They forgo organic chemistry, physics and calculus — though they get abbreviated organic chemistry and physics courses during a summer boot camp run by Mount Sinai. They are exempt from the MCAT. Instead, they are admitted into the program based on their high school SAT scores, two personal essays, their high school and early college grades and interviews.

The study found that, by some measures, the humanities students made more sensitive doctors: they were more than twice as likely to train as psychiatrists (14 percent compared with 5.6 percent of their classmates) and somewhat more likely — though less so than Dr. Kase had expected — to go into primary care fields, like pediatrics and obstetrics and gynecology (49 percent compared with 39 percent). Conversely, they avoid some fields, like surgical subspecialties and anesthesiology.

But what surprised the authors the most, they said, was that humanities students were significantly more likely than their peers to devote a year to scholarly research (28 percent compared with 14 percent). They scored lower on Step 1 of the Medical Licensing Examination, taken after the second year of medical school, which generally correlates with scientific knowledge. But over all, they ranked about the same in honors grades and in the percentage in the top quarter of the class.

Humanities students were also more likely to take a leave of absence for personal reasons, which could reflect some ambivalence about their choices, the study authors said.

Typically, 5 percent to 10 percent of the class drops out before getting to medical school. Those students cannot handle the science or they have changed their minds about their intention to be a doctor, said Miki Rifkin, the program director. One who dropped out was Jonathan Safran Foer, who became an acclaimed novelist.

Dr. Kase founded the Mount Sinai program shortly after a national report on physician preparation questioned the single-minded focus on hard science.

He began with a few students from five colleges and universities that did not have their own medical schools — Amherst, Brandeis, Princeton, Wesleyan and Williams — because, he said, “we did not want to poach.”