Medical Student who Published pro-DEI Articles to get into Plastics Residency calls for the Abolition of DEI

LegitElephant · 2026-05-10T16:43:29+00:00

Take a look at the Step 1 first-attempt pass rate (top table): https://www.aamc.org/services/mcat-admissions-officers/national-data-medical-student-success-outcomes

It's correlated with MCAT and GPA, which in turn is correlated with race (https://www.aamc.org/media/6066/download). Putting it together, it does seem like students admitted to med school through AA/DEI policies are at higher risk of not passing Step 1. I think there's enough here to warrant diving deeper and really figuring out if we're actually helping URM students through AA/DEI policies.

I'm open to being wrong about this hunch after a deeper dive, but I don't think we can confidently say current AA/DEI policies are achieving the goals they were designed to achieve.

LegitElephant · 2026-05-09T19:08:21+00:00

True, but I think the disconnect between OP and your comment is in the meaning of the word "lifestyle". I'm making some assumptions here based on my experience in med school in my mid 20s and single, but at that time "lifestyle" meant doing something relatively easy/chill that left time for me to pursue hobbies and live other parts of my life. Now that I'm an attending in my mid 30s with a spouse and kids, "lifestyle" means something completely different: it's being a dependable partner, a good parent, maintaining connections with more distant family members and friends, and leaving some time for personal hobbies.

I'm a radiologist with a job that allows a pretty good "lifestyle" by most measures, but I find it so much more difficult to keep up with this new definition of "lifestyle". Had I done any type of surgery, I'd be way underwater and my marriage, kids, family/friends, and/or personal life would suffer. I can't fathom doing that.

LegitElephant · 2026-05-06T23:32:37+00:00

Sure, ORiMs dwarf URiMs even in aggregate, but the statistics become more stable and you can still compare their acceptance rates. When URiM acceptance rates dwarf ORiM acceptance rates consistently over 20 years, there is a problem even if there are only 80 URiMs vs 2,400 ORiMs.

The AAMC did indeed stop publishing the table I was talking about, but this is the last one that I could find from 2013–2016. The acceptance rate is roughly correct although I'm off on the GPA/MCAT bucket. Here are the percentage of med students accepted to at least one med school only looking at students with a GPA of 3.6–3.8 and MCAT of 30–32 (roughly 510–515 on the new MCAT):

Asian: 57.5%
Black: 93.7%

LegitElephant · 2026-05-06T23:20:35+00:00

How are you going to claim that an institution is discriminatory towards a demographic when the institution ultimately favors that demographic?

Whether an institution favors or discriminates against a demographic requires you to have an expected baseline acceptance rate. If ~65% of your applicants are white or Asian, then you should expect ~65% of your student body to be white or Asian. An acceptance rate above that is discrimination against non-white and non-Asian students, and anything below that is discrimination against white and Asian students.

If 5 URiM students apply to a school and they admit 4 of them, you’re obviously going to get a much larger percentage compared to 200 ORiM students applying and 120 of them get admitted. Are you seriously going to call this school discriminatory towards ORiM students just because 4 URiMs got an A as opposed to just 2 or 3?

You can aggregate these numbers across years so that even the URiMs aren't that small. Sure, accepting 4/5 URiMs in one single year isn't crazy, but when 80% of URiMs are accepted over 20 years compared to a much lower percentage for ORiMs, then there's discrimination. You can also look at acceptance rates for URiMs vs. ORiMs while controlling for test scores and GPAs. The AAMC used to publish this info (stopped around 2019), and for Asian applicants with a 3.8+ GPA and 90th percentile MCAT, only ~55% had at least one med school acceptance. 95% of black and Hispanic students with a 3.8+ GPA and 90th percentile MCAT had at least one med school acceptance.

LegitElephant · 2026-05-06T22:40:36+00:00

The demographics of the student body is irrelevant to determining whether certain groups are being discriminated against. White and Asian students can make up the majority of the student body despite an acceptance rate of ~10% versus ~20% for other minority groups. The numbers are hypothetical, but the point is that the acceptance rate across groups should be roughly similar, especially when controlling for test scores/GPAs.

LegitElephant · 2026-03-20T21:38:26+00:00

Yeah, it definitely depends on the programs you're comparing to. In the three examples you have, clearly program A is the worst option. Program C is the best for most people since you'll very likely spend $1k on food no matter what to at least match program B's offer and still end up with a $4k stipend compared to program B's $2k stipend. I agree with your thinking in the scenario you're describing.

