MCATs, Affirmative Action, and DEI, Oh My

[Gospel]

My two cents' worth: I remain of the opinion that it's happening because of the specific circumstances of the thread -- its origin in the flap over Arday at Cambridge. Somebody brought up MCATs in the Arday thread; that's why we have an MCAT thread in the first place. People brought up MCATs because they thought it was relevant, and they thought it was relevant because the AAMC publishes data that implies there's a lot of AA on behalf of black people going on, so somebody cited it.

The people who brought up MCATs because they thought it was relevant were, as I pointed out in that thread, flat out wrong.

US medical school admissions are completely irrelevant to Cambridge University's postgraduate hiring practices.

Different legal jurisdictions with different rules, customs, practices and histories, in which different institutions doing different things hire different people for different purposes to different ends? There's no relevance at all.

Oh, and Sociology of Language is, I suspect, not a very closely related discipline to Medicine.

People here started talking about MCATs because they are Americans, and are familiar with MCATs (or at least with the US practice of administering standardised tests for college* admissions), and unfamiliar with literally everything about Cambridge University. So rather than discuss the case at hand, they flew off on an irrelevant tangent that had the sole merit of not being a complete mystery to them.

From my own perspective, in which US practices and testing systems are the alien topic, and the bizarre customs and practices of Cambridge University are, if not sensible, at least familiar (both my father and brother went to Cambridge, and my father remains a Fellow at Christ's), this diversion into the completely unrelated US way of doing things seems truly pointless.

The only** link I can discern between the Arday case and MCAT is the hobbyhorse topic of alleged bias against what the (allegedly fictional) American Socialist White People's Party described as "decent, law-abiding white folk, just like you".








* Even the word "college" means a different thing in the US to what it means in the UK, and within the UK means a different thing in relation to Cambridge University than it means in relation to the wider education system.

** Well, there's also the fact that my brother read Natural Sciences at King's, and that course is often abbreviated to "NatSci", which is a close homophone to "Nazi". Still, that's also a very tenuous link...

Ahh, so my derail callout was outside its jurisdiction. That explains a lot.

 

[Toni]

My two cents' worth: I remain of the opinion that it's happening because of the specific circumstances of the thread -- its origin in the flap over Arday at Cambridge. Somebody brought up MCATs in the Arday thread; that's why we have an MCAT thread in the first place. People brought up MCATs because they thought it was relevant, and they thought it was relevant because the AAMC publishes data that implies there's a lot of AA on behalf of black people going on, so somebody cited it.

The people who brought up MCATs because they thought it was relevant were, as I pointed out in that thread, flat out wrong.

US medical school admissions are completely irrelevant to Cambridge University's postgraduate hiring practices.

Different legal jurisdictions with different rules, customs, practices and histories, in which different institutions doing different things hire different people for different purposes to different ends? There's no relevance at all.

Oh, and Sociology of Language is, I suspect, not a very closely related discipline to Medicine.

People here started talking about MCATs because they are Americans, and are familiar with MCATs (or at least with the US practice of administering standardised tests for college* admissions), and unfamiliar with literally everything about Cambridge University. So rather than discuss the case at hand, they flew off on an irrelevant tangent that had the sole merit of not being a complete mystery to them.

From my own perspective, in which US practices and testing systems are the alien topic, and the bizarre customs and practices of Cambridge University are, if not sensible, at least familiar (both my father and brother went to Cambridge, and my father remains a Fellow at Christ's), this diversion into the completely unrelated US way of doing things seems truly pointless.

The only** link I can discern between the Arday case and MCAT is the hobbyhorse topic of alleged bias against what the (allegedly fictional) American Socialist White People's Party described as "decent, law-abiding white folk, just like you".








* Even the word "college" means a different thing in the US to what it means in the UK, and within the UK means a different thing in relation to Cambridge University than it means in relation to the wider education system.

** Well, there's also the fact that my brother read Natural Sciences at King's, and that course is often abbreviated to "NatSci", which is a close homophone to "Nazi". Still, that's also a very tenuous link...

For some people US medical school admissions is a symbol of woke and racism
against Asians. So any time a person of color ( not Asian) anywhere in the world has any issue related to academia or academic performance or admissions, it’s because of DEI Wokeness and the world is going to hell. Because lord knows a black man cannot possibly have earned his degree fairly.

 

[Elixir]

AI was used to screen his resume and approve his cover letter. It makes me wonder where is he in the whole process.

So where the heck are we headed?

When the AI bots start warring for supremacy, humans will be their unwitting pawns. Whether or not they are truly intelligent or aware is an interesting speculation, but not really even germane. The same systemic feature of competitive landscapes will cultivate the same behavioral features we see in ourselves.

