Relationship between Medical School Diversity and Participation in the US News and World Report Survey

Abstract

Introduction: Reporting in USNWR rankings may reveal unintended, but important, sources of disparities with implications for medical school admissions and the future physician workforce.

Materials and methods: To investigate relationships between allopathic medical school's student body diversity and participation in the US News and World Report Survey, we analyzed diversity statistics as listed in the Medical School Admissions Requirements (MSAR) database. These were compared to the institution's participation in the US News and World Report Survey for 152 US medical schools as either Primary Care or Research ranking.

Results & discussion: When considering USNWR rankings of research schools of medicine, those schools not participating in the survey had a 44.8% increase in UIM students. There was a statistical increase in the percentage of Latino/Hispanic students in schools that did not participate in the US News and World report survey as compared with those that did. Percentages of African American and Latino/Hispanic students were inversely correlated with US News and World Report research rankings. We suggest that participation in current publicly available allopathic medical school ranking platforms may have unintended and adverse consequences in maintaining a diverse medical school class and may impact longer-term goal of developing a diverse physician workforce that resembles the constituent population.

Keywords: Admissions; Disparities; Diversity; Education.