Medical Students' Socioeconomic Status and Academic Performance in Medical School

Kencie Ely; Gemma Lagasca; Shaun Andersen; Deepal Patel; Edward Simanton

doi:10.7759/cureus.39875

Medical Students' Socioeconomic Status and Academic Performance in Medical School

Cureus. 2023 Jun 2;15(6):e39875. doi: 10.7759/cureus.39875. eCollection 2023 Jun.

Authors

Kencie Ely¹, Gemma Lagasca¹, Shaun Andersen¹, Deepal Patel¹, Edward Simanton^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Medical Education, University of Nevada Las Vegas School of Medicine, Las Vegas, USA.
² Office of Medical Education, University of Nevada Las Vegas, Las Vegas, USA.

Abstract

Background Students from lower socioeconomic groups tend to underestimate their chances of acceptance to medical school and their likelihood of success once admitted. Objective The objective of this study is to determine if socioeconomic disadvantage status is linked to lower medical college admission test (MCAT) scores and academic performance in medical school. Methods Using the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) education/occupation (EO) indicator, we compared economically disadvantaged students to students with no financial disadvantage on the MCAT, Phase 1 National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME), United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) Step 1, Phase 2 NBME, and USMLE Step 2 test scores. Results Medical students in the disadvantaged group scored significantly lower on the MCAT than students with no financial disadvantage. The disadvantaged group showed a non-significant lower trend in performance until USMLE Step 2. Conclusions Applicants from lower socioeconomic backgrounds may perform lower on their MCAT and early medical school benchmark exams, but they appear to catch up with and even surpass their peers on their USMLE Step 2 examination.

Keywords: academic performance; financial burden; gpa; mcat; medical school; medical school admissions; medical student; socioeconomic status; usmle.