More Women Enter Med Schools

On an all-male dormitory floor at the Yale School of Medicine, topless pictures of Demi Moore and Kate Moss hang on a bulletin board beneath a diagram of the chemical structure for testosterone.

Testosterone Alley, the unofficial name given the floor, is one of the few places left at the school where first-year male medical students hold sway.

For the first time in the school’s 182-year history, women outnumber men among the first-year students, making up 56 percent of the class that entered in 1994. And Yale is not alone.

Eighteen of the nation’s 126 medical schools reported a majority of women in their first-year class this academic year, including Harvard and Johns Hopkins, two other topranked institutions where it was also a first.

At both schools, women made up 53 percent of the first-year class.

Medical school officials are hardpressed to explain the shift.

With so many different factors - test scores, recommendations and interviews - influencing admissions decisions, officials at Yale, Harvard and Hopkins said it is difficult to pinpoint what is behind the numbers.