MCATs, Affirmative Action, and DEI, Oh My

[Loren Pechtel]

There is zero data that suggests that non-white and non-Asian students fail to fully meet the requirements first admission to the medical schools they are admitted to.

The basic problem is that those standards have been lowered so as to include enough minorities.

 

[Elixir]

Pl are read Don’s excellent post to understand exactly how admissions are determined.

Good call!
Paraphrasing possibly Mark Twain, “it ain’t what we don’t know, it’s what we know that just ain’t so”

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The evidence is in the data about MCAT and GPA distribution for matriculated students. You and your Ilk still have not found a way to explain it without admitting discrimination in the name of "diversity", aka "affirmative action".

You and your ilk cannot explain any reduction in white men’s chances without screaming discrimination. The notion that the world does not revolve around white men is inconceivable to you.

The problem is that you are covering two groups here.

There are the racists that want whites on top, and will object to anything that reduces that.

But there are also those of us who want a colorblind system, we agree with the civil rights movement but think society has gone too far and is now discriminating against those from successful populations. Applications should be stripped of racial information.

 

[laughing dog]

There is zero data that suggests that non-white and non-Asian students fail to fully meet the requirements first admission to the medical schools they are admitted to.

The basic problem is that those standards have been lowered so as to include enough minorities.

Without any evidence that the resulting minority doctors are less successful in their practice of medicine than whites, your opinion appears more like bigoted sour grapes than evidenced-based disinterested and reasoned analysis.

 

[Elixir]

There is zero data that suggests that non-white and non-Asian students fail to fully meet the requirements first admission to the medical schools they are admitted to.

The basic problem is that those standards have been lowered so as to include enough minorities.

Don’t know how you could possibly know that. But it’s irrelevant if true. What matters is that licenses to practice medicine are granted only to qualified applicants.
Show me, Loren! Where is the evidence of higher mortality or poorer health attributable to inferior care rendered by POCs vs Lilly-white or slant-eyed doctors as a result of this imagined bias?

 

[laughing dog]

The evidence is in the data about MCAT and GPA distribution for matriculated students. You and your Ilk still have not found a way to explain it without admitting discrimination in the name of "diversity", aka "affirmative action".

You and your ilk cannot explain any reduction in white men’s chances without screaming discrimination. The notion that the world does not revolve around white men is inconceivable to you.

The problem is that you are covering two groups here.

There are the racists that want whites on top, and will object to anything that reduces that.

But there are also those of us who want a colorblind system, we agree with the civil rights movement but think society has gone too far and is now discriminating against those from successful populations. Applications should be stripped of racial information.

I realize you truly believe that. But you shouldn’t be surprised if others see “successful populations” and see enablers of the first group.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

NOBODY IS SUGGESTING THAT MCAT AND GPA ARE THE ONLY THINGS THAT MATTER!!!

Indeed. You are just suggesting that they should be.

No. We are perfectly willing for there to be other factors. It's just they should be concrete. Show how to measure it, show that the measurement is relevant to outcome.

But this is exactly what used to happen in the past with blacks being found undesirable for vague reasons. Why was it wrong then but proper now??

 

[Loren Pechtel]

No credible alternative explanation has been offered, and it is known that academia champions the idea of "racial preferences". So why are people so reluctant to admit that this is also a case of racial preferences?

This is the key point to me.

We have a lot of educated people seeking to defend the position, yet they can come up with nothing that can actually be held up to scrutiny.

A large quantity of low quality evidence with no high quality evidence almost certainly means it's false.

 

[laughing dog]

No credible alternative explanation has been offered, and it is known that academia champions the idea of "racial preferences". So why are people so reluctant to admit that this is also a case of racial preferences?

This is the key point to me.

We have a lot of educated people seeking to defend the position, yet they can come up with nothing that can actually be held up to scrutiny.

A large quantity of low quality evidence with no high quality evidence almost certainly means it's false.

Ah, the unintended humor if the irony impaired.

Until you produce “high quality evidence” that less qualified doctors are the result of current medical school admissions, you’ve described your position.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Nobody disagrees that there was discrimination in the past. But that does not justify discrimination today.

Why not?

So you're admitting to discriminating.

Note that you're discriminating against those who have not even been accused of doing anything wrong. This is purely punishment for being of the wrong race. Why is it wrong if done to blacks but right if done to whites and Asians??

