The Eck’s Factor: Money makes the medical world go white

It’s been nearly four months since my last column installment, and even longer since I last discussed my relationship with the medical field. In fact, every 10th column installment of mine has to comment on toxic pre-medicine culture — sorry, I don’t make the rules! 

All jokes aside, I actually plan on applying to medical school in June, so what better cathartic outlet for my anxieties than to write an open letter criticizing the organization in charge of my future — the Association of American Medical Colleges. 

Back in September, @AAMC_MCAT, a Twitter account that posts updates on the Medical College Admission Test, tweeted an announcement for an upcoming Virtual Fair: “Did you know more Black men applied and matriculated to #medschool in 1978 than in 2014?” 

Through this tweet, the AAMC completely undermined the socioeconomic barriers it continues to perpetuate despite its efforts to make applying to medical school more accessible. Moreover, wealth privilege and racism saturate the entirety of pre-medicine culture, which contributes to the lack of racial diversity in medical school classes. 

So I wonder, AAMC — whose fault is that? Whose fault is it that you are still overwhelmingly rich and white? 

Nonetheless, I took my MCAT last July, and the entire process milked my iced coffee and book fund. The fee to take the test was $320, which doesn’t include the preparatory materials I purchased from Kaplan and UWorld, which ended up totaling about $1,000. This price is still under the $3,149 price of an MCAT preparatory course through Princeton Review that guarantees a score of at least a 510, an 81st percentile on the MCAT. 

Not to mention the fact that medical school application costs are expensive too, with the first primary application costing $170 and the following costing $42. And as someone who comes from a middle-class background, I can afford these costs. However, what about those who do not come from privileged backgrounds? How do they possibly afford to take the MCAT and apply to medical school? 

While AAMC offers a Fee Assistance Program to students who cannot afford to take the MCAT and apply to medical school without financial aid, financial assistance programs do not exist for preparatory materials. Students can pay for private tutors and prep courses for these standardized tests and propel themselves ahead of those with less money. 

Because it implements these socioeconomic barriers, AAMC makes it even more difficult for people from less wealthy backgrounds to compete with those who not only have money but also social capital. Students whose parents are physicians already have the wealth as well as the connections to shadowing experiences that highlight them as prime candidates when applying to medical school. 

In fact, according to a study by the American Medical Association, this access to money and resume boosters works in favor of children of physicians while applying to medical school, consequently upholding the lack of diversity in medical schools with majority white and rich classes. 

However, with the MCAT, we don’t see the same movement to abolish it like we do with undergraduate college admissions exams, such as the ACT. After all, most prestigious universities, such as the University of California system and the University of Chicago, moved toward not requiring standardized tests in their admissions process. Meanwhile, the rest of the nation is still learning that the tests merely measure students’ wealth instead of their academic capabilities. The same applies to the MCAT. 

Compared to undergraduate culture, however, pre-medicine culture feels like it’s on steroids. In a previous column, I explored cutthroat pre-medicine culture and how it deprives applicants of the empathy medical schools supposedly want to foster. This lack of empathy segues to the culture’s money-hungry maneuvers, which cut off disadvantaged students from resume-building experiences that can set them apart while applying to medical school. 

For example, COPE Health Scholars, in partnership with the Keck Graduate Institute, is a volunteer program that allows students to earn clinical volunteer hours by rotating through different hospital specialties. The program has tuition, though: It costs $406 to complete in nine months. Programs such as COPE incentivize medical school applicants to pay money to “volunteer” and gain worthwhile experience for their applications. 

And we cannot possibly talk about wealth in medicine culture without discussing politics. If I get into medical school, I feel like I have to prepare myself for encountering classmates who do not believe in universal healthcare. And no, I am not being overdramatic: A 2019 survey from the Journal of Academic Medicine suggests that about 11% of medical students do not support the Affordable Care Act.  

Moreover, according to data collected by researchers at Yale, we notice an intriguing, yet unsurprising, pattern: 67% and 65% of surgeons and anesthesiologists, respectively, identify as Republicans, while the same goes for 24% and 23% of psychiatrists and infectious disease specialists, respectively. On average, surgeons and anesthesiologists earn greater salaries than psychiatrists and infectious disease specialists. 

As people’s salaries increase, they tend to shift their political ideology to the right, at least in the medical field. This pattern makes sense, especially considering billionaires who favor conservative tax policies. 

In the medical system, however, this shift is especially corruptive because it further solidifies this greedy framework that exploits undergraduates for money to volunteer and gain acceptance to medical school, only for them to drown in student loans and experience more exploitation at the hands of a doctor-deprived medical system.   

Ultimately, if the AAMC would really like to fix this problem, perhaps it could work toward uprooting this money-hungry culture instead of advertising virtual webinars. Sincerely, a prospective — and concerned — medical student. 

In a special edition of his column, “The Eck’s Factor,” senior Matthew Eck writes about hot-button social issues. He is also the opinion editor at the Daily Trojan.