Other applicants--including Asian-Americans--can qualify for minority status if they can demonstrate financial disadvantage.

Lee Ann Michelson, health career advisor at the Office of Career Services, says medical schools look at the demand for certain types of doctors.

"Traditionally, underrepresented minority doctors go back to serve communities of their own minority," she says. "This is important because their is a need for doctors in inner city and rural locations."

In 1996, Asian-Americans made up 24.8 percent of Harvard Medical School's student body.

Nationwide, Asians, Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders make up 17.6 percent of medical school enrollment.

Rosa J. Soler, associate director for recruitment and multicultural affairs at HMS, says the school acknowledges that there are underrepresented groups not recognized in the AAMC guidelines, especially under the umbrella term "Asian."

Soler says many of the AAMC's broad minority labels are incomplete. "I think that in the future their definition will be revisited as a national standard," she says. "It is an issue that definitely needs to be explored."

Business

Harvard Business School also follows federal guidelines which classify Asian-Americans as a minority. But the school does not consider Asian-American students "underrepresented" like Mexican-or African-Americans, says Business School Admissions Officer Mara H. Yoo '94.

However, officials say the school does not keep track of the number of Asian-American students enrolled.

Even though the Business School, like many of its peer institutions, doesn't consider Asian-Americans underrepresented, several business recruiting programs actively recruit Asian-Americans.

The Sponsors for Educational Opportunity Wall Street Recruiting program for undergraduates has recruited minority students for the past 15 years.

For the first five years the program did not include Asian-Americans in its target group. But in 1987, the program changed its guidelines and allowed Asian-Americans to apply because they were underrepresented in the financial world, Hunt says.

Crimson and Brown Associates runs another national minority recruiting program. They encourage all future professionals who define themselves as minorities to participate.

Crimson and Brown President Jessie T. Woolley says companies have become increasingly aware of the diversity of their consumer bases. And she says that although Asian-Americans are not underrepresented in the industrial sector overall, they are in certain geographic regions.