Marking the fourth straight year of decline, medical schools across the country are receiving less applicants each year.
And with 3.7 percent less applicants in 2000, the figure for 2001 isn’t expected to rise either, said Robert Beran, vice president of student affairs and educational services at the Association of American Medical Colleges.
“The difference I expect to see is the 2000-2001 figures to be about the same,” Beran said. “I estimate between a 3 and 4 percent decline.”
Explanations for the trends range, Beran said.
“Everyone has their own idea why these figures are going down, and really it could be because of any number of factors,” he said. “They are not unusual and these figures have gone up and down.
“The last 50 years have been very cyclical.”
At MSU’s College of Human Medicine, the trends are consistent with the national drop, said Jay Bryde, admissions officer for the College of Human Medicine.
The number has gone down, but Bryde said the college has remained a competitive school with plenty of applications - 2,773 prospective students vied for 106 available spots in 2001.
“We are still getting qualified applicants, and that is what really matters most,” Bryde said.
This downward number cycle is not a phenomenon to have, said Barbara Barzansky, secretary of the American Medical Association’s medical education council and author of the reported statistics.
“We had a decline from the mid- to late-1980s and that turned around,” she said. “No one has proven why this is, but there is a lot of speculation about what’s happened and no research or studies to prove it.”
Some possible factors of the decline include high tuition and debt along with a series of variables all acting together, Barzansky said.
“There are concerns about where the health-care system is going in the future, and concerns with physicians telling potential applicants they aren’t satisfied with the field,” she said. “Directly or indirectly through the press, young people are hearing medicine is not a good career.
“There are so many problems.”
But while numbers of applicants have fallen, other statistics have risen.
Female entrants to medical school have continued to rise to 46 percent - an 8 percent increase from female representation in 1990.
The number of medical school faculty has also continued to rise one percent, the number of medical students has remained constant, Barzansky said.
In addition to problems potential applicants have with medical school or the profession, the reason for the decline in applications may have nothing to do with the field itself, some in the field say.
Diane Ebert-May, director of the Lyman Briggs School, said some students just choose another path.
“We had a senior who moved into public health,” she said. “She ended up choosing the health care field, but decided to serve society in that way.
“At a university like MSU where there is the opportunity to do so many things and students are exposed to the richness of the university, it becomes a matter of what really grabs them,” she said.
While the Lyman Briggs School is a science-oriented residential college, the number of students who go on to medical school has not changed over the years, Ebert-May said, with one-third of the school’s graduates going to medical school.
Heather Smith, a Lyman Briggs School freshman, said her career is still up in the air, and so is the possibility of applying to medical school.
“I think my classes this year and next will determine if it’s the kind of field I want to go into,” Smith said. “Cost and health care issues don’t factor into my decision.
“If it’s my thing and I want to pursue it, it will be long and tedious, but I will definitely go for it.”
Rachel Wright can be reached at wrightr9@msu.edu.
