MCATs, Affirmative Action, and DEI, Oh My

[Toni]

Some people do better on standardized tests regardless of their intelligence and educational background and if anyone did a little research, they would realize as has been pointed out a few times, that MCAT scores do not make a good or a bad doctor. Things like emotional intelligence, willingness to keep learning, being open minded as new medical discoveries take place are far more important than MCAT scores.

Plus, a a nurse who has dealt with both good and horrible doctors, imo, many doctors don't bother to learn much of anything new once they begin practicing. This, imo is very true of while male doctors, not all of them of course, but far too damn many of them. Gotta go. Have fun with this silly argument or find something better to do with your time.

To add to this: for many undergrad students who are aiming for medical school, there is a strong competition for top scores, top grades, the most rigorous ( you name it) available—a kind of pseudo intellectual machismo.

This tends to produce students who are very very good at earning perfect scores but who do not necessarily develop good social skills, empathy, listening skills.

Social skills and empathy are nice to haves. Body of knowledge, ability to accurately diagnose and treat are foundational requirements.

So are social skills and some degree of empathy, depending on the field of medicine.

Patients do not follow the advice of doctors they do not trust. If they do not believe the doctor hears what they are saying and understands what they are saying, there is a break down in communication and the patient is less inclined to follow the doctor’s advice.

Not only that, but I will not continue going to a doctor who lacks empathy and knows how to relate to patients. I originally went to one doctor to have my knee replacement surgery, but didn't like his attitude. The one I ended up with was kind, and considerate and had a much better reputation than the first one. I do have some mild to moderate pain in my knees which is very common, but a friend of mine who went to the other doctor had much worse pain that made it impossible for her to exercise. Besides, I prefer NPs but they they don't do surgery. Sure, I've known one who was a jerk and didn't seem to be very bright, but she was the exception. I'm not a fan of PAs, as they often push unneeded things on patients. I've only known one who I liked.

I have not had much good luck with NPs except for one at the practice where I am now a patient, but I have had nothing but wonderful experiences with the PA’s I’ve seen or more specifically who saw my husband. Wonderful health care workers.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

There are schools of medicine where the median MCAT score is less than that. Also, there are schools where the racial demographics are very different from the US generally. Each school doesn't have the same thresholds nor the same racial breakdown.

I do not see how that invalidates overall data.

It doesn't because it is compatible with the data but alternatively can explain why your inference can be wrong.

You know about HBCUs. There's also some schools in Puerto Rico.

Are you saying these schools reject people who are not black and Hispanic respectively?

No, other groups are not generally applying, though some do. I mean, you read the demographics so should already know.

San Juan Bautista School of Medicine requires a minimum MCAT score of 492 (with 495 often cited as the threshold for interviews), and has a median/average MCAT score of 499 for accepted students.

Those are some horrible stats.

In your oinion, but that isn't the point.

Juan Bautista is basically a glorified Caribbean school. I wonder what their drop out rates are.

Insults are not an argument. These are just some examples of how the different subgroups apply to different schools that have different thresholds.

 

[Toni]

Some people do better on standardized tests regardless of their intelligence and educational background and if anyone did a little research, they would realize as has been pointed out a few times, that MCAT scores do not make a good or a bad doctor. Things like emotional intelligence, willingness to keep learning, being open minded as new medical discoveries take place are far more important than MCAT scores.

Plus, a a nurse who has dealt with both good and horrible doctors, imo, many doctors don't bother to learn much of anything new once they begin practicing. This, imo is very true of while male doctors, not all of them of course, but far too damn many of them. Gotta go. Have fun with this silly argument or find something better to do with your time.

To add to this: for many undergrad students who are aiming for medical school, there is a strong competition for top scores, top grades, the most rigorous ( you name it) available—a kind of pseudo intellectual machismo.

This tends to produce students who are very very good at earning perfect scores but who do not necessarily develop good social skills, empathy, listening skills.

Social skills and empathy are nice to haves. Body of knowledge, ability to accurately diagnose and treat are foundational requirements.

So are social skills and some degree of empathy, depending on the field of medicine.

Patients do not follow the advice of doctors they do not trust. If they do not believe the doctor hears what they are saying and understands what they are saying, there is a break down in communication and the patient is less inclined to follow the doctor’s advice.

