The number of Asian Americans in New York enrolled in medical school has declined 14.5 percent while the number of applicants actually rose 30 percent.
Crain reports those numbers cover a nine year period between 2005 and 2012 and pertain only to New York. The trend in the Empire State runs counter to the national trend which shows both the number of Asian applicants to medical school and the number of Asians accepted both up.
Analysts are unclear what’s caused the decline of Asian American medical students in New York.
“The curve of African-Americans absolutely flatlined, has actually gone down as a percent of the medical school class,” said B Li, co-founder of the Asian Pacific American Medical Students Association. Between 1970-2005, “Asian Americans went from 1.5 percent to about 21 percent of the class. And we’re about 3 percent of population.”