 

[Politesse]

US medical school admissions are completely irrelevant to Cambridge University's postgraduate hiring practices.

Unless of course you believe all of those things are merely two tentacles of one massive, intercontinental conspiracy to displace the White race. Then it makes perfect sense to see them all as "somehow" connected.

 

[Bomb#20]

** Well, there's also the fact that my brother read Natural Sciences at King's, and that course is often abbreviated to "NatSci", which is a close homophone to "Nazi". Still, that's also a very tenuous link...[/SIZE]

Reminds me of that nature cruise in Alaska I went on. The ship biologist got a bee in her bonnet about the passengers talking about all the seagulls we kept seeing, and she was at pains to inform us we were wrong -- they were just gulls, Nazi gulls.

 

[Bomb#20]

Quite so. But by itself, pointing out additional criteria is utterly incapable of accounting for any systematic difference in odds of getting accepted between two students with the same scores but different ethnicities. To account for that, you'd also need a reason to think one ethnicity systematically does better on that criterion.
... Adding a random factor cannot cause a systematic discrepancy. ... To get an explanation, a counterargument, a material consideration, you need a nonrandom factor. You need to reply, "But they look at recommendation letters too, and Native Americans come with systematically better recommendation letters than Asians.". That last part is a vital component of any refutation of the racial discrimination hypothesis.

So you tell me. You posted a long list of additional criteria. Is there something on that list you think Native Americans do a lot better on than Asians?

Maybe GPA's can explain how one 509 MCATs is rejected over another. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Good hypothesis; and it certainly can in individual cases -- all other things equal, a 509 with straight A's is more likely to get accepted than a 509 with some B's. But when accounting for the overall statistics, we can check the AAMC data and find out if that's what's going on; it turns out the average GPA of Native Americans who get accepted is 3.64; Asians average 3.83.

(Source)

 

[Bomb#20]

Quite so. But by itself, pointing out additional criteria is utterly incapable of accounting for any systematic difference in odds of getting accepted between two students with the same scores but different ethnicities. To account for that, you'd also need a reason to think one ethnicity systematically does better on that criterion.
... You need to reply, "But they look at recommendation letters too, and Native Americans come with systematically better recommendation letters than Asians.". That last part is a vital component of any refutation of the racial discrimination hypothesis.

So you tell me. You posted a long list of additional criteria. Is there something on that list you think Native Americans do a lot better on than Asians?

Maybe GPA's can explain how one 509 MCATs is rejected over another. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Or interviews, resumes and letters of recommendation..

But merely listing other criteria doesn't explain a systematic disparity!! Merely listing race does!

You say that as if it's a gotcha, a proof of special-pleading. But I wasn't "merely listing" race -- I listed it, but I also supplied documentation showing people of one race needed systematically higher scores to get in than the other. If Toni can likewise supply documentation showing Native Americans systematically perform better in interviews than Asians, or have systematically better resumes or recommendation letters, that will put her on an equal footing -- she too will be doing more than merely listing other criteria. If she can do that it would instantly undermine the case for thinking racial discrimination is going on.

 

[Toni]

Quite so. But by itself, pointing out additional criteria is utterly incapable of accounting for any systematic difference in odds of getting accepted between two students with the same scores but different ethnicities. To account for that, you'd also need a reason to think one ethnicity systematically does better on that criterion.
... You need to reply, "But they look at recommendation letters too, and Native Americans come with systematically better recommendation letters than Asians.". That last part is a vital component of any refutation of the racial discrimination hypothesis.

So you tell me. You posted a long list of additional criteria. Is there something on that list you think Native Americans do a lot better on than Asians?

Maybe GPA's can explain how one 509 MCATs is rejected over another. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Or interviews, resumes and letters of recommendation..

But merely listing other criteria doesn't explain a systematic disparity!! Merely listing race does!

You say that as if it's a gotcha, a proof of special-pleading. But I wasn't "merely listing" race -- I listed it, but I also supplied documentation showing people of one race needed systematically higher scores to get in than the other. If Toni can likewise supply documentation showing Native Americans systematically perform better in interviews than Asians, or have systematically better resumes or recommendation letters, that will put her on an equal footing -- she too will be doing more than merely listing other criteria. If she can do that it would instantly undermine the case for thinking racial discrimination is going on.

No—you showed that Asian and white applicants had on average highest scores than other racial groups.

That’s not the same thing.

Plus it totally disregards any factor than GPA and MCAT score.

Also, do we know that each of these applicants are unique and only counted one time? Is applicant A counted 5 times if A applies to 5 schools? Is applicant B counted 15 times if they apply to 15 schools??