Long considered one of the best medical schools in the world, the University of California, Los Angeles’s David Geffen School of Medicine receives as many as 14,000 applications a year. Of those, it accepted just 173 students in the 2023 admissions cycle, a record-low acceptance rate of 1.3 percent. The median matriculant took difficult science courses in college, earned a 3.8 GPA, and scored in the 88th percentile on the Medical College Admissions Test (MCAT).
Without those stellar stats, some doctors at the school say, students can struggle to keep pace with the demanding curriculum.
So when it came time for the admissions committee to consider one such student in November 2021—a black applicant with grades and test scores far below the UCLA average—some members of the committee felt that this particular candidate, based on the available evidence, was not the best fit for the top-tier medical school, according to two people present for the committee’s meeting.
Their reservations were not well-received.
When an admissions officer voiced concern about the candidate, the two people said, the dean of admissions, Jennifer Lucero, exploded in anger.
“Did you not know African-American women are dying at a higher rate than everybody else?” Lucero asked the admissions officer, these people said. The candidate’s scores shouldn’t matter, she continued, because “we need people like this in the medical school.”
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How does this relate to the Free Beacon article that speaks to *admissions (you’re talking about exams taken by second-year students. This is the data people are asking for.
And:
They have not “released” those results. They didn’t give me the more positive data when I reached out for comment or include them in a subsequent press release.
Plus:
This is the problem with saying: “well, they still have to pass all their licensing exams, so who cares if they fail their shelf exams?”