Jump to content
Premed 101 Forums

Accepting randomness in medical school admissions: The case for a lottery


Recommended Posts

This article fails to acknowledge that a well-intentioned medical school admissions lottery inadvertently creates a system where once past the combined GPA, CARs and Casper score cutoff, the biggest factor that decides whether you get in or not is the number of times you apply. It would be similar to how you have a higher chance of winning the lottery the more tickets you buy. Medical school applications are expensive and have an associated opportunity cost that would be more of a burden on those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. Someone from a rich family could afford to wait year-on-year and continue applying 3,4 or 5 times until they eventually get accepted. This would be harder to do for someone with financial constraints and/or familial responsibilities. The only way to make an admissions lottery fair would be to give everybody only one chance to apply but that has its own issues. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

23 minutes ago, Philo-King said:

This article fails to acknowledge that a well-intentioned medical school admissions lottery inadvertently creates a system where once past the combined GPA, CARs and Casper score cutoff, the biggest factor that decides whether you get in or not is the number of times you apply. It would be similar to how you have a higher chance of winning the lottery the more tickets you buy. Medical school applications are expensive and have an associated opportunity cost that would be more of a burden on those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. Someone from a rich family could afford to wait year-on-year and continue applying 3,4 or 5 times until they eventually get accepted. This would be harder to do for someone with financial constraints and/or familial responsibilities. The only way to make an admissions lottery fair would be to give everybody only one chance to apply but that has its own issues. 

or make the application process less expensive

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
×
×
  • Create New...