The DOJ just sent UC Davis School of Medicine a very threatening letter. They found that the medical school has violated the law in its admission process.
Here is the letter DOJ sent to UC Davis.
https://www.justice.gov/crt/media/1445191/dl
Here is UC Davis response.
What is the DOJ doing
The DOJ’s campaign against medical-school admissions is one of the most significant higher-education enforcement efforts since the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard. The Trump administration’s position is that some medical schools have continued to use race indirectly through holistic review processes, diversity initiatives, and proxy variables even after the Court prohibited race-conscious admissions.
Schools specifically targeted
So far, the DOJ has publicly identified:
Yale School of Medicine
David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA
Stanford University School of Medicine
UC San Diego School of Medicine
Ohio State University College of Medicine
The DOJ announced findings against Yale and UCLA and subsequently expanded investigations to 15 additional medical schools. The identities of all 15 have not yet been publicly released.
What did DOJ actually find?
UCLA
The DOJ concluded that UCLA’s medical school discriminated against White and Asian applicants by giving preferential treatment to Black and Hispanic applicants. The department cited admissions data showing admitted Black and Hispanic students had lower average GPAs and MCAT scores than admitted White and Asian students.
UCLA strongly disputes the DOJ’s conclusions and says its admissions process is merit-based and legally compliant.
Yale
The DOJ similarly found Yale School of Medicine had used race in admissions decisions. The department’s analysis alleged that Black applicants with similar academic credentials were substantially more likely to receive interviews than Asian applicants. Yale denies wrongdoing and maintains its admissions process complies with federal law.
UC Davis
Just this week, DOJ announced findings against UC Davis School of Medicine, alleging that a socioeconomic scoring system called the “Davis Scale” functioned as a proxy for race by favoring applicants from backgrounds associated with underrepresented minority groups. UC Davis rejects the allegation and says the tool is designed to provide context regarding disadvantage and service to underserved communities rather than race.
What has been the impact on the schools?
1. Immediate legal and administrative burden
Medical schools under investigation have had to produce large quantities of admissions data, internal communications, scoring rubrics, and demographic analyses. Several schools have reportedly received broad DOJ requests for applicant-level records.
2. Chilling effect on diversity initiatives
This may be the largest impact so far.
Admissions officers nationwide are reassessing:
Diversity essays
“Distance traveled” metrics
Socioeconomic disadvantage scales
Pipeline programs
Holistic review criteria
Many schools appear to be revising language and admissions procedures to reduce legal exposure. Even critics of the DOJ effort acknowledge that schools are becoming more cautious about race-related admissions practices.
3. No major federal funding cuts yet
At present, the DOJ has issued findings and opened investigations, but there have not yet been widely reported cases of a medical school losing federal funding solely because of these admissions investigations. The schools generally have been offered opportunities to negotiate voluntary compliance before litigation.
4. Potential impact on class composition
It is still early, but admissions experts expect that if schools become more cautious about diversity-focused admissions practices, enrollment of Black and Hispanic medical students could decline, similar to what occurred in some states after affirmative-action bans. Whether that actually happens nationally remains uncertain.
Why is this such a big deal for medicine?
The dispute goes beyond admissions law.
Supporters of the DOJ investigations argue:
Medical schools should admit applicants solely on individual merit.
Any racial preference violates the Supreme Court’s ruling.
Patients deserve physicians selected without regard to race.
Opponents argue:
A diverse physician workforce improves care for underserved populations.
Holistic review considers many factors besides race.
Statistical differences in GPA or MCAT scores do not prove illegal discrimination.
For physicians, the most consequential question is not whether affirmative action survives—it largely does not after the 2023 Supreme Court ruling—but whether factors such as socioeconomic disadvantage, first-generation status, rural background, language ability, and commitment to underserved communities will also become legally suspect if they correlate with race. That issue is now at the center of the DOJ’s investigations.
Is DOJ suggesting that amdissions should be based soley on GPA and MCAT?
No. The DOJ is not formally arguing that medical school admissions should be based solely on GPA and MCAT scores.
The legal position of the DOJ is that admissions decisions at institutions receiving federal funds must comply with the Constitution and federal civil-rights laws, and that race cannot be used as a positive or negative factor in admissions decisions. The DOJ has generally acknowledged that schools may continue to use holistic review, provided it is race-neutral.
The dispute is over what counts as genuinely race-neutral.
What DOJ appears to accept
Medical schools may still consider factors such as:
Academic performance (GPA, MCAT)
Research experience
Clinical experience
Volunteer work
Leadership
Military service
Rural background
Economic disadvantage
First-generation college status
Personal adversity
Employment history
Language skills
Commitment to underserved communities
These factors have long been part of holistic review and are not inherently race-based.
