This is a very popular theme/idea, but I'm going to tell you why it may not be as effective as everyone assumes. By in large, the kids who would not be getting accepted with reduced admissions would be the ones who don't make it to graduation now. Most schools are very consistent in the number of students that they graduate, even in years where they've taken more or less students (more noticeable in years with the allowed 10% buffer). ie If Ohio takes 125 kids they graduate around 100. If they take 110 (that's a big cut, in terms of lost tuition $ and probably more than you'd get them to do voluntarily), they are still going to graduate around 100 kids. To make a meaningful impact on graduating class size you'd likely have to decrease enrollment by 15-20% (essentially the current rate of attrition). Not only will the CPME not make changes to the caps, but the deans would never voluntarily reduce their class size by that many students. $$$ talks.
I'm mostly playing devil's advocate since I believe the larger schools ought to take less students. It has little to do with the school itself and everything to do with an applicant pool that will only ever have a certain number of kids who can hack it. At least until it grows. If DMU took 120 kids, everything that DMU can currently brag about would be gone. Board pass rates would drop, attrition rate would increase, and I guarantee the 100% residency placement number would be no more. With 9 schools fighting over 1000 kids, no one school can take and graduate over 100 kids AND place them all into residency. It just won't happen. But like I said, not going to happen. Temple was very vocal about not being able to retain faculty and admin if they accepted less students and lost tuition $ at a national meeting some time ago. So in the meantime we hope young DPMs continue to get involved in our training, adding seats to current programs and starting up new ones.
