People have asked for the last 15 years, Vijay, how did you come up with pretending like youre black to get into medical school? That was crazy, huh?
Uh, yeah, it was. But at the time it seemed like a good idea. I had toed the line in school my whole life. I sailed through a prestigious prep school with great grades. Had always been a model student. But college? Well, it was like Disneyland so many rides to take, so much fun to have. I joined a fraternity and committed a great deal of effort to fun. But about halfway through, I had an epiphany and it scared the crap out of me.
I wanted to be a doctor. Yes, its kind of a cultural thing, but Im also totally American, grew up in Boston and even got my middle name from Jo Jo White, one of the Celtics stars. My immigrant folks loved basketball. But I wanted to be a doctor mainly because my mom was a doctor and she was universally loved by her patients. I was immensely proud of her.
One of my closest friends, nicknamed Boots Indian-American like me shared my dream.
But what happened to Boots next chilled me to my marrow. He began applying to medical schools and we both figured he would sail through, get many interviews and then have his pick. Boots was a year older and medical school was everything he had worked for since starting at the University of Chicago. His grades and test scores were better than mine because, unlike me, he actually studied. But when he applied to 15 medical schools, got only two interviews and was accepted to exactly zero schools, he felt like a college running back who thinks hell go to the Patriots in the second round and is stunned when hes relegated to playing in the CFL.
Vijay Chokal-Ingams hair grew back after he had been accepted to and attended medical school. Hes pictured here in his white coat in 2002.Photo: Vijay Chokal-Ingam
My moment of clarity came at 3 in the morning at the Golden Nugget Diner on the North Side of Chicago as we sobered up from a party. He admitted his predicament and once I picked my jaw off the table, I resolved that I would do anything within reason to avoid his fate. Or maybe not within reason.
Now I was terrified. What were my chances of admission to medical school?
In the early 1990s, the Division of Community and Minority Programs of the Association of American Medical Colleges devised Project 3,000 by 2000. This program set the quantitative target (a quota official or unofficial) of increasing minority enrollment in US medical schools from 1,584 to 3,000 between 1990 to 2000.
Many medical schools, including St. Louis University, where I eventually attended, jumped on this program. But the question was whether, in order to achieve their quantitative goal, medical schools were compromising their academic standards, or were they simply going to aggressively recruit minority students? The work of Ward Connerly and Ellen and Jerry Cook suggested that many of the medical schools, especially those in the University of California system, chose the former option. The data suggested that the medical schools were discriminating against their Asian-American and white students and in favor of their black and Hispanic applicants.
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