What DOJ is challenging
The DOJ’s recent investigations suggest concern that some schools may be using ostensibly race-neutral factors as proxies for race.
For example, if a school develops a scoring system that heavily rewards characteristics specifically because they are expected to increase the number of underrepresented minority applicants, DOJ may argue that the school is effectively doing indirectly what it cannot do directly.
That is the issue in the UC Davis case involving the “Davis Scale.”
The underlying philosophical disagreement
Medical schools generally argue:
We are trying to identify the best future physicians, not simply the applicants with the highest test scores.
Admissions committees have traditionally considered qualities such as:
Empathy
Resilience
Communication skills
Service orientation
Leadership
Ability to work with diverse populations
Many deans would argue that an applicant with a 514 MCAT, extensive service in rural clinics, and exceptional interpersonal skills may be a better physician than an applicant with a 525 MCAT and little evidence of those qualities.
The DOJ has not publicly rejected that philosophy. Instead, it is questioning whether some schools are implementing it in a way that unlawfully advantages applicants based on race.
An important practical point
If the DOJ truly believed admissions should be based only on GPA and MCAT, it would be attacking holistic review itself. To date, it has not done that.
In fact, purely GPA/MCAT-based admissions would be inconsistent with how virtually every U.S. medical school operates, including many schools whose graduates populate federal agencies, the military, and elite academic centers.
Why medical schools are nervous
The uncertainty is where the line lies between:
legitimate consideration of disadvantage, service, and life experience; and
using those factors as a surrogate for race.
Many admissions deans worry that the DOJ’s interpretation could narrow the range of factors they can safely consider, even if the DOJ says it supports holistic review in principle.
For physicians, this raises a broader question: What is “merit” in medicine?
Is merit primarily:
GPA and MCAT?
Or does it also include:
persistence through adversity,
service to underserved populations,
communication skills,
leadership,
and the likelihood of becoming the kind of physician a community needs?
The current legal battle is largely about where that balance should be drawn, not whether GPA and MCAT should be the only criteria.
The UC Davis Scale (sometimes called the Socioeconomic Disadvantage Scale or SED scale) is a tool developed by UC Davis School of Medicine to quantify an applicant’s level of socioeconomic disadvantage and provide context for academic metrics such as GPA and MCAT scores.
According to UC Davis, the scale incorporates factors such as:
Family income
Parental education
Growing up in a medically underserved area
Other socioeconomic indicators contained in the medical school application
Need-based financial aid history during college
UC Davis has described the scale as a way to measure “distance traveled” or resilience and to place academic achievement in the context of educational opportunity. The school states that the scale does not include race or ethnicity and was developed specifically to comply with California’s longstanding ban on affirmative action in public university admissions.
How it works conceptually
The idea is that a 510 MCAT earned by someone who grew up in poverty, attended under-resourced schools, and was the first person in their family to attend college may reflect a different level of achievement than the same score earned by someone from a highly advantaged background.
UC Davis uses the scale alongside other admissions factors rather than as a standalone ranking system.
Why DOJ is attacking it
The DOJ argues that the scale functions as a proxy for race because socioeconomic disadvantage and race are correlated in the applicant pool. The DOJ’s findings letter alleges that UC Davis used the scale to adjust the significance of GPA and MCAT scores in a way that increased admission of underrepresented minority applicants.
UC Davis strongly disagrees and argues that:
The scale is race-neutral.
Race is not included.
The school’s mission is to train physicians for underserved communities.
Socioeconomic adversity is a legitimate admissions consideration independent of race.
The interesting historical context
What’s especially noteworthy is that the intellectual foundation for the Davis Scale predates the current controversy by many years. UC Davis researchers published work proposing that adjusting academic metrics for socioeconomic disadvantage could increase both socioeconomic and racial diversity without using race itself.
That is precisely why the current fight is so important. The Davis Scale was widely viewed for years as a model of how a public medical school could increase diversity while complying with California’s affirmative-action ban. The DOJ is now effectively arguing that even some race-neutral methods may be unlawful if their purpose or effect is to produce racial diversity.
As a physician, I recognize the broader policy question underneath this case:
Should medical schools evaluate applicants primarily on academic metrics (MCAT/GPA), or should they also adjust for opportunity, adversity, and likelihood of serving underserved populations?
The UC Davis Scale sits directly at the center of that debate. It is probably the most prominent example in U.S. medical education of an attempt to operationalize “distance traveled” as part of admissions.
