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The influence of income on medical school admissions in Canada: a retrospective cohort study

BACKGROUND: The socioeconomic status of applicants to Canadian medical schools has been understudied in the past two decades. Institutional efforts have been made to address the lack of socioeconomic diversity across Canada during this time. We investigated the income characteristics of medical scho...

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Autores principales: Pitre, Tyler, Thomas, Alexander, Evans, Kyle, Jones, Aaron, Mountjoy, Margo, Costa, Andrew P.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7329437/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32611410
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12909-020-02126-0
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author Pitre, Tyler
Thomas, Alexander
Evans, Kyle
Jones, Aaron
Mountjoy, Margo
Costa, Andrew P.
author_facet Pitre, Tyler
Thomas, Alexander
Evans, Kyle
Jones, Aaron
Mountjoy, Margo
Costa, Andrew P.
author_sort Pitre, Tyler
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: The socioeconomic status of applicants to Canadian medical schools has been understudied in the past two decades. Institutional efforts have been made to address the lack of socioeconomic diversity across Canada during this time. We investigated the income characteristics of medical school applicants, as well as the relationship between applicant income and offer of admission, to characterize the current state of socioeconomic diversity in medical admissions. METHODS: We conducted a retrospective cohort study on 26,120 applicants at one Ontario medical school from 2013 to 2018. Characteristics of applicants who were offered admission were compared to the general population and applicants not offered admission. Regression analyses were used to investigate the association between median total neighborhood income and successful admission. RESULTS: The median total neighborhood income for medical school applicants was $98,816, which was approximately $28,480 higher than the Canadian general population. Those not admitted to the medical school had a median total neighborhood income of $98,304 compared to $105,984 for those offered admission (p < 0.001). This trend was seen in every province and territory in Canada. Median total neighborhood income was a predictor of an offer of admission; applicants in the >75th percentile income group had 54% increased odds of being offered admission when compared to applicants in the <25th percentile in our unadjusted model. Income was not significant in our adjusted models but showed that the income medians drastically shifted between pre-interview and post-interview periods, from $98,816 to $104,960 (p < 0.001). CONCLUSION: Medical school applicants are from higher economic strata compared to the general population. Despite already representing a high economic stratum, a higher median total neighborhood income relative to other applicants was associated with an offer of admission.
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spelling pubmed-73294372020-07-02 The influence of income on medical school admissions in Canada: a retrospective cohort study Pitre, Tyler Thomas, Alexander Evans, Kyle Jones, Aaron Mountjoy, Margo Costa, Andrew P. BMC Med Educ Research Article BACKGROUND: The socioeconomic status of applicants to Canadian medical schools has been understudied in the past two decades. Institutional efforts have been made to address the lack of socioeconomic diversity across Canada during this time. We investigated the income characteristics of medical school applicants, as well as the relationship between applicant income and offer of admission, to characterize the current state of socioeconomic diversity in medical admissions. METHODS: We conducted a retrospective cohort study on 26,120 applicants at one Ontario medical school from 2013 to 2018. Characteristics of applicants who were offered admission were compared to the general population and applicants not offered admission. Regression analyses were used to investigate the association between median total neighborhood income and successful admission. RESULTS: The median total neighborhood income for medical school applicants was $98,816, which was approximately $28,480 higher than the Canadian general population. Those not admitted to the medical school had a median total neighborhood income of $98,304 compared to $105,984 for those offered admission (p < 0.001). This trend was seen in every province and territory in Canada. Median total neighborhood income was a predictor of an offer of admission; applicants in the >75th percentile income group had 54% increased odds of being offered admission when compared to applicants in the <25th percentile in our unadjusted model. Income was not significant in our adjusted models but showed that the income medians drastically shifted between pre-interview and post-interview periods, from $98,816 to $104,960 (p < 0.001). CONCLUSION: Medical school applicants are from higher economic strata compared to the general population. Despite already representing a high economic stratum, a higher median total neighborhood income relative to other applicants was associated with an offer of admission. BioMed Central 2020-07-01 /pmc/articles/PMC7329437/ /pubmed/32611410 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12909-020-02126-0 Text en © The Author(s) 2020 Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research Article
Pitre, Tyler
Thomas, Alexander
Evans, Kyle
Jones, Aaron
Mountjoy, Margo
Costa, Andrew P.
The influence of income on medical school admissions in Canada: a retrospective cohort study
title The influence of income on medical school admissions in Canada: a retrospective cohort study
title_full The influence of income on medical school admissions in Canada: a retrospective cohort study
title_fullStr The influence of income on medical school admissions in Canada: a retrospective cohort study
title_full_unstemmed The influence of income on medical school admissions in Canada: a retrospective cohort study
title_short The influence of income on medical school admissions in Canada: a retrospective cohort study
title_sort influence of income on medical school admissions in canada: a retrospective cohort study
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7329437/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32611410
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12909-020-02126-0
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