The Association of American Medical Colleges recently kicked off its campaign to combat the declining number of minority applicants to medical schools.
Through this campaign, the program aims to address two main obstacles identified by minority undergraduates who considered applying to medical school -- the MCATs and financial aid.
According to Elisa Siegel, senior vice president for communications at the AAMC, focus group participants said performing well on the MCATs and finding good financial aid packages are constant hurdles when they consider applying to medical school.
In one portion of the program, titled "Meet the Doctor," the AAMC offers ads in which doctors discuss how they overcame similar obstacles when applying to and completing medical school. Siegel said she hopes this program will be effective in encouraging minority students to pursue degrees in medicine.
"What we found was that the most inspiring and effective [programs] were the ads that addressed the barriers students told us that they faced ... in a way that shows them the barriers can be overcome," Siegel said.
Siegel hopes the companion Web site will attract prospective applicants and "build a community of students who are interested and engaged and actively considering medicine as a career."
Judy Pointer, program manager at the Office of Diversity at the University's School of Medicine, said financial aid is especially problematic for many prospective minority applicants.
"Money is the resounding message through the University in terms of recruiting minorities and in terms of finding an affordable place to come to," she said.
While the AAMC cited a national trend of declining numbers of minority applicants, Beth Bailey, dean of admissions at the University's Medical School, said she has seen a slight increase in both minority applications and subsequent offers of admission during the last two years.
Bailey said the Medical School's first-year class includes seven black and seven Hispanic students among its 140 members.
While Bailey said she could not account for the increase in minority applicants, she said the admissions office consistently aims to have more minority students.
"We don't have a quota that we're aiming for, we just try to get as many well-qualified minorities in the class as we can," she said. "Our goal is always to have more [minority students], but how many actually are accepted and matriculate each year varies."
Siegel said the AAMC is also monitoring the effectiveness of this program at California State University-Fresno, University of Arizona, University of Pittsburgh and Rutgers University.
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