There has been consistent interest in bolstering the physician-scientist workforce to fuel discovery and translational research (1, 2). In 2014, the Physician-Scientist Workforce Working Group assembled by the NIH identified increasing diversity of the physician-scientist workforce as a priority for the future advancement of the profession; at the time, almost three-quarters of NIH research project grant recipients with an MD-PhD were White, and greater than two-thirds were male (3, 4). Even so, women and underrepresented minorities (URMs), which include Black/African Americans, Hispanics/Latinos, and Native Americans/American Indians, remain underrepresented. The enrollment data for 2018–2019 show that women made up 39.9% of matriculated MD-PhD students, up from 37.7% in 2014–2015 (5). In the past five years, the rate for women enrolled has increased at about 0.55% per year. Even if growth continued at the 2018–2019 rate (1.1%), it would take another ten years for parity to be reached between men and women enrolled in MD-PhD programs. Similar trends emerge for URM MD-PhD students: the graduating class of 2018 had 13.8% URM graduates, whereas 2018–2019 matriculants included 12.1% URMs (6, 7). For that academic year, 16% of applicants were URMs (8). These data highlight that there has been almost no growth in the number of URM MD-PhD students matriculating compared with those who matriculated 8–10 years prior (ie, graduating class of 2018). Additionally, it is necessary to examine reasons why potential women and URM applicants decide not to apply to MD-PhD programs from the outset.