 

[Loren Pechtel]

No credible alternative explanation has been offered, and it is known that academia champions the idea of "racial preferences". So why are people so reluctant to admit that this is also a case of racial preferences?

This is the key point to me.

We have a lot of educated people seeking to defend the position, yet they can come up with nothing that can actually be held up to scrutiny.

A large quantity of low quality evidence with no high quality evidence almost certainly means it's false.

Ah, the unintended humor if the irony impaired.

Until you produce “high quality evidence” that less qualified doctors are the result of current medical school admissions, you’ve described your position.

You're not citing any evidence here.

Where is there a study of doctor performance by race or by MCAT score??

(And I'm not going to count the fact that typically black medical facilities on average deliver lower quality care. That's socioeconomic, not racial. But your strict reliance on race should count it--by your yardstick there should be no blacks allowed.)

 

[Toni]

The evidence is in the data about MCAT and GPA distribution for matriculated students. You and your Ilk still have not found a way to explain it without admitting discrimination in the name of "diversity", aka "affirmative action".

You and your ilk cannot explain any reduction in white men’s chances without screaming discrimination. The notion that the world does not revolve around white men is inconceivable to you.

The problem is that you are covering two groups here.

There are the racists that want whites on top, and will object to anything that reduces that.

But there are also those of us who want a colorblind system, we agree with the civil rights movement but think society has gone too far and is now discriminating against those from successful populations. Applications should be stripped of racial information.

I believe that students have the option to not include race in their application.

That said there are and always have been ways to discern someone’s race and class by looking at where they lived, down to the neighborhood and more telling sometimes, which churches and organizations applicants belonged to.

What you are saying, flat out, is that you advocate for the status quo, which, conveniently enough for you, will not change your world. You seem to think that things are fine now. And they probably are for you.

It’s really scary to think that whatever qualifications and efforts and achievements ts allowed you to reach the status you now enjoy might not be sufficient today. That’s been the case for every generation for a long time now.

As society demands more formal, usually educational, qualifications, educational attainment is more and more important.

Which is exactly why you and a lot of people are looking for ways to lock people dissimilar to yourself out of educational opportunities. You think it’s ’not fair’ if MCAT and GPA are not the only factors used, with the top X scoring applicants being offered admissions, X being the number of slots for the incoming class.

Unfortunately for this strategy, the practice of medicine does not rely solely on the ability to memorize and regurgitate facts on multiple choice tests. Yes, a physician must have an excellent and near encyclopedic knowledge and understanding of a broad set of knowledge about anatomy, physiology, pharmacology, bacteriology, virology and oncology and a variety of disease processes. Add to this best practices, rules and regulations, plus the extremely important ‘soft’ skills of empathy and the ability to listen and communicate effectively and the ability to work well as a member of a team, as a leader, and the vital emotional resilie

There is zero data that suggests that non-white and non-Asian students fail to fully meet the requirements first admission to the medical schools they are admitted to.

The basic problem is that those standards have been lowered so as to include enough minorities.

Where is your evidence that standards are or have been lowered to include enough minorities?

As far as you or I know, the highest single scores on MCAT and highest GPA belong to black or Hispanic applicants. We only know averages and have zero demographic information attached to any particular score.

A person who had wealth that was the average of my wealth and that of Elon Musk would be wealthier than Warren Buffett. Substantially.

They’d still be wealthy.

 

[laughing dog]

No credible alternative explanation has been offered, and it is known that academia champions the idea of "racial preferences". So why are people so reluctant to admit that this is also a case of racial preferences?

This is the key point to me.

We have a lot of educated people seeking to defend the position, yet they can come up with nothing that can actually be held up to scrutiny.

A large quantity of low quality evidence with no high quality evidence almost certainly means it's false.

Ah, the unintended humor if the irony impaired.

Until you produce “high quality evidence” that less qualified doctors are the result of current medical school admissions, you’ve described your position.

You're not citing any evidence here.

My position is you’ve not produced any “high quality evidence”. Still waiting. Instead of avoiding the question, produce some.

Where is there a study of doctor performance by race or by MCAT score?

It’s up to you to substantiate you claims

(And I'm not going to count the fact that typically black medical facilities on average deliver lower quality care. That's socioeconomic, not racial. But your strict reliance on race should count it--by your yardstick there should be no blacks allowed.)