As a counterpoint... having a doctor that has a great bedside manner and is very compassionate doesn't count for much if they misdiagnose you or fail to provide an appropriate treatment.

"That surgeon had fantastic social skills and was really empathetic. It's such a shame he operated on the wrong leg and left a rag inside when he closed."

Like I said - nice to have. It's desirable, and it will make the difference between a good doctor and a great doctor. But it's not a foundational requirement - the foundational requirement is knowledge of their field of practice, ability to accurately diagnose, and being able to recommend the best option for treatment for the specific scenario.

I disagree about people skills, although my experience with surgeons is that most don’t particularly see the need.

Anyone who operates on the wrong body part or who has a rag in the OR is grossly negligent. This has nothing to do with GPA, MCAT scores or how well they did in med school r in their residencies. It suggests strongly that there may be a substance abuse issue or that the hospital is grossly understaffed forcing physicians to work when they are over tired.

 

[Politesse]

Calling everybody who is not on the left a "conservative" does not make us conservative.

No. Reposting conservative bullahot makes you a conservative. And saying, "No, no, I'm really a classical liberal" changes nothing about your concrete claims and actions such as they are

As to what critical race theory is, try reading your own link. It's a start at least. Notice how it has pretty much no words or major concepts in common with your "summary"?

 

[Politesse]

I do not think "critical race theory" for example is honestly looking at the issue of racism.

What does it mean to "honestly look at the issue of racism"?

 

[Elixir]

What does it mean to "honestly look at the issue of racism"?

I suspect it’s something to do with restoring statues of Confederate war heroes.

 

[Emily Lake]

I disagree about people skills, although my experience with surgeons is that most don’t particularly see the need.

Anyone who operates on the wrong body part or who has a rag in the OR is grossly negligent. This has nothing to do with GPA, MCAT scores or how well they did in med school r in their residencies. It suggests strongly that there may be a substance abuse issue or that the hospital is grossly understaffed forcing physicians to work when they are over tired.

You know, I don't dislike you at all Toni. But I'm becoming more and more convinced that we don't even speak the same language. There exists some sort of communication barrier that I just haven't been able to find a way around.

My premise is that good bedside manner is a great thing in a doctor, and makes a doctor better. But bedside manner alone cannot overcome a lack of medical expertise and skill. Medical knowledge is a necessary component of being a good doctor. Someone can be an acceptable doctor without good bedside manner, but cannot be a good doctor without medical knowledge.

I don't think this is a difficult concept, I don't think it's outlandish, and it's certainly not novel. It's not like I'm proposing some new concept here.

What I fail to understand is why you disagree with me on that very fundamental concept. Enough so that you've disagreed repeatedly, despite me having tried to reframe and re-explain my premise.

 

[Toni]

I disagree about people skills, although my experience with surgeons is that most don’t particularly see the need.

Anyone who operates on the wrong body part or who has a rag in the OR is grossly negligent. This has nothing to do with GPA, MCAT scores or how well they did in med school r in their residencies. It suggests strongly that there may be a substance abuse issue or that the hospital is grossly understaffed forcing physicians to work when they are over tired.

You know, I don't dislike you at all Toni. But I'm becoming more and more convinced that we don't even speak the same language. There exists some sort of communication barrier that I just haven't been able to find a way around.

My premise is that good bedside manner is a great thing in a doctor, and makes a doctor better. But bedside manner alone cannot overcome a lack of medical expertise and skill. Medical knowledge is a necessary component of being a good doctor. Someone can be an acceptable doctor without good bedside manner, but cannot be a good doctor without medical knowledge.

I don't think this is a difficult concept, I don't think it's outlandish, and it's certainly not novel. It's not like I'm proposing some new concept here.

What I fail to understand is why you disagree with me on that very fundamental concept. Enough so that you've disagreed repeatedly, despite me having tried to reframe and re-explain my premise.

You do not understand me.

I would never contest the idea that a thorough and extensive knowledge and understanding of human anatomy and physiology as well as microbiology, virology and immunology and how various disease processes work in the human body as well
as best medical practices are essential.

My observation over many years has been that effective doctors also need to know how to listen to their patients and to understand them if they are going to be able to effectively communicate with with their patients and with other medical professionals. Without the necessary communication skills, al if the knowledge and understanding is close to useless. As it is if the physician is unable or unwilling to get a buy in from the patient. Patients are not often at their doctor’s office because they are having a great day. They are likely ill and that will impair the patients ability to communicate well.

