Olsen, Lauren D.2024-06-202024-06-202024http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12613/10555Becoming a physician has historically been reserved for those with ample social and economic capital, but this is slowly changing with efforts to diversify the physician workforce. Much of the research regarding pre-medical education overlooks students with intersecting First Generation and Low Income (FGLI) identities and their unique challenges throughout medical education. This study describes the experiences of FGLI pre-medical students and how undergraduate institutions contribute to the discriminatory design of the medical school admissions process. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with first-year pre-medical students to determine their knowledge of institutional resources, apprehensions about becoming physicians, and how their identities shape interactions with institutional resources. FGLI students reported more anticipatory stress towards the medical school admissions process, a desire for institutional resources better curated to FGLI students, and less academic support from family members than higher socioeconomic and continuing generation students. These findings call on universities to better support FGLI pre-medical students through individualized advising and mentoring programs while restructuring the institution’s biases toward FGLI students. The literature from the field overwhelmingly connects diversifying the physician workforce to lessening health disparities. However, solely relying on FGLI students to mitigate issues perpetuated by shortcomings in social infrastructure places an unfair burden of expectation. Physician diversity is not a fix-all but a piece of the puzzle to achieve health equity, which starts by reducing educational barriers at the undergraduate level.24 pagesengIN COPYRIGHT- This Rights Statement can be used for an Item that is in copyright. Using this statement implies that the organization making this Item available has determined that the Item is in copyright and either is the rights-holder, has obtained permission from the rights-holder(s) to make their Work(s) available, or makes the Item available under an exception or limitation to copyright (including Fair Use) that entitles it to make the Item available.http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/Pre-medical educationFirst-generation college studentsLow-income studentsMedical sociologySocial capitalCultural capitalPre-med advisingStressHigher education disparitiesText