For medical schools, minorities are the star recruits

After Stephen Haskins was accepted into the New York University School of Medicine last year, he revisited the campus at the school's invitation, along with 60 other black and Hispanic students.

During the spring ''second look'' weekend, they were welcomed by top administrators and briefed on life at the school by minority students and faculty members. They were also entertained at restaurants, nightclubs and a Broadway show. The expenses, including round-trip transportation, were picked up by the school.

More medical schools are adopting such recruiting techniques in an effort to increase the racial diversity of their classes.

''It's a little surprising, I think, because obviously they have huge application pools, and it's always been a seller's market,'' said Richard J. Stenzler, an educational consultant in Los Angeles who helps his clients put together applications to graduate and professional schools.

The efforts are largely in response to the small number of underrepresented minority candidates, which has remained relatively constant despite efforts aimed at increasing it. In 1992, 4,034 underrepresented minorities -- African-Americans, Mexican-Americans, American Indians and Puerto Ricans -- applied to medical school, compared with 4,143 in 2003, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges. While other professional schools also reach out to minority students, their more impersonal admissions processes and larger minority applicant pools mean their efforts tend to be less involved, some college advisers say.

The result? Competitive minority applicants are often courted as they weigh the merits of several admissions offers.

Washington University School of Medicine, in St. Louis, spends nearly $20,000 to bring in minority students for a weekend. While the curriculum is touched upon, the focus is to overcome the perception that St. Louis is a ''cow town,'' administrators say. Students are taken on tours of the neighborhood, to the theater and perhaps to a Cardinals game. More than half of those who attended last year enrolled at the school.

Medical schools justify their efforts on a number of grounds, saying that diversity enriches the educational experience for all students and that such efforts are necessary to attract such highly sought-after candidates.

''What's happening is that we're all competing for the best students, and so we have to make these efforts to show the students that we want them,'' said Paul T. White, assistant dean for admissions and financial aid at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

Perhaps the most common justification for such efforts, though, is in creating a physician work force that will be diverse enough to serve the nation's rapidly changing population. Admissions officers say that not only are minority physicians more likely to work with minority populations, which have disproportionately low access to health care, but that minority patients are also more likely to seek out minority doctors.

But some educators question whether the energy might be better directed elsewhere. Some college pre-med advisers, for example, privately wonder whether the money might be better spent on financial aid packages.

Others point out that such tactics do little to increase the numbers of underrepresented minorities entering medicine.

''The problem is that these programs are just shifting the zero-sum total,'' said Dr. Jordan J. Cohen, the president of the Association of American Medical Colleges. ''They're obviously important from the schools' point of view, but they unfortunately don't serve to get at the problem in the aggregate, which is to increase the number in the total pool.''

They also raise the thorny issue of what special treatment, if any, can appropriately be extended to only one group of students.

''A lot of students are looking at the revisit program and they're questioning the equity of having the schools fund one group of students over another,'' said Dr. Will R. Ross, associate dean for diversity programs at Washington University School of Medicine.

''There may come a day when these programs aren't necessary,'' said Mr. White, from John Hopkins. ''But I think they are for the foreseeable future.''

•	For medical schools, minorities are the star recruits New York Times, Wednesday, Oct. 13, 2004 Byline: Juliet Chung