Social background of minority ethnic applicants to medicine and dentistry

Aim To explore ethnic variations in social background of successful applica nts to undergraduate United Kingdom medical and dental schools. Method Retrospective analyses of University and College Admissions Services data on all students to commence study in pre-clinical medicine and dentis try, during the academic years 1994/5, 1995/6 and 1996/7. Analyses were und ertaken for two categories of social class, namely higher (professional and intermediate) and lower (skilled non-manual, skilled manual, partly skille d, and unskilled) social class. Results Over 15 thousand students were accepted to study medicine and denti stry during the three-year study period, of which 80% were from high social class backgrounds. More medical (80.9%) students were from high social cla ss backgrounds than dental (73.3%) students (OR=1.54, 95% CI=1.39, 1.70). S ocial class differences were observed, with a greater proportion of higher social class students amongst the white students than amongst the minority ethnic students (OR=1.42, 95% CI=1.30, 1.55). This was more marked in denti stry (OR=1.48, 95% CI=1.22, 1.79) than in medicine (OR=1.35, 95% CI=1.22, 1 .49). More students from higher social class backgrounds were observed in m edicine than in dentistry amongst the black (OR=1.55, 95% CI=0.59, 4.00), I ndian (OR=2.04, 95% CI=1.58, 2.62) and white (OR=1.44, 95% CI=1.26, 1.64) g roups. Conclusions Significant inter-ethnic differences are observed in the social background of students entering medicine and dentistry. Dentistry accepted a greater proportion of students from lower social class backgrounds and f rom black and minority ethnic groups.