Skirting SCOTUS: How Medical Schools Will Continue to Practice Racially Conscious Admissions

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard and Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina makes it illegal for colleges and universities—including medical schools—to use race as a factor in the admissions process. Statements from professional medical associations, government agencies, and medical schools signal that many in the healthcare establishment nevertheless remain ideologically committed to the principle of racial favoritism and reject the virtue of race blindness.

Efforts to game admissions with an eye toward bolstering racial diversity commonly occur under the moniker of “holistic admissions.” In theory, holistic admissions should mean de-emphasizing the metrics that primarily determine admission to medical school (e.g., GPA and MCAT scores) and placing greater focus on other academic qualifications, personality traits, or professional accolades. In practice, “holistic” admissions often represent a rebranding or workaround of affirmative action.

Recent history shows that evading bans on race-based admissions through the “holistic admissions” moniker can succeed. Administrators at the UC Davis School of Medicine, for example, have been fully transparent about the fact that their model of holistic admissions represents an attempt to skirt California’s ban on affirmative action and to increase the enrollment of students from groups they deem “underrepresented” in medicine. The same scheme used at UC Davis is now popularly floated as a model that medical schools across the nation could emulate.

Though Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard prohibits the use of race as a factor in college admissions, many medical schools appear set to devise workarounds. In the meantime, positive change could be realized through ending the monopoly that the activist-minded Liaison Committee on Medical Education (sponsored by the American Medical Association and Association of American Medical Colleges) currently holds over medical education. Abolishing DEI from medical education also represents an important step, as recent history shows that DEI offices often exert pressure on admissions offices to engage in race-based admissions.

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