The Main Med School Application Prefers Diversity Over Quality

Not diverse enough? Good luck getting into medical school. That’s the reality of the upcoming version of the American Medical College Application Service, or AMCAS, which every applicant must take. A medical school administrator tipped us off to what may be in it. The application is clearly being designed to discover your race, background, and beliefs—not how qualified you are to be a physician.

The current AMCAS is bad enough. It asks applicants to state their gender identity and pronouns. Why? Simple: “These questions are intended to provide medical schools with information about the many ways an applicant could contribute to institutional diversity.” Forget qualifications—identity matters more.

The AMCAS also asks you to describe your “childhood information.” That includes whether your area was “medically underserved” and whether your family has received federal or state assistance programs. Applicants are asked to list their family’s income level, how many people lived in their household, and whether the applicant had to contribute to the family’s income. 

These questions have nothing to do with someone’s ability to be a physician. The only real conclusion is that medical schools are trying to recruit people based on other metrics.

Yet what’s coming is even worse. According to our tipster, the Association of American Medical Colleges, which runs the AMCAS, intends to add “Social Justice/Advocacy” to the list of acceptable answers under “work experience.” In other words, applicants will be able to list politicking and radicalism as a reason they should be let into medical school.

What’s happening to the AMCAS is further proof of the decline of standards in medical education—and the rise of ideology, grounded in the belief that skin color and beliefs matter more than ability and merit. Patients should worry about the quality of their next physician.

Were you rejected from a medical school or training program because you weren’t diverse enough? Please let us know – securely and anonymously.