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Oct. 17, 2007
Med School Applications and Enrollments Jump
If any doubt remained, data released Tuesday should erase them: Medical school is back as a destination, a seeming response to the law of supply and demand.
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As recently as 2002, the number of students applying to and enrolling in American medical schools appeared to be in a freefall, having dipped sharply, from highs in the mid-1990s, amid concerns about a glut of physicians. But with at least some experts now predicting a significant shortfall of doctors in the years ahead, medical schools are expanding their enrollments and students are flooding the institutions with applications to fill the seats, according to an annual look at medical school admissions by the Association of American Medical Colleges.
The number of first-year students enrolling at the nation’s 126 medical schools this fall grew to a record 17,759, an increase of 2.3 percent and at least the fifth straight year in which that number ticked up. And the number of applicants grew by 8.2 percent, to 42,315, the highest total since 1997. Nearly 32,000 of those applicants were applying for the first time, a record high.
The growth in applicants and enrollments come at a time when the medical college association and some other experts are calling for significant increases in the number of American doctors, citing what they predict will be a significant shortage of well-trained medical professionals (the view that the country faces a shortage of doctors is not uniformly shared).
The AAMC has called for a 30 percent increase in medical school enrollments by 2015 through expanded enrollments at existing schools and the creation of new ones, and while association officials said this year’s overall increase probably would not put them on pace to reach that goal, they said they were heartened by the fact that 11 institutions had boosted their enrollments by at least 10 percent. The College of Medicine at the Texas A&M University System’s Health Science Center added 20 first-year students to its 2006 total of 85, an increase of 23.5 percent, and the Michigan State University College of Human Medicine (a 47.2 percent increase) and the University of Arizona College of Medicine (21.8 percent) both grew sharply by adding campuses — Michigan State in Grand Rapids and Arizona in Phoenix.
And as if to underscore the point, Hofstra University announced Tuesday that it was teaming up with a major local hospital, North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System, to create a new medical school at Hofstra. AAMC’s president, Darrell G. Kirch, said that six medical schools were awaiting full accreditation and that numerous others were in various stages of planning.
“We’re pleased to see our schools taking [our] advice to heart,” Kirch said.
Kirch said he and other AAMC officials were gratified not just by the enrollment growth, but by the fact that it was resulting in a medical student body that is both more academically accomplished and more ethnically and racially diverse. Fewer than 45 percent of 2007 applicants to American medical schools were admitted, a figure that has declined steadily from the low 50s at the start of this decade. Enrolled students this fall had an average MCAT score of 28 and average college grade point average of 3.5, Kirch said, “credentials that are the strongest we’ve ever seen.”
The number of enrollees from underrepresented minority groups was higher than ever before, and Kirch specifically noted a 5.3 percent increase over 2006 in the number of black male students who enrolled. Black applicants were less likely to be admitted to the medical colleges than were members of other racial groups — they were admitted at a rate of 38.4 percent, while Asian, Hispanic and white applicants all hovered around the overall average of 44.6 percent.
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Comments
Increasing the number of Physicians
This is a long overdue move on the part of AAMC, AMA, and other interest groups. These interest groups have deliberately and artificially kept the numbers of physicians down in order to maintian their high income, with the result that the cost of medical care is needlessly high, physicians are too busy and unavailable to give quality care, and patients have to wait too long for appointments. The proposed increase in enrollment is still way too conservative. The country needs to tripple its physicians’ pool within the next ten years to cope with the demographic changes brought on by the aging baby boomers and other factors.
Bob, at 10:30 am EDT on October 17, 2007
A call to increase U.S. medical school enrollment
As a primary care physician completing residency this year and planning for a career in the U.S. Public Health Service, I am encouraged that medical schools are expanding their enrollment and hope that the pace will pick up even more. Very few medical schools have been founded (except on the osteopathic side, to their credit) in recent decades. This is a problem that the U.S. has traditionally remedied by training doctors who have received medical schooling abroad (often the best and brightest their nations have to offer).
While ~16,000 medical students graduate each year, there are ~25,000 residency training slots available, meaning that close to one third of all doctors trained in the U.S. are international medical graduates. I am not aware of how many of them return to their countries of origin, but I suspect that our reliance on them has a tendency to keep them in the U.S.
For more on the problem of the brain drain, on potential solutions, and on the associated problem of the U.S. depending on members of developing nations’ medical workforces, please see these two pieces by Dr. Fitzhugh Mullan, published recently in the New England Journal of Medicine: http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/353/17/1810, and http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/356/5/440.
Ryan, at 12:50 pm EDT on October 17, 2007
Med School
I always taught that money was the wrong reason for a person to get into the best profession. Article says we get the best of the foreign doctors here in the United States. That is not correct. They become doctors (I know many of them) in their own third world countries and they get the best training here in the United States. Since it was one of the highest pay jobs in United States all the children (almost all) of foreign doctors themselves became doctors. It wasn’t because they loved being a doctor, it was the greed. One should never get into medical school to get paid the top $, one should go into medical school because he/she has a heart, loves people, and wants to help people....I am happy to hear that medical schools are opening their doors to more students who would love to treat patients’ regardless of how much they will make.
Julie, at 1:40 pm EDT on October 17, 2007
Osteopathic Medical College Growth
Osteopathic medical education is growing rapidly, and it has been forgotten in this article. U.S. osteopathic medical schools now account for one-sixth of the nation’s accredited medical schools.
First-year enrollment at the nation’s 25 colleges of osteopathic medicine jumped to 4,408 this year, a 9 percent increase over fall 2006. A total of 15,586 students are attending U.S. osteopathic medical schools, an increase of more than 8 percent over last year. Today, nearly one in five of all U.S. medical students is studying in an osteopathic medical school, and this number is growing each year.
Applications have also been rising to record levels. Current applications are 10 percent higher than the number at this time last year, and applicants for the 2007-08 academic year were the highest ever, exceeding by 17.7 percent the number of 2006-07 applicants (translating to 2.6 applicants per available seat).
Osteopathic physicians practice the full scope of medicine throughout the U.S. and bring to their practice a hands-on approach to patient care and disease prevention and treatment.
Stephen C. Shannon, DO, MPH, President at American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine, at 4:50 pm EDT on October 17, 2007
Since medical residents are paid governmental money, is there a cap on those funds, further limiting the number of residents that could exist at any given time?
Sarah, Residents pay..., at 5:25 pm EDT on October 21, 2007
Admit lesser-paid foreign doctors
If we need more doctors in America, all we need to do to the medical profession is what has been done to the computer science and engineering professions — allow a flood of foreign doctors on H1-B work visas. In no time, we’ll have more doctors than we need and hospitals will be able to hire them at cut rates. Imagine: doctors working 7 days a week (no more weekly golf outings) and driving Volvos because their 30K/year salaries won’t be enough to afford a Mercedes.
Jay, at 5:00 am EDT on October 23, 2007
a major oversight
It is disappointing that this article omitted figures for the 20% of U.S. medical students that attend osteopathic schools of medicine. 1 in 5 U.S. med students attends a school of osteopathic medicine.
Bryan Hopping, Osteopathic medical schools at Touro University College of Osteopathic medicine, at 5:10 pm EST on December 7, 2007
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The AAMC has absolutely NO right to complian. If there is going to be such a shortage, why are they making it so difficult for QUALIFIED students to get in. I have a daughter going through the process now, with a good gpa and MCAT socres, plus2 years of research (published) at a major teaching hospital in Boston and she has already been denied at 3 medical schools. You want American doctors take American students!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Mary, at 9:55 am EDT on October 17, 2007