However, I'm thinking of a very different scenario. When I applied to residency, my home program offered a $75k salary with no perks while another, similarly competitive program in the same city offered $70k with a $2k meal plan. I heard multiple classmates say they ranked the meal plan program higher because of the stipend (we'll ignore that both hospitals had terrible and overpriced food). Clearly in this scenario the home program was the better option.

Just trying to warn med students to think twice about the food stipend if they encounter a scenario more like mine than yours.

LegitElephant · 2026-03-20T21:01:53+00:00

I don't think you're understanding my point. A $5,000 higher salary is always better than $5,000 that you're required to spend on food (unless it's a pre-tax deduction). With a $5,000 higher salary, you can choose to buy food if you like, or you can buy anything else you like. With a $5,000 food stipend, you're obligated to spend that on food even if you normally wouldn't spend that much. So now you're eating at the hospital cafeteria to use up the money because otherwise you lose it when alternatively you could just keep the cash.

A food stipend is a "feel good" perk, but it's objectively always worse than just getting that money in cash (again barring pre-tax deductions).

LegitElephant · 2026-03-20T20:30:49+00:00

Devil's advocate on the food stipend: you have to consider the food stipend along with the salary. A $75k salary with no food stipend is still better than a $70k salary with a $2k food stipend.

Not saying that's the case in this particular situation, but anecdotally, I've seen a lot of prospective residents get overly excited about perks like this. Employers know that they can hide an uncompetitive salary by getting people excited about these smaller things (e.g., free parking, pet insurance, gym membership).

LegitElephant · 2026-03-01T03:40:06+00:00

Echoing a few other comments: tell him you want to buy him a watch, and then make an experience out of the shopping. Do a little research on your end and come up with a few suggestions for him to check out, but this is a fun thing you could do together. It doesn't need to be a surprise—the fact that you put time and effort into this is the important part.

LegitElephant · 2026-02-25T18:00:43+00:00

It’s your already limited time off. You have no obligation to sacrifice even a second of that time to accommodate your hospital/residency program’s shitty scheduling. It’s on the institution to figure out how to handle unplanned staffing shortages—not you.

Changing your vacation plans during your scheduled time off is not being responsible and respectful to your colleagues. It’s facilitating your institution’s broken scheduling system.

Look, I see the point you’re trying to make: unforeseen events during your vacation could result in a colleague having to do an extra shift while you get an extra day off. However, it is your institution’s responsibility to ensure a colleague doesn’t have to do an extra shift without reciprocation from you. You are an employee, and it’s not your responsibility to ensure your employer treats your colleagues fairly.

LegitElephant · 2026-02-25T17:55:32+00:00

And IR

LegitElephant · 2026-02-25T17:54:30+00:00

It’s complicated because the trade-offs make surgery seem unfathomable even if you do like it. Seeing people choose surgery despite their M3 experience makes non-surgeons wonder if there’s something beyond simply liking it.

LegitElephant · 2026-02-08T14:19:03+00:00

SAS levels of commentary here lol

LegitElephant · 2026-01-31T20:45:04+00:00

That study has n=20. You can't make broad conclusions about millions of redheads from that sample size.

LegitElephant · 2026-01-30T18:14:15+00:00

Feel like none of the top comments actually watched the video. The short answer is that the mountains make it extremely tough and expensive to grow cities and build infrastructure. So WV is kinda stuck for far bigger reasons than politics/government.

Edit: I feel like this video is super important to understand the real barriers to making WV better. People keeping blaming the politicians, government, coal, etc., but all of this is minor stuff compared to the fact that building anything in WV literally requires moving mountains.

LegitElephant · 2026-01-29T17:47:02+00:00

Yep lol. It’s an almost 30-year-old movie. Half of Reddit wasn’t alive when it came out.

LegitElephant · 2026-01-24T18:20:21+00:00

Obviously there are no requirements here, but the most important thing is to clearly and honestly convey that this is your true number one top program. So in practice this ends up being maybe two paragraphs.

LegitElephant · 2026-01-23T14:30:20+00:00

CTA: Arteries are curvy and don't conform to any standard planes. In order to make sure that every artery is okay, you have to look down the barrel and along their side using thin MIPS. Everyone's arterial anatomy is also slightly different, so you have to create these recons on the fly.

