The Association Between a Holistic Review in Admissions Workshop and the Diversity of Accepted Applicants and Students Matriculating to Medical School

PURPOSE: The authors tested for an association between the Association of American Medical Colleges' holistic review in admissions (HRA) workshop and the compositional diversity of medical school accepted applicants and matriculants in schools that held workshops compared with those that did not. METHOD: The authors examined school-level data from 134 medical schools accredited by the Liaison Committee on Medical Education for the years 2006-2016 using information from the American Medical College Application Service. They used a fixed-effects regression to examine the within-school association between an HRA workshop and four measures of diversity: percent first-generation college student, percent black/African American, percent Hispanic, and overall level of racial/ethnic diversity as measured by a diversity index. RESULTS: For schools that held an HRA workshop, descriptive statistics showed higher mean values across all four measures of diversity for the post-HRA workshop period (the HRA implementation period) compared with the preworkshop period (accepted applicants: d = 0.34-0.79; matriculants: d = 0.29-0.73). Analyzing data for all schools, including those that did not hold a workshop, regression models showed that the HRA implementation period was associated with a significant and sustained increase in all four measures of diversity. These findings were consistent for both accepted applicants (P < .01) and matriculants (P < .01). CONCLUSIONS: The significant increases in all four measures of diversity following an HRA workshop support the conclusion that this workshop was associated with increased compositional diversity at the participating medical schools.