By Dr. Satnam Singh
CHICAGO, Il.: Recent report by Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) raises concern about declining number Of students competing for medical school slots. Nationwide, almost all the schools are receiving fewer applications for admission every year. According to AAMC the number of students desiring to receive medical education have dropped sharply to 34 percent in the last 13 years. 42,624 students applied for 197475 first year Class, as compared to only 28, 123 for 198788.
The reason for declining attraction for this prestigious profession. Could be in large part due to high cost of medical education, the long training period required as compared with other careers, fear of surplus physicians and attractiveness for other more lucrative professional opportunities such as law school or business school.
Personal interviews of various students eligible for admission to medical school shows that their relatives or friends who are physicians, are discouraging these young people from entering into medicine.
The declining number of applicants would mean that the medical schools will be forced to accept those students who previously would have been rejected. This means that the quality of physicians Coming out of medical schools will suffer.
On the other hand in another report by AAMC, the number of female physicians graduating in 1987 rose to32.3 percent.as comparing to 30.8 percent in 1986, indicating increasing attraction of females towards this profession.
Fewer physicians are graduating each year. This trend will ultimately favor the assimilation of 10,000 foreign trained physicians, who had been denied access to this profession in the past.
Article extracted from this publication >> December 18, 1987
