Queen’s to launch Canada’s first medical school admissions lottery

Queen’s University is planning a first-in-Canada policy of lottery-based admissions for its medical school, in a bid to enrol more students from low-income and minority backgrounds.

The new process, beginning with the 2025 admissions cycle, will give applicants lottery eligibility once they meet minimum levels for the Medical College Admissions Test, grade-point average and an ethical judgement test.

The plan also includes a separate process for lower-income students and an adjusted route for indigenous applicants.

The changes reflected the fact that Queen’s each year had thousands of qualified medical school applicants “who would make excellent doctors”, said Jane Philpott, the dean of the faculty of health sciences at Queen’s and director of the medical school. “Our new admissions process will give them equal opportunity to be selected for the interview stage.”

As in many countries, Canada has long struggled with major inequities in medical school enrolment, which has been found to include disproportionately high shares of students with parents who are wealthy and have advanced educational degrees. Barriers for low-income students have been identified along the pathway, including their fewer opportunities to build records of accomplishments, and the basic costs of applying and obtaining transcripts.

In the case of Queen’s, its medical school gets about 5,000 applications each year for only 115 slots. The Ontario university in 2020 established a programme to emphasise the recruitment of more black and indigenous high-school students to its medical school pathway.

One year earlier, Queen’s issued a formal letter of apology for its action a century earlier in banning the admission of black students to its medical school, at a time when it had 15 black medical students. It currently reports having about half that many.

At the time of its apology, Queen’s said that its accelerated medical school pathway would set aside 10 seats for high-school graduates who identify as black or indigenous.

University officials said that, as part of its new policy, it would return to the use of standard test scores and grade-point average for their lottery cut-off, after the current policy of setting higher-than-average scoring minimums, to help winnow their applicants.

Such revisions should make a distinct difference in access for lower-income and minority students, university officials said. “Increased diversity and life experience in our medical school,” Eugenia Piliotis, the associate dean of undergraduate medical education at Queen’s, said in outlining the plan, “will lead to more diversity in the health workforce.”

paul.basken@timeshighereducation.com