Does it matter?

And by "it" I mean race, when it comes to med school success.

I ran into Betty at the gym this morning, and out of the blue, she asked me if it was harder to do well third year as an Asian person. I replied that I didn't think so, so she followed up by telling me that she and a friend had been looking at the AOA list and they realized that despite Northwestern's diversity, the AOA list had very few non-Caucasian members, and males outnumbered females 2-1.

I didn't remember noticing anything unusual, so I came home and looked up the AOA inductee list and tallied them up. There were 26 AOA people this year. 20 of the 26 (77%) were Caucasian. There was 1 Indian person (4%), 4 Asian people (15%), and 1 African American person. 17 of the 26 were male (65%). 2 were HPME.

For a class that's pretty evenly split male and female and roughly 35% Asian, 40-45% White, 20% HPME, it's a little strange that almost 80% of the AOA people are White, no?

Kathy Lee (ex-APAMSA president) observed that many of her Asian classmates seemed to get worse grades third year despite having been high achievers. She wrote a few papers to validate her observations. I've never bought into it, and I still don't, but it's hard to look at the list and not wonder what it is that Asian med students aren't doing as "well" as their Caucasian classmates. Why are so few of them making it to the top 16% of the class?

One of the biggest reasons I ignore Kathy Lee's research is because I'm afraid that Asian med students read it and think, "Oh, I'm at a disadvantage because I'm Asian. It's always going to be an uphill climb." I can't think of anything more misleading, and the last thing we need is another inferiority complex or excuse.

It's not because you're ASIAN.

When 50% of your grade third year comes from subjective clinical evaluations, doing well requires that you're personable, enthusiastic, conscientious, a team player, inquisitive, well read, and outspoken to a certain extent. You can't expect people to read your mind, so if you want to be recognized for your work you have to speak up and show people what you know. That's the reality, not just on wards, but in any work place environment. So to argue that Asians don't do as well because of their race is just infuriating. There might be some truth that culturally we're raised to speak up only when we know the right answer, to respect hierarchy and to avoid being loud and obnoxious if we don't know what the hell's going on, but by the time you're 25 and in your 3rd year of med school, it's time to recognize what sort of behavior is appropriate for what sort of environment. If you can't, then I don't think you can blame anyone but yourself.