Strong evidence exists that most medical schools in New York State “appear to treat Jewish applicants for admission less favorably than non-Jewish applicants, ” according to a three-year study submitted to the State’s Board of Regents by Herman L. Weisman, chairman of the Commission on Law and Social Action of the American Jewish Congress which conducted the study.
Mr. Weisman cited as evidence to warrant this conclusion an analysis of the disposition made by the nine medical schools in this state of applications submitted to them by 178 students who had won scholarships on the basis of written competitive examinations conducted by the Department of Education in 1950, 1951 and 1952.
The Commission’s study, said Mr. Weisman, was limited to a student group that could meet the highest educational requirements in order to discover whether students applying to these schools were being rejected for reasons of race, religion or color in violation of the State’s Fair Educational Practices Act.
The disposition of these applications over this three-year period reveal that four of the nine schools accepted so low a proportion of Jewish scholarship winners as to raise a strong presumption of discrimination. These were:
1. Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons which accepted 18.8 percent of Jewish scholarship winners as against 52. 6 percent of the non-Jews.
2. Cornell University’s Medical College, with 11. 5 percent of Jews as against 50. 0 percent of the non-Jews.
3. Rochester University’s School of Medicine which numbered 13.5 percent Jewish scholarship winners as against 55,0 percent of the non-Jewish winners.
4. The New York State University School of Medicine at Syracuse which accepted only 27. 0 percent of the Jewish scholarship winners as against 87. 5 percent of non-Jewish winners.
The admission record of two schools, Albany Medical College and Buffalo University’s School of Medicine, with 25. 0 and 33, 3 percent of Jewish applicants accepted, respectively, as against 81. 8 and 87. 5 percent, respectively, of non Jewish applicants, indicated discrimination, although not as strongly as in the case of the four schools mentioned.
One school, New York Medical College at Flower Hospital in New York City, had low acceptance figures for both religious groups–20. 6 percent of the Jewish winners, and 33. 3 percent of the non-Jews–so that evidence as to discrimination was deemed “inconclusive. “
Only New York University’s College of Medicine and the New York State University’s College of Medicine at Long Island University had acceptance records “strongly indicating that they pass on applications without regard to religion. “
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
