MCATs, Affirmative Action, and DEI, Oh My

[Bomb#20]

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

No, I want people to be accepted without regard to race or ethnicity, one way or the other.

Tribalism is a mental illness -- people who think tribally can rarely be talked out of it any more than talk therapy can cure schizophrenia. They can hardly ever be made to understand that non-tribal thinking even exists -- when you don't decide what's right based on favoring their preferred tribes, their attempt to understand your point of view begins and ends with them making a judgment of which other tribes you favor.

Now, if you truly cared about Asians, you would also be calling WV schools discriminatory and demanding they open up to Asian candidates from out-of-state.

Looks like Toni is not the only tribal thinker here.

 

[Bomb#20]

As I’ve said, I know people who are quite intelligent t n the science way, with stellar GOAs and MCAT scores who dud not get into Ned school because they were not particularly good at the people portion of the job. I like them, abd respect them but no one who knew them thought they’d be good doctors despite everyone being blown away by their brilliance.

And as I said, there is no reason why Asians and whites would be worse in the "people portion of the job" than blacks and Hispanics. So that is not a good reason to give the latter a preference despite mediocre grades and scores.

...
But nice reveal that you cannot conceive of a world where the better student is not white or Asian. Or that a black or brown student can be equal to a white or Asian student, which was exactly my premise.

This is why your 'arguments' always fail: you always reveal your basic bigotry--you've already determined who you think is the 'better' candidate with the 'better' credentials based solely upon their being, in your example, Asian.

Toni, Derec didn't say anything bigoted. You did. What you wrote was an expression of your religious bigotry. He denied that people in group B are overall better than people in group A at the "people portion of the job"; you read his words and you decided, on your own initiative, without evidence, that what he actually meant was that every single A person is better than every single B person. You imputed that to him, not because he implied it -- what he wrote is perfectly consistent with groups A and B being equally good at the "people portion of the job" -- but because that's a stereotype your religion teaches you to assume about infidels.

White people like to make themselves feel better by believing or telling themselves to believe that the only way any person of color or female gets chosen ahead of a white or preferred type Asian is because of Affurnstive Action. It’s comforting to believe that you lost out because of preferences for a demographic you don’t fit.

And look at that. That one's not religious bigotry. Any sentence that begins with "White people like to..." is racial bigotry. Stop projecting your own flaws onto others.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Specific schools may have missions such as to increase doctors in underserved communities. Some candidates during interviews/essays etc may show an interest to work in such communities. Hours of community service in those environments may count as evidence. That may give them an edge. This can be correlated to race and somewhat self-sorting.

Pretty much all premeds are told to do both clinical and nonclinical volunteering in some way connected to "underserved".

Evidence?

It has become cliche. But subjective measures like interviews and essays are a great way for adcoms to smuggle in racial consideration even though they should not.

Different schools have different MCAT thresholds or none at all. Different schools have different demographics. Some lower and no threshold schools have significantly more under-represented minorities. There can be self-sorting here, too, where mid and high scorers do not apply to these schools.

But it should all average out when looking at national data. Unless there is a racial bias in admissions for the purposes of increasing "diversity".

It doesn't average out though and I have given examples.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

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

No, I want people to be accepted without regard to race or ethnicity, one way or the other.

Tribalism is a mental illness -- people who think tribally can rarely be talked out of it any more than talk therapy can cure schizophrenia. They can hardly ever be made to understand that non-tribal thinking even exists -- when you don't decide what's right based on favoring their preferred tribes, their attempt to understand your point of view begins and ends with them making a judgment of which other tribes you favor.

Now, if you truly cared about Asians, you would also be calling WV schools discriminatory and demanding they open up to Asian candidates from out-of-state.

Looks like Toni is not the only tribal thinker here.

That isn't tribal thinking.

 

[Politesse]

Calling anything they don't like "tribal" is itself a common habit of racists...

 

[Toni]

Not just the graduation rate but also the three stage USMLE.

Since everybody is so in love with standardized tests..

Both Step 1 and graduation rates are highly associated with MCAT and undergrad GPA, as repeatedly shown. Admitting people with lower academic metrics in order to increase "diversity" puts them at higher risk of failure.

But 'they' are not failing out.

