Racial-ethnic background and specialty choice: a study of U.S. medical school graduates in 1987.

This study used two Association of American Medical Colleges' questionnaires to determine whether there was a relationship between the racial-ethnic backgrounds and the specialty choices of a 1987 cohort of 11,136 U.S. medical school seniors, both prior to entering medical school and as they prepared for residency training. Their specialty preferences as premedical students were shown by their responses to the Premedical Student Questionnaire, administered when they registered for the Medical College Admission Test; their specialty choices at the end of their medical school training were shown by their responses to the Medical Student Graduation Questionnaire, which they completed shortly before graduation. Racial-ethnic backgrounds, self-recorded, were classified into black, other underrepresented minorities, Asian, other non-underrepresented minorities, and white. Specialties were clustered into primary care, medical specialties, surgical specialties, and supporting services. Before entering medical school, the students had similar specialty preferences regardless of background. As seniors in medical school, there was even greater convergence of specialty choices among the students of all backgrounds. Racial-ethnic background in itself appears not to have been a major factor influencing the senior medical students' specialty choices.