Unspoken Requirements: Conversations on Race and Privilege in GMed at VCU
By Aaliyah Freeman
freemanaa@vcu.edu
According to Accepted, the top 100 medical schools in the country have an acceptance rate ranging from 6 to 7 percent. Intimidating, right? Moreover, the situation is growing more complex and competitive each year, as more applicants compete for a smaller number of spots. To help and ensure that students achieve their dream of medical school, the Honors College at VCU is proud to host the Guaranteed Admission for Medical, or, GMed, program.
The GMed is a program similar to Pre-Med, however, program members are guaranteed a spot in VCU’s medical school at the end of their undergrad. The 2021 academic profile of the current freshman class speaks volumes to the hard work that goes toward being accepted into the highly esteemed program. According to VCU’s website, this year, those who were accepted averaged an “accumulated an average of 450 hours of healthcare-related experience.”
For many students, these hours are made up of, but not limited to, job shadowing, research, teaching/tutoring, and extracurriculars at school that involve the healthcare field. While there is not necessarily a required test score, students accepted tend to have above a 1300 SAT score-- this year, specifically, the average was 1490.
While for many students getting into GMed is challenging enough, it is important to note that once accepted into the program, students are still encouraged, and in fact required, to be exceptional candidates for medical school.
Being guaranteed a spot by no means is a cue to relax during undergrad. Students still must complete approximately 8 required STEM courses for the GMed track, take the MCAT, accumulate ample clinical exposure hours, and much more.
For years, GMed has been a vehicle to success for many Honors students at VCU seeking an illustrious career in healthcare. After all, it has an acceptance rate strikingly similar to Ivy League colleges-- VCU reported a 4.56% acceptance rate for the class of 2025.
The program isn’t above criticism, however. As with many prestigious and selective institutions across the country, especially those geared towards the medical field, there are noticeable disparities between the GMed community and the remainder of students in VCU Honors, specifically pre-medical students.
VCU does not release its statistics on the demographics of accepted GMed students, but it is no doubt to current Honors students that the program consists of an overwhelmingly Asian majority. This isn’t surprising, as the majority of individuals in medical education across the country are white or Asian, according to the AAMC.
This statistic opens the door for healthy conversations about the extent in which the GMed program is a microcosm of the environment of the contemporary medical field, which ultimately lacks diversity and tends to require a degree of economic privilege. I had the opportunity of having some of these conversations with current GMed students throughout the month of October.
“I will never disagree that there’s definitely a [racial and wealth] disparity when it comes to admissions to medical school...and programs like GMed and other BSMD schools,” states a current GMed student. While this student acknowledges the racial and economic privileges that accepted GMed students may have, he doesn’t feel that those privileges should undermine the hard work that goes into being accepted into the program.
Some students feel a sense of tension between themselves and their pre-med counterparts, who feel they may not have been afforded the privileges that often, but not always, create prime applicants for the program. Varying from person to person, these privileges may look like having family members that are physicians and can help their children acquire medical experience, shadowing opportunities, or just mere exposure to the world of medicine.
Other GMed students have admitted that to an extent, economic privilege has helped them get into the program, meaning, perhaps their family members weren’t physicians, but they grew up in well-funded school districts that provided them opportunities that made them competitive applicants, or were able to pay for SAT/ACT tutors and college advisors. Another current GMed student, reflecting on GMed criticisms and his own privilege asks, “Do you critique people that are in the program because they have parents that are physicians or because they had an advantage? That is fair. But there’s also a lot of work that goes into it.”
“I will never disagree that there’s definitely a [racial and wealth] disparity when it comes to admissions to medical school...and programs like GMed and other BSMD schools."
And hard work tends to be the common denominator for many GMed students when asked, “How do you think you got in?” Multiple students I had conversations with disclosed that they applied to nearly 20 different programs similar to VCU’s Guaranteed Admission program, one student describing the application processes as “brutal,” and stating that they only got into two out of the twenty schools they applied to. The same student discussed the many sacrifices they made during high school to get in, like exchanging summer vacations for SAT prep courses.
In all the conversations I had with GMed students, we concluded the discussion by debating how or whether VCU could do anything to improve wealth and race disparities within its GMed population. Many of the conclusions drawn were similar: the disparities in the program seem to be pretty unavoidable and are rooted in historic and systemic trends and privileges.
Hence, many students feel that there is little that the admissions board can do outside of the efforts they likely are already making. “It all comes down to merit,” remarks one GMed student. The student believes that since it’s such a selective program, there’s not much room for equitable admissions if more diverse students lack any of the qualifications needed for the program. Another student also stated that they don’t necessarily blame VCU’s GMed program for the lack of diversity, admitting, “I feel like it could be generalized to other programs,” meaning, other guaranteed medical school programs at other universities.
Lastly, multiple students I talked to feel that the disparities can be accredited to societal stigmas and stereotypes, especially within the Asain community, which seems to be the most highly represented in VCU’s GMed program. As one Indian student remarked during our discussion, “It’s every Asian immigrant parent’s dream to have their kid go to med school and become a doctor.” When looking at the disparities from this perspective, one may even conclude that the applicant pool creates the disparities within itself, not admissions boards.
Having mature conversations about how to improve various organizations on campus here at VCU is crucial, and should be integral to the student experience. Not only that, but it’s healthy for students to be able to recognize privilege and diversity, or lack thereof, and to be able to talk about the implications of the two in academic settings and the real world.
VCU Honors students are the future change makers and leaders of the world, they are always seeking ways to improve their community and school, and they look forward to seeing the expansion of diversity in the GMed program as generational stigmas are broken and programs to bridge the gap between the medical field and underrepresented groups are built.