 

[Toni]

As I’ve said, I know people who are quite intelligent t n the science way, with stellar GOAs and MCAT scores who dud not get into Ned school because they were not particularly good at the people portion of the job. I like them, abd respect them but no one who knew them thought they’d be good doctors despite everyone being blown away by their brilliance.

And as I said, there is no reason why Asians and whites would be worse in the "people portion of the job" than blacks and Hispanics. So that is not a good reason to give the latter a preference despite mediocre grades and scores.

...
But nice reveal that you cannot conceive of a world where the better student is not white or Asian. Or that a black or brown student can be equal to a white or Asian student, which was exactly my premise.

This is why your 'arguments' always fail: you always reveal your basic bigotry--you've already determined who you think is the 'better' candidate with the 'better' credentials based solely upon their being, in your example, Asian.

Toni, Derec didn't say anything bigoted. You did. What you wrote was an expression of your religious bigotry. He denied that people in group B are overall better than people in group A at the "people portion of the job"; you read his words and you decided, on your own initiative, without evidence, that what he actually meant was that every single A person is better than every single B person. You imputed that to him, not because he implied it -- what he wrote is perfectly consistent with groups A and B being equally good at the "people portion of the job" -- but because that's a stereotype your religion teaches you to assume about infidels.

White people like to make themselves feel better by believing or telling themselves to believe that the only way any person of color or female gets chosen ahead of a white or preferred type Asian is because of Affurnstive Action. It’s comforting to believe that you lost out because of preferences for a demographic you don’t fit.

And look at that. That one's not religious bigotry. Any sentence that begins with "White people like to..." is racial bigotry. Stop projecting your own flaws onto others.

Is that you, Loren?

 

[Bomb#20]

Is that you, Loren?

First rule of tribal thinking: the outgroup are interchangeable parts.

 

[Bomb#20]

Calling anything they don't like "tribal" is itself a common habit of racists...

In order for you to have a reason to believe that, you'd need to be competent at identifying racism.

 

[Bomb#20]

Tribalism is a mental illness -- people who think tribally can rarely be talked out of it any more than talk therapy can cure schizophrenia. They can hardly ever be made to understand that non-tribal thinking even exists -- when you don't decide what's right based on favoring their preferred tribes, their attempt to understand your point of view begins and ends with them making a judgment of which other tribes you favor.

Now, if you truly cared about Asians, you would also be calling WV schools discriminatory and demanding they open up to Asian candidates from out-of-state.

Looks like Toni is not the only tribal thinker here.

That isn't tribal thinking.

What non-tribal inference procedure led you to write that imbecilic assertion?

 

[laughing dog]

Is that you, Loren?

First rule of tribal thinking: the outgroup are interchangeable parts.

Irony coming the author of

Tribalism is a mental illness -- people who think tribally can rarely be talked out of it any more than talk therapy can cure schizophrenia. They can hardly ever be made to understand that non-tribal thinking even exists -- when you don't decide what's right based on favoring their preferred tribes, their attempt to understand your point of view begins and ends with them making a judgment of which other tribes you favor.

What non-tribal inference procedure led you to write that imbecilic assertion?

Both of you need to give this collectivist ad hominem "ilk" nonsense a rest. Nobody is responsible for the behavior of his ilk.

Perhaps you should take your own advice and give this collectivist ad hominen "tribe" a rest.

 

[Politesse]

Calling anything they don't like "tribal" is itself a common habit of racists...

In order for you to have a reason to believe that, you'd need to be competent at identifying racism.

Speaking offhand of "tribal" society as though it were inherently evil is indicative of a sheltered and prejudicial upbringing. It's a common aphorism on "Right" and "Left" alike, but have you ever noticed that people who actually have a tribal background don't use it? Not just because it is prejudicial, but because it is intellectually absurd to blame Europe's habitual and violent factionalism on the social organization of their favorite victims.

 

[southernhybrid]

I hope you're all done arguing about the importance of MCATs. All they mean is that one has about a 99% chance of making it through the first year of medical school as opposed to those with lower MCAT scores who only have a 94% of passing their first year. You can look that up at the AMA site.

If one is good at taking certain types of tests and if one has spent a lot of extra time preparing for these tests, most likely their scores will be higher. it's a skill, but it doesn't mean one will do great in school or become a good physician. Plus people drop out of school for all kinds of reasons other than not getting passing grades. Sometimes it's not the profession they were meant for, as they were pushed into it by family etc.

