Survey Shows Bias Against Jews and Catholics in Medical Schools

Results of a five-year study conducted here on what happened to pre-medical students enrolled in two Philadelphia colleges when they applied to medical schools throughout the United States were made public here today. They showed that 12 percent of the Jewish and Catholic students with “A” grades were rejected, while 100 percent of Protestant “A” students were accepted.

The same study disclosed that two-thirds of all Jewish “B” students, and more than two-thirds of Catholic “B” students failed to gain acceptance at any medical school in the fall following their graduation. Of the Protestant “B” students, only one-third failed to gain admission.

“Emphasis on the gifted and on developing one’s talents to the utmost for the benefit of society sound like mockery to such students,” said David L. Ullman, chairman of the Philadelphia Fellowship Commission’s Committee on Opportunities for Higher Education, which conducted the study. “Religion plays a significant role in the case of “A” students and a major role in the case of “B” and “B plus” students in determining whether they will be admitted to some medical school. Society needs the best possible physicians as well as engineers and physicists. To block the development of such talents because of race, religion or national origin, is unforgivable in 1958.”

The five-year study was based on material gathered by personal interviews with 612 June-graduating seniors, beginning with the 1951 classes at the College of the University of Pennsylvania and the School of Liberal Arts of Temple University, who had filed one or more applications for admission to a medical school, in Philadelphia or elsewhere in the United States. Mr. Ullman emphasized that the study was not of medical schools, but rather of the experiences of pre-medical students applying for admission to medical schools.