Family Medicine Specialty Choice at Matriculation and Graduation

Family medicine has experienced wide variation in the proportion of allopathic medical students it attracts, ranging from a high of 16.8% to a low of 6.8%. We sought to measure the changes in specialty choice between the start of medical school and graduation.

We compared the specialty choice reported on the American Association of Medical Colleges annual allopathic Matriculating Student Questionnaire (MSQ) from 2014 to 2017 with the Graduation Questionnaire (GQ) from 2018 to 2021.

Among 55,635 students who completed both the MSQ and the GQ, more than 70% changed their specialty choice between matriculation and graduation. Just 45% of students who reported family medicine at matriculation chose family medicine at graduation. However, 70% of students entering family medicine at graduation had selected some other specialty at the start of medical school. This increase of more than 3,000 students who made their family medicine specialty choice during medical school represents a net gain of nearly 1,000 students entering family medicine over the 4 years.

Most allopathic medical students change their specialty choice during medical school. The historic concern about students being talked out of family medicine during medical school is still partially valid, yet the data reported here show that the majority of students entering family medicine at graduation had reported a different specialty when they entered medical school. While increasing family medicine recruitment into medical school is crucial, these data also show the critical importance of family medicine departments helping recruit and support medical students' family medicine choice during medical school.