MCATs, Affirmative Action, and DEI, Oh My

[Loren Pechtel]

Related question: this kind of focus is on underrepresented minorities who at least in theory meet a public need at a greater rate (mission fitness). Where is the uproar regarding predominantly non-Asian regions (like WV or White rural areas) from blocking qualified out-of-state (Asian) applicants from applying? It seems like there is a goal here, not by you, by Trump... have you thought about it?

Institutions exist to serve their population. Preference for in-state applicants is often legally required as part of receiving state money.

Thus I have no objection here. It's an entirely relevant basis to decide, openly listed.

Are you also okay with this?

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I don't like that. Essays like this are too easily outsourced and do not realistically reflect the students.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

It IS a big part of it which is why the standards are very high.

They may be high for whites and Asians, but they are far lower for blacks and Hispanics.

Unfortunately it is not a case of those who score the highest in the MCAT making the best doctors. That would be great if it were true—easy peasy to select those who would be the best.

Those who score high on MCAT and have good grades from a good school show academic aptitude which is necessary, but not sufficient for being a good doctor.

But it simply is not the case. There are other qualities and abilities which are as valuable as being able to score the highest on standardized tests.

Of course. But you have not shown any evidence why these "other qualities and abilities" should be distributed opposite to academic performance. Because that would be needed to undo the academic advantage of whites and Asians in absence of discrimination.

Why is this so hard for you (and the rest of the Ilk) to understand?

The scores are not 'far lower.' Only applicants who meet the threshold for test scores, and GPAs are considered. Other supporting materials are part of the application packet, as well as personal statements and pretty often, interviews.

Two of us found the same issue with Duke admissions. Test scores are numbers, they only become meaningful when converted into percentiles. And the percentile gap is large.

The fact is that the ability and drive to excel in taking certain kinds of tests and earning high GPAs is not paired with 100% congruence with the ability to hold up in stressful situations, work well as a team, interact well with others on a personal level or enjoy working with people and having the capacity to do so while remaining professional and establishing a good working relationship with the patients.

You keep repeating things along these lines without ever indicating why one should expect a racial disparity in such matters.

Who suggested there was a disparity that fell along racial lines?

You are among those who seem convinced that talent falls along racial lines. And that certain types of academic talent are perfectly aligned with other types of talent.

What the hell does Duke have to do with this?

I don't think talent falls along racial lines. I think the development of talent falls along socioeconomic lines. (And don't talk of catching up--doesn't happen unless you put roadblocks in front of the leaders.)

As for Duke--are you not reading the thread? Duke admitted that despite the Supreme Court ruling they continue to have huge MCAT discrepancies. Their own news talked about the judgment from the Justice department--while I certainly don't trust this administration on this matter (nor have I trusted any administration on this--all have been wrong, just not always in the same direction) I would think that their own news would have presented the other side if there was anything to present. There is a lot more likelihood of truth in statements (or lack of statements) contrary to the interests of the party making them.

 

[laughing dog]

Related question: this kind of focus is on underrepresented minorities who at least in theory meet a public need at a greater rate (mission fitness). Where is the uproar regarding predominantly non-Asian regions (like WV or White rural areas) from blocking qualified out-of-state (Asian) applicants from applying? It seems like there is a goal here, not by you, by Trump... have you thought about it?

Institutions exist to serve their population. Preference for in-state applicants is often legally required as part of receiving state money.

Thus I have no objection here. It's an entirely relevant basis to decide, openly listed.

So you have no problem when there is discrimination for mostly whites because it is open.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

You know one thing... when I needed a surgical procedure, I trusted my PCP in the referral. And I've never asked a doctor or surgeon what their MCATs were.

How does what you wrote justify medical schools blatantly discriminating against white and Asian applicants?