Gotta go pet my dogs or get a buzz on. Carry on.....

 

[Toni]

Tribalism is a mental illness -- people who think tribally can rarely be talked out of it any more than talk therapy can cure schizophrenia. They can hardly ever be made to understand that non-tribal thinking even exists -- when you don't decide what's right based on favoring their preferred tribes, their attempt to understand your point of view begins and ends with them making a judgment of which other tribes you favor.

Now, if you truly cared about Asians, you would also be calling WV schools discriminatory and demanding they open up to Asian candidates from out-of-state.

Looks like Toni is not the only tribal thinker here.

That isn't tribal thinking.

What non-tribal inference procedure led you to write that imbecilic assertion?

Such cool reasoning powers demonstrated by your devolution into insults and name calling…

 

[ZiprHead]

I hope you're all done arguing about the importance of MCATs. All they mean is that one has about a 99% chance of making it through the first year of medical school as opposed to those with lower MCAT scores who only have a 94% of passing their first year. You can look that up at the AMA site.

If one is good at taking certain types of tests and if one has spent a lot of extra time preparing for these tests, most likely their scores will be higher. it's a skill, but it doesn't mean one will do great in school or become a good physician. Plus people drop out of school for all kinds of reasons other than not getting passing grades. Sometimes it's not the profession they were meant for, as they were pushed into it by family etc.

Gotta go pet my dogs or get a buzz on. Carry on.....

It's something the bigots can latch onto.

 

[laughing dog]

Gotta go pet my dogs or get a buzz on. Carry on.....

No need to make a choice - why not both?

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Derec, where medical schools maintain a hard MCAT threshold, that minimum applies equally to all applicants, regardless of race.

That is true as far as it goes. But note that minimum MCAT is much lower than the average MCAT.
Take Medical College of Georgia. Average MCAT: 512. Minimum threshold: 496. That's a huge gulf, and plenty of space to smuggle in racial preferences. Unfortunately, MCG does not publish averages by race, and the only reason Duke did so was because of a DOJ lawsuit.

Once an applicant clears that threshold, admissions committees use a consistent rubric that weights a wide variety of metrics--not just GPA and test scores--to evaluate the candidate as a whole.

Including, inappropriately, race.

You are completely misrepresenting my point. "Mission fitness" is not an arbitrary racial multiplier; it is an evaluation of a candidate's alignment with a school’s specific goal, which often includes providing healthcare to underserved communities. Committees measure this through secondary essays, interviews, and proven track records of community service. When schools consistently weight these factors, certain demographics will naturally score higher in the aggregate because their backgrounds or experiences align more closely with those specific community needs. Just as some demographic groups aggregate higher on standardized tests, others aggregate higher on mission alignment.

You are missing my point. Unlike MCAT and GPA, evaluating these other things is highly subjective, and thus fertile ground for an adcom to bring in both their subconscious biases as well as any conscious desire to skirt the 2023 SCOTUS decision. Compare with Harvard College's infamous personality scores. I do not believe Asian students are >2x more disinterested in providing healthcare to the underserved than blacks any more than I think Asian applicants to Harvard consistently have bad personalities.

This does not exclude anyone. An individual white or Asian applicant can score perfectly on mission fitness, just as an applicant from any background can score a 528 on the MCAT. You are confusing population-level statistics with individual capabilities. Individuals are not aggregates, and aggregates are not individuals.

And you are confusing scores on a test with a concept such as "mission fitness" which is as subjective as it is nebulous. Perfect candidate to smuggle in considerations of race.

Ultimately, medicine is a hands-on profession centered on a goal of treating the sick. Your premise that standardized test scores are the sole valid metric for admission--and that any deviation from them is proof of a rigged system--ignores a range of other variables that actually predict a good doctor that will meet public needs.

I do not think standardized tests or even grades are the "sole valid metric". But I think weird secondary essays are virtually useless other than as a figleaf for adcoms to give a boost to whomever they like.

It seems like you are focusing on just a few medical schools out of many, and along the way, assuming your conclusion. Your observation began by pointing out differences in means across racial demographics, and you effectively said, "Aha, that proves discrimination!" For discrimination to be the prevalent cause, it would have to encompass the vast majority of the variance in the data. Yet you consistently handwave away any discussion of legitimate variance. You rinse and repeat: assume your conclusion as the only explanation for the differences. There doesn't seem to be a serious attempt to discuss the data or test alternative hypotheses; you just repeat your assumption.

