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Secondary Essays: The Diversity Prompt

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In considering your strategy and content for the medical school secondary diversity prompt, I’d recommend you ask yourself the following question:

What ethnic, religious, racial, gender, language, socioeconomic, or sexual orientation aspects of me, my family, or my experience make me distinctive?

Please note that experience is part of the question I have posed. An applicant I mentored a few years back wrote to me concerned that she did not fit into a minority category and thus, could not answer the prompt effectively. I suggested she consider an experience that targeted the prompt’s theme, and she wrote a strong essay about her successful efforts to increase diversity during sorority rush, which she spearheaded. When I applied to medical school, I crafted one of my secondary essays on my experience hearing Spike Lee speak on my college campus. Don’t be afraid to think outside the box.

If you haven’t already, check out my Doximity piece on shortcomings of the medical school admissions process, especially the secondary applications (a moneymaker for institutions).

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Diversity in Medical School?

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The AAMC recently published a piece about racial, socioeconomic, and gender diversity in 2023-4 medical school classes. The good news is that there’s some more representation of those from Latino and Native American backgrounds. 

African-American student enrollment remained mostly stable.

Women matriculants rose slightly to 56.6%. Economic diversity was still a problem. See the article here for details.

Interestingly, those who entered medical school in 2023-4 had a median undergraduate GPA of 3.84, which was even higher than in previous years.

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How Might the Supreme Court Decision about Affirmative Action Affect Medical School Admissions

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The American Medical Association (AMA) recently sponsored an interesting webinar on how the Supreme Court affirmative action decision might influence medical schools. Invited faculty included representatives from the AMA, Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, Association of American Medical Colleges, University of California (UC) Davis Medical School, and Meharry Medical School. I recommend listening to the recording or reading the transcript. (You can get CME credit for doing so, as a bonus.) 

There are a few points I found particularly interesting: 

  1. An African American physician has a likelihood of seeing African American patients at a rate that is approximately 23 to 24 times that of a white physician.
  2. Among first-year medical students, 62-63% of African American pupils say that serving an underserved population is what they want to do when they finish their education, whereas white and Asian students are in the twentieth percentiles in reporting that they want to serve those same populations.
  3. UC Davis Medical School is employing multiple, creative techniques to improve diversity at their institution, including implicit bias mitigation training and the implementation of a medical school track called Avenue M – focused on applicants who went to community colleges. Consequently, at UC Davis, over 50% of students coming from disadvantaged or underrepresented-in-medicine backgrounds make up their classes.

You can find the AMA webinar and transcript here.

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How Race and Gender Affect Medical Specialty

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The AAMC published an interesting piece recently showcasing the results of their Physician Specialty Data Report on the interplay of race, gender, and specialty. 

It’s worth combing through the data yourself, but here are a few takeaways:

Doctors from underrepresented groups are more concentrated in primary care fields. These specialties are extremely needed and noble, but since primary care is less well remunerated than surgical specialties, it’s worth thinking about the disproportionate density of minority physicians.

Women make up the majority of medical school students for the fourth year in a row.  

Women represent a significant minority in surgical specialties like orthopedic surgery (5.9%), thoracic surgery (8.3%) and neurosurgery (9.6%). Ouch.

Focusing on another demographic, the doctor workforce has grown older. Over 46% of active U.S. doctors are 55+. That number was ~38% in 2007. 

For more details, read the report here.

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Secondary Essays: The Diversity Prompt

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I’ve had several questions recently on how to approach secondary essays, so I’ll address some common prompts over the next month or so in this blog.

In considering your strategy and content for the diversity prompt, I’d recommend you ask yourself the following question:

What ethnic, religious, racial, gender, language, socioeconomic, or sexual orientation aspects of me, my family, or my experience make me distinctive?

Please note that experience is part of the question I have posed. An applicant I mentored a few years back wrote to me concerned that she did not fit into a minority category and thus, could not answer the prompt effectively. I suggested she consider an experience that targeted the prompt’s theme, and she wrote a strong essay about her successful efforts to increase diversity during sorority rush. When I applied to medical school, I crafted one of my secondary essays on my experience hearing Spike Lee speak on my college campus. 

Don’t be afraid to think outside the box.

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About Dr. Michelle Finkel

Dr. Michelle Finkel

Dr. Finkel is a graduate of Stanford University and Harvard Medical School. On completing her residency at Harvard, she was asked to
stay on as faculty at Harvard Medical School and spent five years teaching at the world-renowned Massachusetts General Hospital.
She was appointed to the Assistant Residency Director position for the Harvard Affiliated
Emergency Medicine Residency where she reviewed countless applications, personal statements and resumes. Read more

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