He said medical schools are turning away hundreds upon hundreds of candidates "who meet all the standards, who are scoring in the 90th percentile" on the medical-school entrance exam.
Fifty-five percent of New York students met the English Language Arts proficiency standards in 2012 by scoring at least a 3 on a scale of 1 to 4, and 65 percent scored at least a 3 on the math tests.
But, says Antonio Carlos Ronca, the rector of Sao Paulo's Catholic University, the provao has forced slacker institutions to improve standards, or risk a tide of student defections to higher-scoring universities.