Your claim didn't actually demonstrate that schools are "blatantly discriminating against white and Asian applicants", so not certain why I should debunk a baseless claim. However, I might note that over 20% of graduates of Medical School are Asian. That would be more than 3 times the percent of Asians living in the US. This would imply your accusation hinges on your complete misunderstanding of what the word "discrimination" means.

You need to know the percentage of a particular race applying to med schools and compare that to their acceptance percentage to determine whether there is discrimination compared to other races.

No, not really. The whole 3x on population infers enough that there isn't discrimination. But, I know that people are wanting to die on this molehill.

There is this. It is blog-ish so if someone finds sounder stats, please post them.

Group	MCAT	GPA	Acceptance Rate
Asian	514.3	3.85	44.5%
White	512.3	3.82	47.2%
Middle Eastern/North African	511.7	3.84	38.4%
Black/African American	507.2	3.65	35.9%
Hispanic/Latino	506.8	3.71	38.9%
American Indian/Alaska Native	505.2	3.64	40.7%

This would imply that demographics are being accepted at a rate that is generally proportional to their scores.

Jimmy, I have lifted your post from the other thread and placed it here. I looked at the bloggish page a while ago and also recently. There is an implied methodology by the statements they've made. For acceptance rates, I reproduced this methodology but I also came to the same conclusion of _how_ it should be calculated independently. It's just Acceptance rate = applicants/matriculants. There is a glitch, though, I have noticed. I could reproduce all the percents except for the Black category for that metric. I have 31.02% for Black instead when I do this calculation. I note also that in the initial table on the page, they leave out Black entirely from acceptance rates. I think what this means is that they forgot to do the calculation and then did it later, giving more chance of an error. Perhaps I am in error. I will go back and look at this with a fresh set of eyes later on. (Also, this would make the Hispanic numbers look more out of line, but these are skewed by Puerto Rico statistics). Bomb#20 also pointed out that the comparison should include __applicant__ statistics. Anyway, I will return to this later.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

I looked at it again and still see 31.02%. Also there's a question of whether or not Puerto Rico should be excluded from Hispanic statistics. Would it also follow that we need to remove particular states that have lower averages, too? Or schools/state schools? When does it end to make the comparison "fair?" I am not sure.

In any case, here are some adjusted numbers for Hispanic, primarily nonPR Hispanic. I used AI to do the arithmetic.
Acceptance rate = 36.46%
MCAT mean for applicants = 501.5
GPA mean for applicants = 3.53
MCAT mean for matriculants = 508.8
GPA mean for matriculants = 3.72

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Related question: this kind of focus is on underrepresented minorities who at least in theory meet a public need at a greater rate (mission fitness). Where is the uproar regarding predominantly non-Asian regions (like WV or White rural areas) from blocking qualified out-of-state (Asian) applicants from applying? It seems like there is a goal here, not by you, by Trump... have you thought about it?

Institutions exist to serve their population. Preference for in-state applicants is often legally required as part of receiving state money.

Thus I have no objection here. It's an entirely relevant basis to decide, openly listed.

Are you also okay with this?

University of North Dakota School of Medicine Secondary Essay Prompts | Med School Insiders

These are the secondary application prompts for University of North Dakota School of Medicine & Health Sciences for the currently application cycle. To view the previous year’s secondary essay prompts, scroll down.

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I don't like that. Essays like this are too easily outsourced and do not realistically reflect the students.

I had mean the content of the questions as it applies to our understanding of subjects like diversity, the public good, and state's mandates. North Dakota is interesting in its history. While there are a lot of White people, there are still some NA populations that have not only lingered, there's also a reservation or more tribal areas. More than 5% are NA in ND, but about 2% are Asian. It is about 80% non-Hispanic White. It also has many rural areas and so there are many rural Whites.

 

[Derec]

You would be wrong according to the
Mental health issues can lead to a decline in academic performance and, ultimately, to attrition, Dr. Boyd noted. The heavy workload that medical students take on can contribute to burnout and affect personal well-being.