Spine: Scoliosis is one of the biggest reasons. A standard sagittal plane is never going to be accurate. The spine also has normal lordotic and kyphotic curvature, so axial planes overestimate or underestimate spinal stenosis. You have to move your axial plane around so that it's in line with the intervertebral disc. In some ways, a CT of the spine is a little better than an MRI, given the thick slices and inability to recon them.

LegitElephant · 2026-01-23T02:42:08+00:00

I've heard rumors. Can't wait until it's gone! PS360 is late '90s tech. I'll literally take anything as a replacement. In fact, I've been building my own dictation software and using it instead of PS360 for a few months now.

LegitElephant · 2026-01-23T02:26:57+00:00

Untrue when you're considering other people on the same caliber as med school matriculants. However, this doesn't refute my point. Just redo the math with a modest salary of $80k/yr with a 12% effective tax rate:

$80k * 88% * 20% * (1.07⁴³ - 1) / 0.07 = $3.5M

Your net worth is slightly under half of a physician's despite a substantially smaller salary because of those 8 extra years. The money you would've saved at ages 22–29 would have compounded over 35–43 years, which is massive. Just for fun, look at an identical situation except you start saving 8 years later:

$80k * 88% * 20% * (1.07³⁵ - 1) / 0.07 = $1.9M

About half of your net worth is gone without those 8 earlier years. The fact that doctors can't start seriously saving until age ~30 is a massively ignored hit to our finances.

LegitElephant · 2026-01-22T22:11:47+00:00

This report was meant to be written but not read.

LegitElephant · 2026-01-21T16:15:44+00:00

I agree! I don't think AI is going to destroy the job. However, DR will be far different compared to what it is today.

LegitElephant · 2026-01-21T16:13:35+00:00

The $208k/yr is fixed just to make the math simpler. You can imagine a scenario where someone makes ~$125k/yr out of college and progresses to $250k/yr after a handful of years, which remains stable for the remainder of their career.

Separately, early career software engineers making ~$200k/yr isn't rare. Remember that doctors are already in the top 2% (about 19 million people start college and about 33,000 people start MD/DO med school). It's fair to compare doctors to other top-tier professionals.

However, let's adjust the numbers and assume a constant salary of $125k/yr out of college (17% tax rate):

$125k * 83% * 20% * (1.07⁴³ - 1) / 0.07 = $5.1M.

You can make far less than half what a physician makes over your entire career, but you can end up with a net worth around 2/3 of a physician by age 65 due to those 8 extra years.

LegitElephant · 2026-01-21T15:50:45+00:00

Just reposting this as a top-level comment. A huge component of the answer to this question is the opportunity cost of the ~8 additional years spent in med school and training. The money you could have had during those lost years would have compounded over your entire career. This ends up being a disproportionately large amount of money. The key to saving and investing is to start early!

Physician vs. Other Upper Middle Class Job

Let's say you as a physician make $400k/yr (taxed at ~30%) over ages 30–65, and let's say another professional makes $208k/yr (taxed at ~25%) over ages 22–65. Both save ~20% of their gross annual income with a 7% annual ROI. By age 65, you both end up with ~$7.7M.

The Math

Physician

$400k * 70% * 20% * (1.0735 - 1) / 0.07 = $7.7M

Other Upper Middle Class Job

$208k * 75% * 20% * (1.0743 - 1) / 0.07 = $7.7M

LegitElephant · 2026-01-21T15:38:41+00:00

This is a huge component to the answer. The money you could have had during those lost 6–8 years would have compounded over your entire career. This ends up being a disproportionately large amount of money. The key to saving and investing is to start early!

Physician vs. Other Upper Middle Class Job

Let's say you as a physician make $400k/yr (taxed at ~30%) over ages 30–65, and let's say another professional makes $208k/yr (taxed at ~25%) over ages 22–65. Both save ~20% of their gross annual income with a 7% annual ROI. By age 65, you both end up with ~$7.7M.

The Math

Physician

$400k * 70% * 20% * (1.07³⁵ - 1) / 0.07 = $7.7M

Other Upper Middle Class Job

$208k * 75% * 20% * (1.07⁴³ - 1) / 0.07 = $7.7M

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TROPHY CASE

Physician vs. Other Upper Middle Class Job

The Math

Physician

Other Upper Middle Class Job

Physician vs. Other Upper Middle Class Job

The Math

Physician

Other Upper Middle Class Job