I’ve sat in doctor’s offices and watched doctors talk down to or past the patient or disregard what the patient was saying, This is not a good doctor. And the patient suffers for the doctor’s poor communication skills or efforts

 

[Loren Pechtel]

But they are not backpeddaling at all. Top medical schools expect high MCAT scores from their applicants, higher than MD average, and MD schools expect higher scores than DO schools. It's just that they all expect lower scores from applicants from favored races and ethnicities.

I'm not convinced that they have different thresholds for different cohorts. But I wouldn't be surprised if the thresholds had been lowered across the board in order to attain a higher percentage of a cohort that has a lower mean or a skew.

Exactly. They set the floor low enough to get enough "qualified" people. Back when they published the data you could see the real world floor varied by race.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

There is a major problem with discrimination "research"--finding "discrimination" is always treated as an endpoint. No, look for what's causing it!

That is the entire point of critical theory. Funny how conservatives hate that more than anything.

Funny how it's more about finding "discrimination" than finding truth.

What does that have to do with critical theory?

I was referring to discrimination research, not specifically critical race theory.

Research should always aim to uncover the driver of whatever you are looking at.

But they just quit once they find supposed discrimination. Even when it doesn't make sense--look at the flap about redlining around the turn of the century. Really, now, you expect me to believe bankers--all bankers--are only discriminating against blacks in black neighborhoods who want low down mortgages??? The local situation is much more sensibly explained by hypothesizing that bankers don't like loans that will end be underwater in a few years. This is an entirely sensible business decision that doesn't require any racism. And when you make a big thing out of questionable data you are basically admitting you don't have good data.

 

[Derec]

Depends entirely on the distribution around the mean, not just the mean.

Of course.

Let's do a super oversimpified demonstration. Imagine we only have two cohorts, A and B.

We can just use the 2023-24 data from AAMC instead of oversimplified made up numbers.

A has a mean of 50, with a standard deviation of 25. That gives us about 2/3 of the cohort falling between 25 and 75.
B has a mean of 55, with a standard deviation of 10. That gives us 2/3 falling between 45 and 65.

Your hypothetical has difference in μ being significantly bigger than difference in σ. But the MCAT distributions are not like that.
For applicants, Asian MCAT is at a mean of 509.1 with a σ of 9.3.
Black applicants have MCAT at a mean of 497.5 with a σ of 10.0. I.e. standard deviations are similar, but means are not.

If the threshold is set at 60, you will end up with a higher percentage of cohort A being above the threshold than of cohort B, even though B has a higher mean. The same threshold can produce different results based on the standard deviation.

But that is because your distributions have different σs while having similar μs.

Let's apply that to actual data. If we set 500 as cutoff and assume normality, 83.6% of Asian applicants will be above the cutoff, but only 40.1% of blacks will. That's less than half! If we increase the cutoff to 505, 67.0% of Asians are above the cutoff, but only 22.7% of blacks are. That's only about a third. So proportions will change, but the order is not going to flip given these parameters.

Now if you lowered that threshold to 50, you would flip that result - you'd end up with quite a bit more of B in your result than A.
ETA: If you were morbidly inclined, you might consider it score gerrymandering - adjust the aggregate threshold until you get a mix that suits your objectives.

As I have shown, that does not really work unless means are really close and st. devs. are significantly different.

Which is why the admins resort to shady practices like Harvard College assigning Asians poor personality scores in order to limit their numbers.

 

[Politesse]

Even when it doesn't make sense--look at the flap about redlining around the turn of the century. Really, now, you expect me to believe bankers--all bankers--are only discriminating against blacks in black neighborhoods who want low down mortgages???

So to be a "pure scientist" you have to just straight up ignore all evidence that's in front of you? Throw out any data that match your bullshit rhetoric? That's science?

Redlining was LAW. Black-and-white, clear as day. It's only "disputed" now by people who are just as passively racist now as they were when they were letting it happen in the first place.

 

[Politesse]

The local situation is much more sensibly explained by hypothesizing

You are unspeakably confused about the very nature of the scientific method. Like, at a primary school level. It doesn't matter what followed that phrase, nothing could have made that sentence scientifically sound.

