Pupils from poorer backgrounds are less confident in their ability to enter and complete medical school than those from higher socioeconomic groups. Greenhalgh and colleagues (p 1541) interviewed 68 academically able pupils aged 14-16 years and found that pupils from working class backgrounds see medical school as distant, unreal, and culturally alien. They associate medical education with prohibitive personal risk and greatly underestimate the chances of their applications being successful.
Figure 1.
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