To test this mathematically, I ran a simulation of a medical school similar to the Medical College of Georgia (MCG). Interestingly, this school accepts very few non-residents (~98% are in-state), which underscores the point again about geographic enrollment constraints. Using recent data, we have about 1,821 in-state US citizen and permanent resident applicants competing for roughly 304 enrollment spots.

Even assuming every medical school applicant in Georgia applies to this school, we can use the national MCAT and GPA means and standard deviations for each racial cohort to accurately represent the baseline applicant pool.

Then, I ran a holistic admissions committee scoring algorithm on that simulated pool. I made it 100% race-blind, and to your favor, I completely excluded any "mission fitness" variables or simulated questions about SES/economic adversity. The algorithm simply uses MCAT and GPA (accounting for the fact that the two are correlated, so they aren't completely independent) and adds three other completely race-blind metrics--it doesn't matter if they represent transcripts, recommendations, clinical work, community service, secondary essays, or interviews. That is 5 metrics weighted equally. ZERO "mission fitness," meaning no evaluations about where someone's career might take them (which would naturally give a fair aggregate advantage to Black and Hispanic applicants over White and Asian applicants). Just a pure, strictly race-blind holistic score.

The result? Black applicants still get accepted. Hispanic applicants still get accepted. And a significant gap between their MCAT means still naturally emerges. For example, Asian matriculants can still have a 7.0+ higher MCAT mean over Black matriculants even under a strictly race-blind admissions algorithm.

This experiment isn't about whether or not I have found the exact proprietary weighting parameters that Georgia uses--I probably haven't. It's about mathematically proving that multi-variate admissions packages are a major driver of the statistical differences you claimed are absolute proof of widespread discrimination.

Finally, this once again goes back to what Jimmy Higgins wrote: broadly speaking, acceptance rates correlate with the MCAT means for the national demographics. Explaining the remaining variance is simply a matter of statistics skill, not assuming a national conspiracy.

 

[Bomb#20]

I hope you're all done arguing about the importance of MCATs. All they mean is that one has about a 99% chance of making it through the first year of medical school as opposed to those with lower MCAT scores who only have a 94% of passing their first year. You can look that up at the AMA site. ...

Things can be unimportant for one purpose and important for another. The position of Mercury was off from calculations by one ten millionth of a degree and this was the evidence that refuted Newton's Law of Gravity even though an error in the seventh digit of the position of a rock fifty million miles away had no practical consequences for anybody's life. The MCATs can be every bit as unimportant as you think they are for making good doctors, and yet still be the evidence that refutes the theory that medical schools don't racially discriminate.

 

[Bomb#20]

Now, if you truly cared about Asians, you would also be calling WV schools discriminatory and demanding they open up to Asian candidates from out-of-state.

Looks like Toni is not the only tribal thinker here.

That isn't tribal thinking.

What non-tribal inference procedure led you to write that imbecilic assertion?

Such cool reasoning powers demonstrated by your devolution into insults and name calling…

I called it imbecilic because it was. Perhaps this will be clearer if we switch to the contrapositive form -- "if P then Q" is logically the same claim as "if not Q then not P". So if you disagree with my assessment, can you exhibit an intelligent reason to believe "If you don't call WV schools discriminatory and demand they open up to Asian candidates from out-of-state, then you don't truly care about Asians." is a correct inference? Why the heck should turning Californians into doctors be the job of West Virginia's taxpayers?

 

[Bomb#20]

Calling anything they don't like "tribal" is itself a common habit of racists...

In order for you to have a reason to believe that, you'd need to be competent at identifying racism.

Speaking offhand of "tribal" society as though it were inherently evil is indicative of a sheltered and prejudicial upbringing. It's a common aphorism on "Right" and "Left" alike, but have you ever noticed that people who actually have a tribal background don't use it? Not just because it is prejudicial, but because it is intellectually absurd to blame Europe's habitual and violent factionalism on the social organization of their favorite victims.

I don't recall speaking of tribal society, offhand or otherwise. You appear to be equivocating between the meanings of "tribal" in political and sociological contexts. I was referring to individuals' habits of thought, not to social organization.