I see this Dr. Boyd is dismissing academic reasons so much that she is even blaming "mental health" for academic failures.
Besides, medicine is often a very high-pressure profession with a heavy workload. Mental resilience, being able to handle it is essential for med students.
Btw, MCAT also requires a lot of work to prepare and is a high-pressure exam. I am sure a lot of premeds self select themselves out of running because of MCAT.

I am not basing my arguments not on some supposed authority (Cynthia Boyd is on the admissions committee, so of course she will defend the current practice) but on the data that I have posted numerous times upthread.

I’ve already mentioned people I know personally who are extremely bright and had very high GPAs and MCAT scores but who did not get into medical school despite their obvious intelligence and ability to achieve a high GPA and MCAT scores. There is no doubt in my mind that they are extremely intelligent people who could handle the academic rigors quite well but it simply was a poor fit for their actual interests.

That is not uncommon.

Are you sure that they really were a "poor fit" despite their academic prowess, or were they maybe rejected for improper reasons? Perhaps even because they had too little melanin and grandparents who did not speak Spanish.

 

[Derec]

I don’t see how you can actually know that is in fact an accurate statement.

Asked and answered. In brief: statistically, it is pretty much impossible for it to be due to chance. So it's either discrimination or some other factor that is relevant to admissions and where blacks and Hispanics best whites and Asians. Nobody here has even attempted to identify such a a factor, much less provide any evidence for it. So, discrimination is a logical conclusion.

Note that med schools are not even denying that they practiced racial preferences prior to the 2023 SCOTUS ruling.

 

[Toni]

I don’t see how you can actually know that is in fact an accurate statement.

Asked and answered. In brief: statistically, it is pretty much impossible for it to be due to chance. So it's either discrimination or some other factor that is relevant to admissions and where blacks and Hispanics best whites and Asians. Nobody here has even attempted to identify such a a factor, much less provide any evidence for it. So, discrimination is a logical conclusion.

Note that med schools are not even denying that they practiced racial preferences prior to the 2023 SCOTUS ruling.

Don has talked upthread at length that the statistics do not account for which schools various applicants apply to, or how many schools they apply to or if there is different admissions criteria for each school. Any/all of those factors would cause an affect and all are in play.

 

[Derec]

First, similar is in the eye of the beholder.

No, it's not.

Second, if there are other non quantitative factors and/or sorting by schools by mission and students, there is no reason to expect stats to be “similar “ (as Don so thoroughly explained earlier in the thread).

He explained nothing. As I have repeatedly explained, these other factors would not change or undo the academic advantage whites and Asians have unless they are somehow distributed in the opposite way. Note that nobody here has proposed such factors. So the only other logical possibility is that race/ethnicity itself is used as a factor.

Apparently “disparate outcomes” means discrimination only against whites and Asians.

You have it exactly backwards. It's because of "disparate outcomes" by race (fewer black doctors than their share of the population, more Asian ones etc.) that med schools practice discrimination in order to decrease that "disparate outcome". This results in whites and Asians needing far better scores and grades to get in than groups (blacks, Hispanics, American Indians) who are given a preference.

 

[Derec]

Don has talked upthread at length that the statistics do not account for which schools various applicants apply to, or how many schools they apply to or if there is different admissions criteria for each school. Any/all of those factors would cause an affect and all are in play.

It has already been explained why Don2's reasoning is wrong.

 

[Derec]

Asian and white applicants are accepted at the highest rates.

Irrelevant, as has been explained. Acceptance rates are a function not only of selection criteria but also of the applicant pool. Since the applicant pool is so different in performance by racial/ethnic groups, a race-neutral admissions process would result in acceptance rate that were more different, and a matriculant pool that was far more similar when it comes to GPA and MCAT.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Related question: this kind of focus is on underrepresented minorities who at least in theory meet a public need at a greater rate (mission fitness). Where is the uproar regarding predominantly non-Asian regions (like WV or White rural areas) from blocking qualified out-of-state (Asian) applicants from applying? It seems like there is a goal here, not by you, by Trump... have you thought about it?

