{"id":1379,"date":"2019-05-25T22:02:37","date_gmt":"2019-05-25T22:02:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/?p=1379"},"modified":"2019-10-11T16:37:35","modified_gmt":"2019-10-11T16:37:35","slug":"cuny-school-of-medicine-tops-nation-in-diversity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/2019\/05\/cuny-school-of-medicine-tops-nation-in-diversity\/","title":{"rendered":"CUNY School of Medicine tops nation in diversity"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
CUNY School of Medicine<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The CUNY School of Medicine, only two years into its history, has achieved a stunning accomplishment. The <\/span>school<\/span> leads the nation as the most racially diverse medical school in the country, with 5<\/span>3 percent <\/span>of students being members of minority groups.\u202f<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The diversity<\/span> is undoubtedly linked to the school\u2019s revolutionary acceptance policy, which eschews MCATs in place of a more holistic application process.<\/span>\u00a0Students are selected out of high school, and their acceptance is determined by <\/span>a number of<\/span> qualifiers. These include essay samples, interviews with students, and an investigation into the student’s extracurricular life. According to <\/span>Annabel Santana<\/span>, <\/span>the school\u2019s <\/span>a<\/span>ssistant <\/span>d<\/span>ean of <\/span>d<\/span>iversity and <\/span>e<\/span>ducational <\/span>a<\/span>ffairs<\/span>,<\/span> the applicants are considered by \u201cnot only the schools they come from, but their communities.\u201d The admissions office <\/span>takes into account<\/span> the students\u2019 socioeconomic status as well as their high school performance, internship experience and their level of engagement with their communities.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The school, located in Harlem on the City College of New York campus, was established in 2016 after CUNY absorbed what was established in 1943 as the Sophie Davis School of Biomedical Engineering. CUNY carried on the tradition put in place by the Davis school of providing high school graduates with an all-inclusive six-year medical degree rather than the tiered system employed by most colleges. The school has a student body of 400, and a highly competitive acceptance rate of 7 percent. In some cases, recruitment begins as early as middle school.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Campus at the City College of New York<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u202f<\/span>Representatives of the school reach out to high school students in various ways. Santana believes that \u201cthe earlier you can connect to young people and say<\/span>,<\/span> \u2018<\/span>hey this is a career you can pursue,<\/span>\u2019<\/span>\u201d the better.\u202f<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Once accepted, the students have access to <\/span>a number of<\/span> programs put in place to make them feel safe, seen and heard.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>\u201cWe try to be much more supportive of our students in ways beyond the academic, and it has been highly effective in reducing our attrition rates,\u201d Santana said. These support systems include programs like White Coats for Black Lives, a nationally active<\/span>,<\/span> student<\/span>–<\/span>run organization that works to eradicate racism in medical schools<\/span>;<\/span> or Sisters for Sophie, a collection of African American women acting as advisors and mentors. According to Santana, the staff at the college is very diverse, which \u201chelps students to see that they have mentors and role models with similar backgrounds to their own.\u201d\u202f<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

According to a press release by CUNY<\/a>, The diversity level at<\/span> CUNY School of Medicine is nearly the inverse of national statistics, which see a white medical student population of about 59<\/span> percent<\/span> on average. The population of black students at the college is 35<\/span> percent<\/span>, nearly five times the national medical school average of 6<\/span> percent<\/span>. The school also enrolls women at a markedly higher rate than the rest of the country, with 63<\/span> p<\/span>ercent<\/span> of its student body being comprised of women, which is the highest percentage in the nation among medical schools.\u00a0<\/span>The community outreach and social considerations have led to 80<\/span> percent<\/span> of the school\u2019s student body being either immigrants or <\/span>first generation<\/span> citizens.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u202f<\/span>The non-traditional six-year plan helped facilitate the elimination of the MCAT. \u201cBecause we\u2019re recruiting directly from high school, we didn\u2019t see it as adding value to process,\u201d Santana said. \u201cWe thought it might be less informative because the MCATs have been shown to be more of a barrier to get into medical school because it\u2019s more a measure of knowledge and ability to take standardized exams.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u202f<\/span>According to Santana, a feeling of acceptance and inclusivity is tantamount to keeping students happy and comfortable at the college. She says that the administration works to \u201cidentify needs early on and get advisors involved. We make sure students know they have people they can reach out to.\u201d All staff members are subject to implicit bias training, a class that helps faculty recognize their inherent biases and work to acknowledge and eliminate them when dealing with students.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u202f<\/span>All of this has le<\/span>d to the success of the most diverse medical school in the nation. Retention and graduation<\/span>\u00a0r<\/span>ates are high, and Santana believes that the students \u201care very supportive of each other. They really develop a sense of community.\u201d This community serves as an important augmentation to the myriad communities from which the students hail, making them feel welcome among<\/span> peers from all backgrounds<\/span>, Santana said<\/span>.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>\u201cWe give our students an opportunity to demonstrate that they have a lot of experience to bring to the table.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By taking students straight out of high school, the school’s student body is 53 percent minority, five times the national average.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":1380,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[119],"class_list":["post-1379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-cuny-medical-school"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1379"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1379\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1570,"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1379\/revisions\/1570"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}