 

[southernhybrid]

@Toni
I have not had much good luck with NPs except for one at the practice where I am now a patient, but I have had nothing but wonderful experiences with the PA’s I’ve seen or more specifically who saw my husband. Wonderful health care workers.

I guess we've just had very different experiences. The last PA I received care from was constantly pushing unnecessary things on me. She was smart but obnoxious and other patients agreed with me. The last one I worked with was a nice person but she was always trying to save the lives of people who were ready to die, including one very well liked man who was not only receiving hospice care, he was in the process of dying. On a more personal level, when she found out I was an atheist, she started that bullshit, "I'll pray for you stuff". The only PA I ever liked specialized in dermatology and she removed some harmless lesions from my hands for free. Two other PAs in dermatology were not only lacking in social skills, they didn't seem very bright. But, as I said, we all meet different medical providers depending on where we live and probably where they get their schooling, so our experiences are likely different.

One of my favorite doctors was what I refer to as a brilliant air head. She was intellectually a genius and could discuss pathophysiology in detail. She also had a Phd in engineering, prior to entering medical school. She was also a closeted atheist. I was the only one who knew that. But, she was the most disorganized person I ever met in healthcare. Ditzy as could be. Sometimes very smart people are like that. They are very smart but very disorganized and as one who worked in QA for years, I found that very annoying. Still, she was my doctor for about 20 years until she suddenly disappeared without even letting her patients know. She had just told me she was going to spend more time seeing patients instead of working with new residents, but she vanished. She didn't die. She was just so ditsy that she didn't bother to tell anyone she was leaving the practice that she had once owned. In less than a year, the entire practice closed down and I had just met a wonderful NP there, so I hated that.

Oh well.....at least I've tried to get off of the topic that the racist claims some are making on this thread, without even realizing that they sound racist to some of us. Can we move on....I doubt it.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Let's apply that to actual data. If we set 500 as cutoff and assume normality, 83.6% of Asian applicants will be above the cutoff, but only 40.1% of blacks will. That's less than half! If we increase the cutoff to 505, 67.0% of Asians are above the cutoff, but only 22.7% of blacks are. That's only about a third. So proportions will change, but the order is not going to flip given these parameters.

First, there isn't a universal cutoff. I discussed this with you multiple times over multiple years, including in this thread. When I last brought this up because the cutoffs vary at universities where Blacks or Hispanics are more prone to apply and Asians are not (like say in Puerto Rico or HBCUs OR different tiers of schools), all you did was insult the school instead of applying that new knowledge to your hypothesizing.

Second, pure normality is indeed an assumption and there may be modes and skews within the data in particular to some variables that may be somewhat independent of race.

Third, normality is a spectrum and when you begin to discuss maxima and minima, a beta distribution can fit data better than a normal distribution. I took a look at this over data of __test__ __takers__ in some year of MCATs. I found that a distribution of test takers in general with mean of 500.6, stdev of 11.2, had somewhat more normal like distribution 1 stdev out of from mean but also it was different, i.e. a beta distribution began to impact the numbers. Now 2 stdev from the mean, the beta distribution was stronger than the normal. What I mean by this is that the percents of population at the tails is more reflective of a beta distribution than a normal distribution.

You ought to consider how these three factors: non-universal cutoffs, different subgroups applying to different schools, and beta distributions play a role rather than just throwing your hands up in the air and saying, "that's a shitty school!" So you have test takers, supposing that MCAT trainers are negligible, and they may take the test some 3 times in a year (uncommon but it happens) and they may not apply until the score is higher or they might not have resources to take it 3 times and so apply just after the first time. In any case, there are three phases test taking, applying, and acceptance/matriculation. If the score isn't high enough to get into a school where they want to go: (Ivy league, HBCUs, Puerto Rico, tier 2, tier 3, state school, etc), (different thresholds) then they may take it again or decide to go into research or something else. Some people might not even _want_ to go to schools that you would call shitty. That isn't an argument about what to call schools, it's about a gap in counts in between test takers and the next phase, i.e. applicants. That is, if we look at distributions of applicants, they may also have a kind of beta distribution or some kind of other cutoff or threshold because many students have decided to _not_ apply yet, their scores were too low.

