Course selections and career plans of black participants in a summer intervention program for minority students

From 1985 through 1987, data were gathered on 151 participants in a summer program at the Bowman Gray School of Medicine of Wake Forest University. This program was designed for academically talented minority students to promote their awareness of medicine as a potential career and to strengthen their science and mathematics backgrounds. Among the findings were that the differences in the students' selections of courses in their schools were small, regardless of the occupational or educational levels of their parents, and that the gender of the students had little relation to their choices of advanced mathematics and science courses. The significance of the findings is discussed and the importance of continued support of such intervention programs is emphasized.