Do pre-admission programs make a difference in the enrollment of underrepresented-minority students at U.S. medical schools?
OBJECTIVE
To assess the association between the presence of pre-admission programs directed at underrepresented minority (URM) students at medical schools accredited by the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME) and the first-year and total enrollments of URM students during the 1993-94 academic year.


METHODS
The authors ranked 119 LCME-accredited medical schools by the percentages of their first-year classes and total enrollments made up of URM students. They then compared the schools in three ways: (1) schools ranking above versus below the median in terms of numbers of URM students; (2) the top 25% versus the lower 75%; and (3) the top 25% versus the lowest 25%. Logistic regression was used to determine the association between the presence of pre-admission programs and URM enrollment.


RESULTS
Fifty-six percent of the medical schools had pre-admission programs. For both first-year and total enrollments, each comparison showed that schools ranked as having higher percentages of URM students (above the mean and in the top 25%) were more likely to have pre-admission programs than were the schools ranked lower (below the mean, lower 75%, and lowest 25%).


CONCLUSIONS
This study suggests that the presence of pre-admission programs is positively associated with enrollment of URM students at U.S. medical schools.
Strayhorn
G
G
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, School of Medicine, USA. strayhrn@med.unc.edu
Demby
K
K
D000328:Adult; D004516:Education, Premedical; D005069:Evaluation Studies as Topic; D006801:Humans; D016015:Logistic Models; D008913:Minority Groups / Q000193:education* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D013337:Students, Medical / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D014481:United States