Institutions exist to serve their population. Preference for in-state applicants is often legally required as part of receiving state money.

Thus I have no objection here. It's an entirely relevant basis to decide, openly listed.

So you have no problem when there is discrimination for mostly whites because it is open.

What matters is why, not what the racial distribution is. You're pulling the standard disparate outcome proves discrimination bit.

Post-secondary education tends to be more favorable to in-state residents. Whether that should be the case is a separate issue.

 

[Toni]

You would be wrong according to the
Mental health issues can lead to a decline in academic performance and, ultimately, to attrition, Dr. Boyd noted. The heavy workload that medical students take on can contribute to burnout and affect personal well-being.

I see this Dr. Boyd is dismissing academic reasons so much that she is even blaming "mental health" for academic failures.
Besides, medicine is often a very high-pressure profession with a heavy workload. Mental resilience, being able to handle it is essential for med students.
Btw, MCAT also requires a lot of work to prepare and is a high-pressure exam. I am sure a lot of premeds self select themselves out of running because of MCAT.

I am not basing my arguments not on some supposed authority (Cynthia Boyd is on the admissions committee, so of course she will defend the current practice) but on the data that I have posted numerous times upthread.

I’ve already mentioned people I know personally who are extremely bright and had very high GPAs and MCAT scores but who did not get into medical school despite their obvious intelligence and ability to achieve a high GPA and MCAT scores. There is no doubt in my mind that they are extremely intelligent people who could handle the academic rigors quite well but it simply was a poor fit for their actual interests.

That is not uncommon.

Are you sure that they really were a "poor fit" despite their academic prowess, or were they maybe rejected for improper reasons? Perhaps even because they had too little melanin and grandparents who did not speak Spanish.

You are conflating taking a leave of absence or leaving a program for any reason with 'academic failure.' This is obviously untrue. Medical students, like every other person who walk this planet, have a plethora of life circumstances that can cause anyone to want or need to take a break to attend to pressing personal matters. Students who have spent the past 8-20 years preparing for medical school have placed themselves under a great deal of stress for a long time---physical, mental, financial, relationship, etc. It is unsurprising if sometimes some of them may need to step back to deal with any of those issues affecting them or a close family member.

Re: people I know personally who I know are brilliant but absolutely unsuited to being a medical provider? Yeah: I think everyone breathed a sigh of relief when one did not get into medical school because, brilliant though she is, she isn't actually interested in biology or chemistry at all and much preferred to do math and physics. Frankly, she applied to medical school as an act of rebellion. Her parents were academics and she wanted to not follow that same very obvious path for someone whose brain and personality is wired the way hers is wired. She took biology classes because she needed them to look good for medical school. She took math and physics because that's what she loved.

The other person I was referring to (and this applies to more than one person, actually, so think of this as a composite person) is/are exceptionally bright but their brain does not really enjoy the type of problem solving that is required of most physicians, and for at least one, everything biology related is just too messy, and they are prone to faint at the sight of blood.

I think of it the same way as I know I am smart enough to understand the principles of mechanics of all of the systems of my car but I'm frankly not interested very much in how it works. It works, I can take it to the shop if needed and not sound like a complete idiot but that's all I'm interested in doing. If I had to, I could do more but would I like it? Not really.

 

[Toni]

Asian and white applicants are accepted at the highest rates.

Irrelevant, as has been explained. Acceptance rates are a function not only of selection criteria but also of the applicant pool. Since the applicant pool is so different in performance by racial/ethnic groups, a race-neutral admissions process would result in acceptance rate that were more different, and a matriculant pool that was far more similar when it comes to GPA and MCAT.

Irrelevant? I thought that was what you wanted: mostly white and Asian applicants being accepted.

Yes, applicant pools do differ by various demographic groups.