Finally, so far I am discussing with you your assumptions and the math, but as bilby and others have pointed out, this all could be besides the point. Earlier, I posted a study that suggests MCATs are not predictive of how good a doctor becomes __or__ at least that once one has gotten into medical school and made it through, the level of precision used on an MCAT score is not correlated to success as a doctor.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I disagree about people skills, although my experience with surgeons is that most don’t particularly see the need.

Anyone who operates on the wrong body part or who has a rag in the OR is grossly negligent. This has nothing to do with GPA, MCAT scores or how well they did in med school r in their residencies. It suggests strongly that there may be a substance abuse issue or that the hospital is grossly understaffed forcing physicians to work when they are over tired.

You know, I don't dislike you at all Toni. I'm becoming more and more convinced that we don't even speak the same language. There exists some sort of communication barrier that I just haven't been able to find a way around.

My premise is that good bedside mann

Depends entirely on the distribution around the mean, not just the mean.

Of course.

Let's do a super oversimpified demonstration. Imagine we only have two cohorts, A and B.

We can just use the 2023-24 data from AAMC instead of oversimplified made up numbers.

A has a mean of 50, with a standard deviation of 25. That gives us about 2/3 of the cohort falling between 25 and 75.
B has a mean of 55, with a standard deviation of 10. That gives us 2/3 falling between 45 and 65.

Your hypothetical has difference in μ being significantly bigger than difference in σ. But the MCAT distributions are not like that.
For applicants, Asian MCAT is at a mean of 509.1 with a σ of 9.3.
Black applicants have MCAT at a mean of 497.5 with a σ of 10.0. I.e. standard deviations are similar, but means are not.

If the threshold is set at 60, you will end up with a higher percentage of cohort A being above the threshold than of cohort B, even though B has a higher mean. The same threshold can produce different results based on the standard deviation.

But that is because your distributions have different σs while having similar μs.

Let's apply that to actual data. If we set 500 as cutoff and assume normality, 83.6% of Asian applicants will be above the cutoff, but only 40.1% of blacks will. That's less than half! If we increase the cutoff to 505, 67.0% of Asians are above the cutoff, but only 22.7% of blacks are. That's only about a third. So proportions will change, but the order is not going to flip given these parameters.

Now if you lowered that threshold to 50, you would flip that result - you'd end up with quite a bit more of B in your result than A.
ETA: If you were morbidly inclined, you might consider it score gerrymandering - adjust the aggregate threshold until you get a mix that suits your objectives.

As I have shown, that does not really work unless means are really close and st. devs. are significantly different.

Which is why the admins resort to shady practices like Harvard College assigning Asians poor personality scores in order to limit their numbers.

er is a great thing in a doctor, and makes a doctor better. But bedside manner alone cannot overcome a lack of medical expertise and skill. Medical knowledge is a necessary component of being a good doctor. Someone can be an acceptable doctor without good bedside manner, but cannot be a good doctor without medical knowledge.

I don't think this is a difficult concept, I don't think it's outlandish, and it's certainly not novel. It's not like I'm proposing some new concept here.

What I fail to understand is why you disagree with me on that very fundamental concept. Enough so that you've disagreed repeatedly, despite me having tried to reframe and re-explain my premise.

Again, undergrad percentage of Asians in class of 2029 at Harvard is 40+%.

You are brain fucking numbers to create an allusion that matches your racist view of collegiate education in the United States.

 

[Colonel Sanders]

Medical schools don't have room for, nor should they be expected to lower standards for any person.

In generalities, I agree. But I think there may be room for some squish that you're not taking into consideration. For example, it could be that in the past the bar has been set very high, as a means to limit the number of doctors, and thereby command higher rates. That's great... until we end up in a situation where there aren't enough doctors for the population and access becomes a problem.

If the bar is set higher than is required, then lowering that bar may be appropriate if doing so doesn't jeopardize quality.

Potentially timely analogy: It's all well and good to have your toilet paper bar set at soft, thick, doesn't pill, doesn't tear, doesn't have a nap when supplies are abundant. But when supplies run low, you might very well decide that all you actually care about is whether or not it will block your pipes.

Some people do better on standardized tests regardless of their intelligence and educational background and if anyone did a little research, they would realize as has been pointed out a few times, that MCAT scores do not make a good or a bad doctor. Things like emotional intelligence, willingness to keep learning, being open minded as new medical discoveries take place are far more important than MCAT scores.