Your ridiculous straw man of “your strict reliance on race” somehow reminds me of the apt description of Trump: “evety accussation is a confession “.

 

[Elixir]

Show me, Loren! Where is the evidence of higher mortality or poorer health attributable to inferior care rendered by POCs vs Lilly-white or slant-eyed doctors as a result of this imagined bias?

Or …

Where is there a study of doctor performance by race or by MCAT score??

That is a hell of an admission:
You want to alter a system to accommodate what amounts to no more than your suspicion that harm is being done to end users of our medical system, due to anti-Caucasian, anti-Asian bias on the part of admissions systems.
I think it would be YOUR job to provide evidence of harm to support your assertion of harm.
Remember, Loren:

A large quantity of low quality evidence with no high quality evidence almost certainly means it's false.

Please explain how that doesn’t mean your assertion of harm is bullshit.
Thanks.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Because we are discussing standardized tests, there are hard minimum and maximum boundaries. In your hypothetical, a minimum score of 0 corresponds to two standard deviations below the mean. Since it's impossible to score below 0, the data cannot follow a perfect bell curve—it has to be skewed.

There will be some skew because long tails are cut off, but I do not think deviation from normal distribution are at all significant for our purposes.

Your statement is incredibly vague.

If you are comparing an Asian cohort to an African American cohort on a test with a hard 528 ceiling, the skew matters. For a group with a higher mean, the right tail of their distribution crashes into that ceiling and compresses heavily (a left skew). For a group with a lower mean, their curve is much less restricted at the top. Treating these as identical "perfect normal distributions" mathematically distorts the upper percentiles, which are precisely the percentiles we are discussing when looking at medical school acceptances.

Furthermore, test distributions warp as they move through three distinct filters: all test takers → applicants → matriculants. At each stage, the bottom drops out. Some students take the test two or three times to achieve a competitive score--an advantage heavily correlated with family wealth (paying for prep courses, having the free time to study instead of working, etc.). Assuming normality across these aggressively filtered, socioeconomically stratified sub-populations is just that: an assumption.

So, how can we confidently discuss these as normal distributions when we can mathematically see there are skews?

They are not perfect normal distributions of course, but they are close enough.

This gets even more complicated when we introduce confounding variables. For example:
Socioeconomics: Research shows that factoring in parental education and family income virtually eliminates racial differences in MCAT scores.

Do you have a source for that?
But in any case, I do not doubt these factors would remove much of the racial distribution difference. But parental education also means that their children likely grew up in a home where their intellectual development was encouraged from an early age. And there is also a genetic component - more educated parents are also likely more intelligent and they pass their genes to their offspring. And family income is also correlated with parental education (albeit not perfectly of course).
Now, growing up in a well-off family helps with all kinds of things, and many far more directly than MCAT. Your parents might be able to hire an MCAT tutor, but you still have to do the work and take the test. Those parents can also hire a professional writer to craft the perfect personal statement and secondary essays, but in that case you don't have to do squat. So, which admission criterion do you think is more susceptible to family income/wealth?

Preparation Capacity: Total hours dedicated to test prep is a strong predictor of MCAT success, which correlates with the financial capacity to afford extra educational resources and the free time to use them.

As I said, family income helps with a lot of things. More free time also means more time to do volunteering or research, and family connections (e.g. physician parent knows the PI at a local university) can help you get a spot.
Again, family income/wealth helps with everything. But with MCAT and to a lesser degree college coursework (as term papers and such can be outsourced), the kid still has to do the work him or herself.

If you don't like the MCAT, what do you think med school admissions should be based on?

This is a false dichotomy. I never said I "hate the MCAT" or that we should abandon it.

The MCAT is a valuable tool early in the process for predicting who can survive the grueling didactic classroom years (Years 1 and 2). However, as I pointed out in my previous post, the empirical data shows that MCAT scores do not correlate with clinical success during residency. Once a student survives the classroom years, the variance in their success is driven by real-world dimensions: physical, real life multi-tasking, working with colleagues, resilience, dexterity, bedside communication....

Saying "the MCAT is not the sole, permanent predictor of a good doctor" is not the same as saying "the MCAT is useless."

This raises bigger questions. When we group distributions purely as a function of race, are we actually looking at multi-modal, distinctly non-normal distributions driven by class and income?

