Minority and Low-Income Students Benefit from Postbaccalaureate Premedical Programs (University of California, San Francisco, News Office, News Release, September 5, 2006).
Researchers have found that postbaccalaureate premedical programs are a valuable tool for increasing the number of disadvantaged and underrepresented students entering medical school. The study, which appears in the September 6, 2006 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, is the first of its kind to use rigorous scientific methods to evaluate whether these programs are effective in addressing the lack of racial and ethnic diversity among physicians in America. Over the course of several years, the study compared a sample of 265 students who were accepted into the University of California's postbaccalaureate premedical programs to a control group of 396 college graduates who applied, but were denied admission, to the same postbaccalaureate premedical programs. The study concluded that 67.6% of the programs’ participants compared to only 22.5% of the nonparticipant control group were ultimately admitted and enrolled in medical school.