A group of students at a North Chicago university have sued the university, accusing it of allegedly misrepresenting the career potential of a master’s degree program and killing their dreams of becoming physicians.
The students charge in the suit that the sole reason they entered Finch University of Health Sciences’ yearlong master of applied physiology program was because admissions office personnel and departmental secretaries had assured them maintaining a grade-point average of a B or better guaranteed them a spot in the university’s medical school.
The program is one of a handful nationwide that are designed to be a proving ground for prospective medical school students.
But on the first day of their student orientation, in July 1996, the students were shocked by a memo from Associate Dean Timothy Hansen.
The memo said a B average was no guarantee of admission into the university’s Chicago Medical School and that only the top 50 graduates would be accepted.
Though that medical school class would be the first to limit Finch graduates, Hansen said Tuesday that the students were made aware long before they sat for orientation that acceptance into the medical school was contingent upon more than just their grade-point averages in the master’s program.
“It’s extremely competitive,” Hansen said. “No one was guaranteed anything.”
About 11,200 people from across the country applied for the approximately 160 class openings.
Having already plunked down $28,500 in tuition and having turned down other graduate school opportunities, the Finch students remained hopeful that a 3.0 grade point–or B–average would assure them a seat in medical school and decided to stick it out, according to the suit.
When the students’ final grade-point averages were tallied last month, 78 of them made the cut, or the B-or-better threshold that they had thought would be good enough to get in the medical school, according to the suit.
But on Thursday, the university’s general counsel reiterated the policy outlined in the previous summer’s memo: Only 50 students would be accepted into medical school. The remaining spots will go to students from other schools.
The suit was filed Monday in Lake County Circuit Court by five students on behalf of all 28 students who were not in the top 50 but had maintained at least a B average.
“One of the crowning things in one’s life is to become a physician, so understandably people walked away from other opportunities to pursue this opportunity,” said the students’ attorney, Clinton Krislov.
“All the students are asking for in the suit is what they were promised–a spot in medical school,” Krislov said.
Hansen, who in addition to being associate dean is also the director of the applied physiology program, said that the plaintiffs are simply mistaken.
“No one ever promised anybody that they would be accepted no matter whatever GPA they got,” he said.
“There are people who fell below the mark that I like very much and think will make good physicians,” Hansen said. “But we just can’t fill our class with only one category of applicants.”
The suit seeks an emergency temporary restraining order, to force the medical school to reserve class spaces for the disgruntled students until the case is decided by a jury.
Lake County Judge Emilio Santi is scheduled to preside over a hearing on the matter Wednesday morning.
Accredited in 1948 and initially located near Cook County Hospital in Chicago, Finch University and Chicago Medical School moved to its 90-acre North Chicago campus in 1981.
