[ll931110]

That highlights a fundamental difference between US vs other countries university education system. In most countries university is vocational training e.g. you learn very deeply what's needed for a relatively specialized job with few chance to retrain once enter the workplace. The US focuses on broad undergrad education system, thus students can/should be able to adapt in their long career, even retraining and switching career if necessary.

But let's say, for the sake of arguments, that US adopts the requirement of having highschoolers applying straight away to medical school. Then suddenly you need a very different selection criteria. High school grades are off. SAT is jokingly too easy, so you need a much more difficult national exam (and enforce that nationwide). Students either grind in high schools for high grade or they'd rather drop that early to go for "normal" universities. And finally, you need better schools across the board to provide students with such opportunity, because if left unchecked, you'll have 10-20 percent of students from California, and only a few spots from Tennessee, thus not ensuring rural area having enough doctors.