When Luis Godoy earned his associate’s degree and became a radiological technician in 1999, he soon found himself being called upon to do more than just take X-rays.
“I was able to bridge a gap between physicians that don’t speak Spanish and patients that don’t speak English,” Godoy said during a recent interview. “I found that very fulfilling.”
So fulfilling, in fact, that the experience of working alongside physicians and serving patients who told Godoy they thought he’d make a good physician himself ultimately led Godoy, now 31, to enter the UC Davis School of Medicine this fall in Sacramento, Calif.
While entering medical school is a significant accomplishment for anyone, it was a monumental feat for Godoy, whose childhood was split between schoolwork and helping his parents pick and cut peaches and pears on a migrant farm camp in Suisun Valley in California, who became affiliated with the San Marcos street gang as a youth, and who ultimately got expelled from high school during his sophomore year and became a teenage father during his senior year.
But Gudoy’s rocky sojourn from gangbanger and teenage father to first-year medical student is more than just a compelling story of a student who overcame daunting odds to achieve success in the realm of higher education. It is one of the many stories behind statistics released Wednesday by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) that show significant gains in the numbers of minorities who entered medical school this year.
While the number of first-year enrollees to U.S. medical schools has gradually increased over the years—from 16,541 in 2003 to 18,665 this year—the demographic with the most dramatic increase was among Hispanic males, such as Godoy, whose overall medical school enrollment increased by 17.1 percent over last year, according to AAMC. Hispanic female enrollees increased by 1.6 percent, and total Hispanic enrollment was up 9 percent, or 1,539 this year versus 1,412 last year.
The total first-year medical school enrollment for African-Americans grew by 2.9 percent to 1,350 over 2009, when it was 1,312. American Indian enrollees increased by 24.8 percent, although their numbers were small, going from 153 last year to 191 this year.
