A Conversation with Dr. Linton Yee, Associate Dean of Admissions
Dean Klotman: Good Morning, I'm Mary Klotman, Dean of the Duke University's School of Medicine. Welcome to my monthly podcast From one Duke to Another. In these podcasts I talk with members of Duke's faculty, staff, students, alumni, and friends about some of the most interesting topics related to education, research, and patient care. This month I'm joined by Linton Yee, our associate dean for admissions for the School of Medicine. Dr. Yee oversees the medical student admissions process for the school and develops new initiatives to improve admissions strategies and processes. And I can tell you that's one of the areas that I get the most questions about. Dr Yee was named Associate Dean in May. He has served as vice chair and chair of the School of Medicine's admissions committee and has been the clinical course director for the Body Disease Class. He's also the Asian/Pacific American Student Association faculty advisor and leader of the Student Faculty Show Band, and I heard him play this year. Dr. Yee is Associate Professor in the department pediatrics in the division of emergency medicine. I can tell you as a new dean, having someone as experienced as Dr. Yee in admissions is a huge asset for me. So welcome Linton.
Linton Yee: Well thank you for having me on.
DK: This has been an exciting year for this school in many ways but in particular for admissions. We received over 8,000 applications. Now correct the the numbers if we're wrong, and 129 new students. Can you talk about that?
LY: That's correct. We were originally anticipating trying to get to the 115 to 120 mark this year, but a lot of people decided that this was the place they wanted to be for the next four years.
DK: So you try to predict the number of students that will accept you offer?
LY: Normally it ends up being a 2 to 1 ratio, in the past, but this year it kind of defied that, and I guess that's good for Duke because people really want to be here. And I think we have a lot to offer them in terms of, a number of things in terms of the curriculum, the lifestyle in Durham now. I mean a lot of these things for, instance like the lifestyle in Durham kind of hurt us in the past because Durham was not seen as a place to be. Now you go downtown to Durham and you can't find parking anymore.
DK: It's been transformed! I thinking people that have been here for a while would be absolutely shocked. As I was when I came back after many years away. Was there a particular part of our applicant pool or acceptance pool that you think we did better this year than other years?
LY: Right. So we did really well in our underrepresented minority pool and I think this year we had 36 underrepresented minority students which comprises 28 percent of the class which is higher than our usual average which is roughly around 24 percent. And I think we've made - we have a lot of people from California that we that we stole from like San Francisco and Stanford. We have a fairly significant Hispanic Latino representation this year. I think you know years ago, probably about four or five years ago, we only had three Latino students in the class. Now this year we have I think almost 12. So, we're making significant inroads in a number of different areas.
DK: So I think historically, one thing that we've really taken a lot of pride in is the diversity of our classes. Yesterday I had an amazing experience spending most of the day with an outside speaker, Scott Paige, who recently published a book called The Diversity Bonus, and we had all the leadership participate, and he really makes the compelling case for something that I think we've already learned, which is diversity is part of excellence, and they go hand in hand. And I think our school has really defined that very clearly.
LY: In order to improve patient care you need to make a connection with the people you're taking care of. An