Plus, a a nurse who has dealt with both good and horrible doctors, imo, many doctors don't bother to learn much of anything new once they begin practicing. This, imo is very true of while male doctors, not all of them of course, but far too damn many of them. Gotta go. Have fun with this silly argument or find something better to do with your time.

To add to this: for many undergrad students who are aiming for medical school, there is a strong competition for top scores, top grades, the most rigorous ( you name it) available—a kind of pseudo intellectual machismo.

This tends to produce students who are very very good at earning perfect scores but who do not necessarily develop good social skills, empathy, listening skills.

Social skills and empathy are nice to haves. Body of knowledge, ability to accurately diagnose and treat are foundational requirements.

So are social skills and some degree of empathy, depending on the field of medicine.

Patients do not follow the advice of doctors they do not trust. If they do not believe the doctor hears what they are saying and understands what they are saying, there is a break down in communication and the patient is less inclined to follow the doctor’s advice.

Not only that, but I will not continue going to a doctor who lacks empathy and knows how to relate to patients. I originally went to one doctor to have my knee replacement surgery, but didn't like his attitude. The one I ended up with was kind, and considerate and had a much better reputation than the first one. I do have some mild to moderate pain in my knees which is very common, but a friend of mine who went to the other doctor had much worse pain that made it impossible for her to exercise. Besides, I prefer NPs but they they don't do surgery. Sure, I've known one who was a jerk and didn't seem to be very bright, but she was the exception. I'm not a fan of PAs, as they often push unneeded things on patients. I've only known one who I liked.

I have not had much good luck with NPs except for one at the practice where I am now a patient, but I have had nothing but wonderful experiences with the PA’s I’ve seen or more specifically who saw my husband. Wonderful health care workers.

I had an NP tell me my pneumonia was allergies. I told her I'd been in the hospital two weeks prior for it and that the course of antibiotics was probably not long enough to get rid of it. I'd been taking thousands of milligrams of ibuprofen and chugging bottles of cough syrup to keep the cough down and the fever away, which I told her, but "No, it's just allergies." The fucking idiot told me to take Claritin.

About three weeks later, with a 103f fever, I staggered into the ER. I had a 1200 millimeter pleural effusion. The doctor asked me how in the hell I'd been walking around and working, and that's when I found out that if it burst through the lung wall that I would've drowned.

I spent ten days in the hospital and barely remember being there. I spent another month at home, but still wasn't right for a good six months.

Yay for NPs.

 

[thebeave]

I disagree about people skills, although my experience with surgeons is that most don’t particularly see the need.

Anyone who operates on the wrong body part or who has a rag in the OR is grossly negligent. This has nothing to do with GPA, MCAT scores or how well they did in med school r in their residencies. It suggests strongly that there may be a substance abuse issue or that the hospital is grossly understaffed forcing physicians to work when they are over tired.

You know, I don't dislike you at all Toni. I'm becoming more and more convinced that we don't even speak the same language. There exists some sort of communication barrier that I just haven't been able to find a way around.

My premise is that good bedside mann

Depends entirely on the distribution around the mean, not just the mean.

Of course.

Let's do a super oversimpified demonstration. Imagine we only have two cohorts, A and B.

We can just use the 2023-24 data from AAMC instead of oversimplified made up numbers.

A has a mean of 50, with a standard deviation of 25. That gives us about 2/3 of the cohort falling between 25 and 75.
B has a mean of 55, with a standard deviation of 10. That gives us 2/3 falling between 45 and 65.

Your hypothetical has difference in μ being significantly bigger than difference in σ. But the MCAT distributions are not like that.
For applicants, Asian MCAT is at a mean of 509.1 with a σ of 9.3.
Black applicants have MCAT at a mean of 497.5 with a σ of 10.0. I.e. standard deviations are similar, but means are not.

If the threshold is set at 60, you will end up with a higher percentage of cohort A being above the threshold than of cohort B, even though B has a higher mean. The same threshold can produce different results based on the standard deviation.

But that is because your distributions have different σs while having similar μs.

