Why Medical School so competitive?
Mr. A asked:
I’m a pre med student. But I don’t understand why Medical School admissions keeps on getting harder. Some 3,500 plus students applied for 40 slots at my school’s medical program. We have a dangerous shortage of doctors in this country and an obviously high supply of qualified students. But why does year after year admissions becomes more selective.
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I’m a pre med student. But I don’t understand why Medical School admissions keeps on getting harder. Some 3,500 plus students applied for 40 slots at my school’s medical program. We have a dangerous shortage of doctors in this country and an obviously high supply of qualified students. But why does year after year admissions becomes more selective.
Someone please explain this to me. Thanks in advance.
December 30th, 2009 at 10:43 am
It’s either they don’t have enough qualify people to teach it or government have a hand in it. I use to go to college in Long Beach, and in their nursing program, you would be put on a two year waiting list just to register for the program. Paul
December 31st, 2009 at 12:07 pm
You’ve already identified the reason. It’s simple supply and demand. Every year more students apply, and the number of available seats increased by 160 in the past two years. What school is this BTW? FIU?
There is a shortage of doctors, but I would not go so far as to call it dangerous. Also, there may be 3500 applicants, but maybe 10% are actually qualified.
Educating a doctor is expensive, and tuition doesn’t even cover half of the cost. If we want greater access to medical education, then we have to increase public funding. I would also love to see more medical schools, but it’s not easy to build them. UCF and FIU both have hundreds of millions of dollars invested in them, and there is still no guarantee that they’ll succeed (although with their leadership, particularly Dean Rock at FIU and Dean German at UCF, it’s unlikely that they’ll fail). Increasing seats at schools is another option, but it still requires more funding. Joe
January 2nd, 2010 at 11:12 am
Medical schools can now afford to be picky. Would you rather have a physician who had a near-perfect GPA and MCAT score or someone who barely got by in their undergraduate years and wants to get accepted into medical school with a measly 3.2 GPA and decent MCAT score? I think it’s better that we now have higher standards. Dan
January 4th, 2010 at 3:38 am
It isn’t more competitive than in years past, and the 3500/40 is a false statistic. About half of all applicants are accepted, and that’s stayed fairly stable for decades. The reason it looks so bad from your perspective, other than the obvious anxiety, is that each applicant typically applies to multiple schools. The number of slots available is indeed lower than it should be, but more doctors practicing equates to more costs, and the US government has been trying everything but the correct approach to cost containment in health care for about thirty years, so we’re not likely to see a substantial increase in the number of slots any time soon.
I’m reminded of Winston Churchill’s summation of the American spirit: we can be counted upon to do the right thing, after we’ve tried everything else; so eventually Uncle Sam will get around to realizing that health care doesn’t work on the same economic rules as the rest of the economy, and cost-containment measures will eventually become more rational. John de Witt
January 4th, 2010 at 11:44 pm
The reason med schools are limited in how many students they can accept absolutely has to do with space, teachers, and budget. But there’s another reason…
The biggest problem isn’t space in the med school (the academic years), it’s space during internships and residencies. Residencies, especially, are a problem. The hospitals have to pay the residents, which means that residencies require money. As more and more med schools expand or are created, there are going to be too few residency spaces available. You could end up finishing your academic course and then not be able to find a residency to complete your training. Or, sometime in the future, doctors may end up having to pay to get a residency, rather than get paid for their residency. It’s a little-publicized problem that’s going to cause huge issues if med schools keep adding students without any plan for expanding residencies as well. Kristin