Again, you are making assumptions about the metrics of the demographic pools that you cannot actually support by data. As was explained before, more than once.

 

[Derec]

This is focusing on small patterns of pixels instead of looking at the image. That isn't isn't duck... look at this patch of 25x25 pixels, it looks like a windmill!

What now?

The paper also indicates the economic disparity was about as large for racial disparity, which would make economic sense. And yes, the disparity isn't of no importance, however, I was quite surprised by the number, assuming black students had to be dropping out in droves in order to justify the gnashing of teeth.

How large does the disparity need to be?

> 95% of black medical school students are graduating medical school.

Wrong. If 5.7% of black med students drop out after the first year, then only 94.3 survive the first year. So <95%, and that's just for the first year.

This implies the value of deviations in MCAT and GPA between med school applicants vs the viability of handling and graduating medical school is of low importance. Otherwise, a medical school entry form would be name/address/college transcript/MCAT scores.

It implies no such thing.

According to your numbers:

• 98 of 100 people above 505 on the MCAT graduate.
• 95 of 100 people with an MCAT of 502-505 graduate.
• 92 of 100 people with an MCAT of 498-501 graduate.

So people who barely didn't get to 500 on the MCAT, but were accepted into medical school... almost certainly graduated medical school.

Those are Step 1 numbers, not graduation numbers. Passing Step 1 is a necessary condition, not a sufficient condition for graduation. For example, those who flunk out after the first year (see above) never even take Step 1.
Corrected numbers:

• 96 of 100 people with 505 or above on the MCAT graduate in 4-5 years.
• 92 of 100 people with an MCAT of 502-505 graduate in 4-5 years.
• 88 of 100 people with an MCAT of 498-501 graduate in 4-5 years.

AAMC does not have graduation itself, but taking more than 5 years and still somehow graduating is probably very rare, and a red flag for residencies too.

Those are freebie gambling numbers.

Not even your numbers are quite that, but real numbers are worse. About one in eight with MCAT of ~500 will have a sizable student loan with nothing to show for it.

I've got to imagine that those who did have lower MCAT scores needed something else to buoy their application.

Often that "something else" is the right skin color and abuelitos who hablaban español.
Sure, sometimes it's something legitimate, like a corpsman in the military with years of experience. But racial preferences also exist, and I am sick of people trying to deny the obvious.

Of course, we don't have those in front of us. So we have no idea why the medical school picked the applicant with a 498 on their MCAT but they saw them move on to graduate.

Not for any individual, but overall, I do not think people can deny the existence of racial preferences.
And how many of them just barely graduated by the skin of their teeth?

When I went to college, freshman year, lots of people had engineering as a major. I'd say at least 33% disappeared by sophomore year after the weeding out classes were completed. So 5% to me is low. One can look at 8% and compare to 2% and say that is a 400% increase. But I'd rather look at the two crowds, the crowd of the initial 100 who graduated at 98% and the initial crowd of 100 the graduated at 92%. Are you really saying that you'll notice which group has 6 more people in it?

You have to look at the risk relative to others. Undergrad has a high overall attrition rate. Med school has a low attrition rate. If overall survival is 94%, the 88% gang has a 3x higher rate of attrition compared to all med students, and 4x higher attrition than high-MCAT students. Sure, it may be low compared to your undergrad, or even premed undergrad, but why should we use that as a yardstick? Compare like with like. And if something gives you 3-4x chance of failing, I would say that it is a highly relevant variable.

Derec, the statistics show better grades mean higher acceptance.

Within racial/ethnic groups, surely.
But across these groups, an e.g. Asian students needs much better grades and scores to have a similar chance of acceptance than e.g. a black student. That is a sign of racial preferences.

You may like the fact that there are racial preferences, like Ziprhead. That would at least be intellectually honest. What is not honest is to deny that racial preferences exist, like Toni or Don2 or the Hound are doing.