Let's apply that to actual data. If we set 500 as cutoff and assume normality, 83.6% of Asian applicants will be above the cutoff, but only 40.1% of blacks will. That's less than half! If we increase the cutoff to 505, 67.0% of Asians are above the cutoff, but only 22.7% of blacks are. That's only about a third. So proportions will change, but the order is not going to flip given these parameters.

Now if you lowered that threshold to 50, you would flip that result - you'd end up with quite a bit more of B in your result than A.
ETA: If you were morbidly inclined, you might consider it score gerrymandering - adjust the aggregate threshold until you get a mix that suits your objectives.

As I have shown, that does not really work unless means are really close and st. devs. are significantly different.

Which is why the admins resort to shady practices like Harvard College assigning Asians poor personality scores in order to limit their numbers.

er is a great thing in a doctor, and makes a doctor better. But bedside manner alone cannot overcome a lack of medical expertise and skill. Medical knowledge is a necessary component of being a good doctor. Someone can be an acceptable doctor without good bedside manner, but cannot be a good doctor without medical knowledge.

I don't think this is a difficult concept, I don't think it's outlandish, and it's certainly not novel. It's not like I'm proposing some new concept here.

What I fail to understand is why you disagree with me on that very fundamental concept. Enough so that you've disagreed repeatedly, despite me having tried to reframe and re-explain my premise.

Again, undergrad percentage of Asians in class of 2029 at Harvard is 40+%.

You are brain fucking numbers to create an allusion that matches your racist view of collegiate education in the United States.

You don't seem to be looking at the Asian applicants on an individual level when it comes to racism. Here is an example from my neck of the woods. If this isn't racism against Asians, then what is it? Is he just really unlucky? Is it likely a young black or hispanic student with the exact same credentials would experience the same widespread rejection as well?

Northern California high school grad rejected by 16 colleges hired by Google

SAN FRANCISCO -- College admissions decisions disappoint thousands of high-achieving students each year, but one Northern California teen's story is catching the attention of Congress.

Stanley Zhong, 18, is a 2023 graduate of Gunn High School in Palo Alto.

Despite earning 3.97 unweighted and 4.42 weighted GPA, scoring 1590 out of 1600 on the SATs and launching his own e-signing startup RabbitSign in sophomore year, he was rejected by 16 out of the 18 colleges he applied to.

Although Zhong recognizes that elite college admissions is complicated and his pool of Silicon Valley computer science major applicants is highly competitive, he admits to being surprised.

He was denied by: MIT, Carnegie Mellon, Stanford, UC Berkeley, UCLA, UCSD, UCSB, UC Davis, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Cornell University, University of Illinois, University of Michigan, Georgia Tech, Caltech, University of Washington and University of Wisconsin.

His only acceptances: University of Texas and University of Maryland.

College admissions experts frequently tell applicants that schools with an under 5% acceptance rate like MIT and Stanford are reaches for almost everyone, but Zhong was even denied by Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, which has a middle 50% GPA of 4.13-4.25 for admitted engineering students.

Fer Christsake, he was rejected by my alma mater, and I'm apparently just a big dummy (according to many here anyway).

 

[Toni]

I disagree about people skills, although my experience with surgeons is that most don’t particularly see the need.

Anyone who operates on the wrong body part or who has a rag in the OR is grossly negligent. This has nothing to do with GPA, MCAT scores or how well they did in med school r in their residencies. It suggests strongly that there may be a substance abuse issue or that the hospital is grossly understaffed forcing physicians to work when they are over tired.

You know, I don't dislike you at all Toni. I'm becoming more and more convinced that we don't even speak the same language. There exists some sort of communication barrier that I just haven't been able to find a way around.

My premise is that good bedside mann

Depends entirely on the distribution around the mean, not just the mean.

Of course.

Let's do a super oversimpified demonstration. Imagine we only have two cohorts, A and B.

We can just use the 2023-24 data from AAMC instead of oversimplified made up numbers.

A has a mean of 50, with a standard deviation of 25. That gives us about 2/3 of the cohort falling between 25 and 75.
B has a mean of 55, with a standard deviation of 10. That gives us 2/3 falling between 45 and 65.

Your hypothetical has difference in μ being significantly bigger than difference in σ. But the MCAT distributions are not like that.
For applicants, Asian MCAT is at a mean of 509.1 with a σ of 9.3.
Black applicants have MCAT at a mean of 497.5 with a σ of 10.0. I.e. standard deviations are similar, but means are not.