The distributions are nearly normal. That is a red herring.

And I am sure "class and income" play a role, but mostly in such a way that they truly reflect how well a student is prepared for med school. It is certainly a much better gauge of preparedness than writing about`` yourself or volunteering at a soup kitchen.

Ultimately, this only underscores your broader point: we really do not know as much as we think we do from these tables, and people are making assumptions based on flawed, uni-dimensional models.

We do know that there are marked differences between racial/ethnic groups among applicants. We also know that these differences persist for matriculants as well. With race-blind admissions, those differences would either disappear for matriculants or else could be explained by some metric that would compensate for the differences in MCAT scores (and GPAs since the differences go the same way). I can't think of such a metric - there is no reason to assume, or evidence (that I have seen) to show that blacks best Asians in other metrics used by med schools.
Which means that admissions must not be race-neutral. That hypothesis is further strengthened by the fact that universities have a history of desiring to increase "diversity" even if it means discriminating against members of groups who perform better on average. See: Asians at Harvard.

Again, you are looking at this uni-dimensionally. You are assuming the only valid metrics are standardized test scores and GPAs.

Different medical schools have entirely different missions and different requirements with different applying racial demographics. Many state and regional medical schools have explicit charters to train doctors who will practice in underserved rural or inner-city communities. If an applicant has a slightly lower MCAT but a demonstrated history of working in those specific environments--which you dismissed as "volunteering at a soup kitchen"--that applicant is a objectively better fit for that specific school's mission.

You are treating a chart of average MCAT differences as an absolute proof of systemic discrimination. While there may be isolated instances of unfairness, the broader system is functioning as intended: committees weigh the MCAT heavily for academic baseline, but they also weigh other factors, such as the specific mission of the medical school. And the data backs up this holistic approach: once these students actually make it to residency, their initial MCAT disparities no longer predict their clinical success.

 

[ZiprHead]

Nobody disagrees that there was discrimination in the past. But that does not justify discrimination today.

Why not?

So you're admitting to discriminating.

I'm in no position to discriminate anyone.

Note that you're discriminating against those who have not even been accused of doing anything wrong. This is purely punishment for being of the wrong race. Why is it wrong if done to blacks but right if done to whites and Asians??

The ones that were discriminated in the past did nothing wrong too.

During the first half of the game one team has started on the fifty yard line, the other on the twenty. Now comes the second half and both teams must now start on the twenty. Is the game now fair?

 

[Derec]

The ones that were discriminated in the past did nothing wrong too.

Two wrongs don't make a right.

During the first half of the game one team has started on the fifty yard line, the other on the twenty. Now comes the second half and both teams must now start on the twenty. Is the game now fair?

I see that metaphor a lot, and it is really a powerful testament for how movement leftism sees people: not as individuals, but merely as representatives for group identities. So they see nothing wrong with punishing some people and rewarding others to what happened not to them, not even necessarily their ancestors, but just people who kinda-sorta look similar.

In reality it's not the same game. It's like saying that because there was a bad call in one Superbowl that cost team A the title, the next time these two teams meet in the Big Game, team B should start at an disadvantage even if all the players on both teams are different.

 

[Derec]

Nobody disagrees that there was discrimination in the past. But that does not justify discrimination today.

Why not?

Because they are different people. You want to punish people who look a certain way merely because people who looked similar to them enjoyed certain advantages in the past. I.e. you want to punish people for belonging to a certain racial or ethnic group. Racism by any other name smells just as rotten, whether you call it "affirmative action" or "DEI".

But I'll give you one thing. Most other left-wing posters here are vociferously trying to deny that discrimination takes place, and engaging in increasing levels of denialism. You at least are willing to admit that you think discriminating against white and Asian students is the right thing to do. You are wrong, of course, but at least you're honest.

 

[Derec]

It's the side of a curve. Very, very distorted.

How do you think it affects the comparison of the means here?

 

[Derec]

NOR DOES THE SCORING SYSTEM.

It certainly does.

It's a fucking exam. It says three-eighths of fuck all about who will be the best doctor.

"Who will be the best doctor" is the question for the med school itself, which btw. also includes tests.

The question MCAT is trying to answer is which applicants are best academically prepared for the rigors of med school. And I think MCAT does a pretty good job of it.


What would you use instead of the MCAT?