Commentary

CUNY Med School Is Proud Of Not Having Standards

  • By Do No Harm Staff
  • April 18, 2023
  • City University of New York

Should medical schools have standards for who they accept? Every patient in America would obviously say yes, since lower quality physicians inevitably provide worse levels of care. Yet the CUNY School of Medicine apparently disagrees, and it’s openly touting its disregard for standards.

We discovered this fact after watching a recent seminar hosted by the International Association of Medical Science Educators. The seminar was titled, “building pathways and bridges on the bumpy road towards equity in STEM and medicine.”

The moderator asked, “are there any programs to support the next step of MCAT preparation in admissions process for those students that go on?” A representative at CUNY’s medical school response: “I can say for our school at the CUNY School of Medicine, when they get accepted into the BS/MD program, there is no MCAT to gatekeep them from going into medical school.”

This is an astounding statement. Medical schools should want to “gatekeep” in order to accept the most qualified students. And the MCAT in particular is proven to help find the medical students who are most likely to become the best physicians. Yet the MCAT, along with the whole concept of gatekeeping, have come under assault from woke activists who believe that standards prevent schools from achieving their demands for greater diversity.

Figure 1, Admission requirements, CUNY School of Medicine (https://www.ccny.cuny.edu/csom/you-apply)

CUNY is not alone. At least 40 medical schools have abandoned the MCAT for at least some applicants. For instance, the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine waives MCAT requirements for some applicants from Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

This is a dangerous trend – and it’s deeply disturbing that medical schools are patting themselves on the back. The CUNY School of Medicine may be proud of abandoning key standards for applicants, but patients should perhaps be worried the next time they’re treated by one of its graduates.