How one medical school became remarkably diverse — without considering race in admissions [statnews.com]

^{The first class at the University of California, Davis medical school, in 1972, was predominantly white and male. CHRISTINE KAO/STAT}

By Usha Lee McFarling, STAT, March 7, 2023

The diversity of medical school classes has barely budged in recent decades, even with the ability to consider an applicant’s race as one factor in admissions. Now, many medical school leaders fear a looming U.S. Supreme Court decision to restrict or ban race-conscious admissions policies could lead to precipitous declines, imperiling efforts to fight the nation’s stark racial and ethnic health disparities.

There’s good reason for concern: In the nine states where affirmative action is already banned at public universities, medical school classes are notably less diverse. But one school in California — the state with the country’s longest-standing ban on using race in admissions — has defied the odds. The University of California, Davis runs the country’s most diverse medical school after Howard, a historically Black university, and Florida International, a Hispanic-serving research university.

What Davis, and its remarkably diverse class of 2026 demonstrates, is an alternative future for a post-affirmative action world, one where diversity might be achieved despite the many obstacles that stand in the way. The student body has gone from predominantly white and male in the years before California adopted its affirmative action ban in 1996 to one in which nearly half the current class comes from Black, Hispanic, and Indigenous populations — people who have been historically underrepresented in medicine, and sometimes mistreated by its practitioners.

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