and ethnic minority groups were more likely to work in primary care or in regions where doctors were scarce.
According to Dr. Jesse M. Ehrenfeld, president of the American Medical Association, patients have better outcomes when treated by similarly experienced doctors.
The UC Davis scale has attract attention for its ability to engage a wide variety of students using what schools call a “racially neutral” socioeconomic model.
In its most recent go to class Of the 133 students, 14 percent are black and 30 percent are Hispanic. nationwide, 10 percent of medical school students are black and 12% are Hispanic. The majority of students in the UC Davis class — 84 percent — come from disadvantaged backgrounds, and 42 percent are the first family members to attend college.
The overall acceptance rate has been less than 2 percent.
In the Davis scale, first used in 2012, eight categories establish an adversity score for each candidate. Factors include family income, whether the applicant is from an underserved area, whether they help support the nuclear family, and whether their parents attended college. Are not.
The higher the percentage of applicants on the disadvantage scale, the greater the gain.
There is no fixed formula for how to balance grades with academic achievement, says Dr. Henderson, but one simulation of the system revealed that students from underrepresented groups rose to 15.3 percent from 10.7 percent. And the percentage of students with economic difficulties tripled, from 4.6% to 14.5% of the whole class.
At the same time, scores from the MCAT, the standardized test for medical school applications, fell only slightly.
Still, it’s not easy to convince medical schools to raise admissions standards, especially anything that detracts from the value of test scores and grades. Dr. Henderson said he received feedback from his own colleagues.
“Doctors say their children went to medical school elsewhere, and they don’t go here,” he said.
As the children of doctors, he said, those candidates had zero SED scores.
Several scholars, including Richard D. Kahlenbergpromoted the use of class-conscious priorities, which they argued could address racial inequalities in education without sparking the outrage often fueled by pluralist schemes. diversification based on race.
And President Biden said on Thursday that his administration would develop a “new standard for colleges that takes into account the adversity a student has overcome.”
“Kids who face tougher challenges have shown more courage, more determination, and that should be a factor that colleges should count on,” Biden told reporters at the White House. until enrollment.”
He might be talking about someone like Eleanor Adams, a member of the Choctaw Nation, who has said that she doesn’t think medical school is an option for her.
“I didn’t grow up with a lot of money,” she said.
But she found mentors to encourage her, and now she’s in her third year of medical school at UC Davis, in Sacramento. Dr. Henderson said she plans to become a doctor with the Indian Health Service in Oklahoma — fulfilling one of the school’s goals, Dr. Henderson said, which is to train doctors who will return to the community. their.
At schools in other states that have not taken affirmative action, such as the University of Michigan, admissions officials have complained that enrollment of many socioeconomically disadvantaged students has no significant increase proportion of black, Hispanic, and Native American students.
“Those tools certainly have their utility, but they don’t accomplish what racially conscious admissions methods do,” said Dr. Ehrenfeld of the American Medical Association.
Socioeconomic ratings can also be legally challenged. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., in his majority view on affirmative action, wrote that colleges may consider how race has affected an applicant’s life. But he also warns against using proxies for the race.
The Legal Organization of the Pacific, a libertarian group, has sued a selective school, the Thomas Jefferson High School of Science and Technology in Alexandria, Va., for using economic factors as a base for the admissions race.
Joshua P. Thompson, the fund’s attorney, said the legal questions surrounding these adverse indexes are complex.
“I think the devil will be in the details,” Mr. Thompson said. “The Supreme Court has been quite clear that what cannot be done directly cannot be done indirectly.”
If that happens, Dr. Henderson says the unfavorable size of his school will be defended in court.
“Am I worried about it? Yes,” Dr. Henderson said of a lawsuit. “Is it going to stop me? ARE NOT.”
