Five things to know:
1. Plaintiff Samuel Pierce was denied admission to every medical school he applied for and sued several institutions for denying him admission, including the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and the Yale School of Medicine, according to the lawsuit.
2. In the suit, Mr. Pierce and his attorney claimed Yale denied him admission because he is a white Republican, and that the school violated federal antitrust laws by participating in a network of medical schools that share the names of admitted applicants. He claimed the antitrust conspiracy “enables” Yale and the other participating schools to “discriminate against otherwise worthy applicants like him who do not share Yale’s purported ideological views.”
3. The “conspiracy” refers to Yale’s use of an Association of American Medical Colleges system called the Multiple Acceptance Report. The report allows medical schools to share information on admitted candidates with other participating schools. However, the report has been abandoned, according to Insider Higher Ed.
4. Federal Judge Christopher Cooper did not find evidence that Yale denied Mr. Pierce because of his political views and ruled that Yale’s involvement in the applicant-sharing network did not violate federal antitrust regulation. Mr. Cooper’s ruling specifically noted the differences between colleges’ financial policies, which he said should be covered by antitrust law, and their admissions policies.
“The Sherman Act applies only to conspiracies that restrain ‘trade or commerce.’ Decisions by academic institutions about which and how many students to admit are noncommercial and therefore not covered by the Sherman Act,” he wrote.
5. In a statement to Insider Higher Ed, an AAMC spokesperson said medical schools must rely on admission-sharing networks because their class sizes are not flexible.
“If a matriculated student leaves after a semester has begun to attend another medical school, the school cannot simply fill the seat with another applicant, as vital training time has been lost. To prevent unfilled seats, medical schools closely manage yield projections, including in some cases by increasing the number of acceptances offered. The now-retired report referenced in the court’s decision was a yield management tool, provided by the AAMC, which showed accepted applicants holding concurrent acceptances at multiple schools,” he said.
To access the full report, click here.
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