If the threshold is set at 60, you will end up with a higher percentage of cohort A being above the threshold than of cohort B, even though B has a higher mean. The same threshold can produce different results based on the standard deviation.

But that is because your distributions have different σs while having similar μs.

Let's apply that to actual data. If we set 500 as cutoff and assume normality, 83.6% of Asian applicants will be above the cutoff, but only 40.1% of blacks will. That's less than half! If we increase the cutoff to 505, 67.0% of Asians are above the cutoff, but only 22.7% of blacks are. That's only about a third. So proportions will change, but the order is not going to flip given these parameters.

Now if you lowered that threshold to 50, you would flip that result - you'd end up with quite a bit more of B in your result than A.
ETA: If you were morbidly inclined, you might consider it score gerrymandering - adjust the aggregate threshold until you get a mix that suits your objectives.

As I have shown, that does not really work unless means are really close and st. devs. are significantly different.

Which is why the admins resort to shady practices like Harvard College assigning Asians poor personality scores in order to limit their numbers.

er is a great thing in a doctor, and makes a doctor better. But bedside manner alone cannot overcome a lack of medical expertise and skill. Medical knowledge is a necessary component of being a good doctor. Someone can be an acceptable doctor without good bedside manner, but cannot be a good doctor without medical knowledge.

I don't think this is a difficult concept, I don't think it's outlandish, and it's certainly not novel. It's not like I'm proposing some new concept here.

What I fail to understand is why you disagree with me on that very fundamental concept. Enough so that you've disagreed repeatedly, despite me having tried to reframe and re-explain my premise.

Again, undergrad percentage of Asians in class of 2029 at Harvard is 40+%.

You are brain fucking numbers to create an allusion that matches your racist view of collegiate education in the United States.

You don't seem to be looking at the Asian applicants on an individual level when it comes to racism. Here is an example from my neck of the woods. If this isn't racism against Asians, then what is it? Is he just really unlucky? Is it likely a young black or hispanic student with the exact same credentials would experience the same widespread rejection as well?

Northern California high school grad rejected by 16 colleges hired by Google

SAN FRANCISCO -- College admissions decisions disappoint thousands of high-achieving students each year, but one Northern California teen's story is catching the attention of Congress.

Stanley Zhong, 18, is a 2023 graduate of Gunn High School in Palo Alto.

Despite earning 3.97 unweighted and 4.42 weighted GPA, scoring 1590 out of 1600 on the SATs and launching his own e-signing startup RabbitSign in sophomore year, he was rejected by 16 out of the 18 colleges he applied to.

Although Zhong recognizes that elite college admissions is complicated and his pool of Silicon Valley computer science major applicants is highly competitive, he admits to being surprised.

He was denied by: MIT, Carnegie Mellon, Stanford, UC Berkeley, UCLA, UCSD, UCSB, UC Davis, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Cornell University, University of Illinois, University of Michigan, Georgia Tech, Caltech, University of Washington and University of Wisconsin.

His only acceptances: University of Texas and University of Maryland.

College admissions experts frequently tell applicants that schools with an under 5% acceptance rate like MIT and Stanford are reaches for almost everyone, but Zhong was even denied by Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, which has a middle 50% GPA of 4.13-4.25 for admitted engineering students.

Fer Christsake, he was rejected by my alma mater, and I'm apparently just a big dummy (according to many here anyway).

I remember reading about this. It is quite surprising and it makes me think that something else is going on here. Racism seems unlikely at the schools he did not get into.

I have no idea. It could have been the timing of his applications was late. It could be that his admissions essay caused some red flags. Or his letters of recommendation. . I don’t like to speculate that an applicant was dishonest in their application but I wonder if something in his materials did not set off an alarm?

The reason I mentioned timing is that if the schools which rejected him had already accepted the number of students they had slots for in his stated field of study, that would have resulted in a rejection.

This is just me and obviously not what admissions actually do but if I knew an applicant had applied at many schools, I’d be a bit suspicious that they were sincere about choosing MY school to apply.

I have wondered about this and realized many/most schools do not look at it the same way because occasionally there is a news story about a student being accepted at ALL of the Ivies.

None of those schools is likely to be forthcoming about the reason for their rejection.

 

[thebeave]

Ever heard of Occam's Razor?