The statistics show that Asians far exceed their percentage of the population in medical school student percentage and have a higher rate of acceptance overall, ie not being discriminated against!

That does not follow, as I have shown previously. If the new NBA commissioner decides that "race-conscious" signing is necessary to increase the diversity of the league and black percentage drops to 50%, then it still greatly exceeds black percentage in the population, but blacks would still be discriminated against.

The statistics show graduation rates are on par with one another,

Statistics do not show that. 250% higher first year dropout is not "on par".

which indicates that admission policies are not taking in people that are not capable of graduating. Which means the admission policies are taking in data well beyond just test and GPA scores into the fold. Nothing is broken.

BS. More people would be graduating, and fewer would be left holding their student loan documents and no degree, if racial preferences did not exist.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Asian and white applicants are accepted at the highest rates.

Irrelevant, as has been explained. Acceptance rates are a function not only of selection criteria but also of the applicant pool. Since the applicant pool is so different in performance by racial/ethnic groups, a race-neutral admissions process would result in acceptance rate that were more different, and a matriculant pool that was far more similar when it comes to GPA and MCAT.

Irrelevant? I thought that was what you wanted: mostly white and Asian applicants being accepted.

Yes, applicant pools do differ by various demographic groups.

Again, you are making assumptions about the metrics of the demographic pools that you cannot actually support by data. As was explained before, more than once.

You are reacting to your perception of our positions, not to our actual positions.

I can't speak for Derec but my position is to remove all thumbs from the scale. The scale contains only that which can be reasonably measured and is openly placed there--the merits of any particular item on the scale is a separate issue. I am not attempting to dictate exactly what goes on the scale, just that it be honest.

 

[laughing dog]

First, similar is in the eye of the beholder.

No, it's not.

Of course it is. It is a qualitative assessment about how two different things are alike.

Second, if there are other non quantitative factors and/or sorting by schools by mission and students, there is no reason to expect stats to be “similar “ (as Don so thoroughly explained earlier in the thread).

He explained nothing. As I have repeatedly explained, these other factors would not change or undo the academic advantage whites and Asians have unless they are somehow distributed in the opposite way. Note that nobody here has proposed such factors. So the only other logical possibility is that race/ethnicity itself is used as a factor.

As been explained before, there are other logical possibilities.

Apparently “disparate outcomes” means discrimination only against whites and Asians.

You have it exactly backwards. It's because of "disparate outcomes" by race (fewer black doctors than their share of the population, more Asian ones etc.) that med schools practice discrimination in order to decrease that "disparate outcome". This results in whites and Asians needing far better scores and grades to get in than groups (blacks, Hispanics, American Indians) who are given a preference.

As been explained ad nasuem, the data is insufficient granular to support your Trumpian depictions of differences, let alone your conclusions similar to those of white nationalists.

 

[laughing dog]

Related question: this kind of focus is on underrepresented minorities who at least in theory meet a public need at a greater rate (mission fitness). Where is the uproar regarding predominantly non-Asian regions (like WV or White rural areas) from blocking qualified out-of-state (Asian) applicants from applying? It seems like there is a goal here, not by you, by Trump... have you thought about it?

Institutions exist to serve their population. Preference for in-state applicants is often legally required as part of receiving state money.

Thus I have no objection here. It's an entirely relevant basis to decide, openly listed.

So you have no problem when there is discrimination for mostly whites because it is open.

What matters is why, not what the racial distribution is. You're pulling the standard disparate outcome proves discrimination bit.

There is discrimination - you admitted it!

Post-secondary education tends to be more favorable to in-state residents. Whether that should be the case is a separate issue.

You said you had no objection. No need to make excuses.

 

[Emily Lake]

It's pretty clear that you are not black.

Because the white chick is the expert on what makes an acceptable black person?

I mean, I agree that Derec probably isn't black... but I would think that a white person placing themselves in a position of authority over what constitutes blackness is kind of a bit sketchy, don't you think?