Characteristics of medical school applicants: implications for rural health care

Physicians seem to prefer to practice in communities where there is already an adequate number of physicians, rather than in underserved rural areas. Virtually all studies examining this problem base their data on subjects who are already within or beyond the medical education process. Thus, such studies may obscure the degree to which practice site preferences are a result of the medical education selection process, or to what degree they were present in the premedical student population. Medical school applicants were surveyed about their intended practice site choices, as well as a number of characteristics thought to be correlated with intended practice sites. Eleven characteristics were found to be associated with intended practice sites. A disproportionately large number of applicants intended to practice in mid-size communities, a disproportionately low number of applicants in rural areas. There was no statistically significant difference in the acceptance rates of applicants who planned to practice in rural areas and those who did not.