MCATs, Affirmative Action, and DEI, Oh My

[Emily Lake]

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

My illustration had a 10% difference in means, as opposed to the 3% difference in the actual means you're referencing. That's not "similar" means.

If we set 500 as cutoff and assume normality,

Why assume normality? More to the point, why assume a non-skewed distribution, when there's very good reason to think that skew likely exists?

Realistically, I don't really care to continue this line of argument. I provided an illustration to demonstrate that a single threshold could be used that would produce very different mixes in outcome by raising and lowering for the entire population. And that was on the extremely simplistic assumption of skewlessness.

 

[ZiprHead]

Says the guy who hates Muslims and black people.

I don't hate either. I am very critical of the tenets of Islam and hate the ideology of Islamism. I am also very critical of much of contemporary racial politics and hate black nationalism/supremacism. Those are not the same things.

And unlike you, I do not support anybody being discriminated against on account of their race or ethnicity.

Uh huh...

 

[Emily Lake]

Redlining was LAW.

... over 50 years ago.

 

[Emily Lake]

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.

The entire topic is about MCATs, DEI, and affirmative action. Race is an integral part of that discussion. Expecting that there will be no disagreement on that topic, or that everyone will all just smile and nod and blithely say "oh yes, it's horribly racist, something must be done" is quite the wishful thinking

 

[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. 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 really fucked up the quote there, Jimmy. I assume your comment is intended for Derec, rather than me?

 

[Emily Lake]

I know it is an extremely small set—and should be. I’m surprised it even exists. Ivies are notoriously proud of their unique special schools and I would think they’d reject as being unserious anyone they knew applied to all the Ivies…

How would they know?

 

[Emily Lake]

It is very possible to be an excellent test taker —and a less talented professional in any field you care to name.

You're not joking. I know I'm a bit biased... but some of the absolute worst practicing acturaries I've know breezed through exams like they were nothing. Great test takers, really crappy at doing the job. Some are good at both.

Doing well on tests doesn't guarantee success post exams. On the other hand... doing poorly on tests rarely results in success at the other end.

 

[Emily Lake]

View attachment 55102

There are a couple ways to look at this.

1) OMFG!!! Blacks drop out about 250% more than whites!!! OMFFFFFGGFG!
2) Out of 1000 people, 977 whites don't drop out and 943 blacks don't drop out.

With these numbers, it makes one wonder, the importance of the MCAT other than being a basic screening tool.

The 250% is the relevant number. The other is being deceptive.

No it isn't. It's lying with statistics... even if it's unintentional. In reality, only 2.3% of whites drop out, and only 5.7% of blacks. The difference is not material.

This is the statistical equivalent of showing a vertical bar chart where the axis is set to 900 instead of 0 and saying "Look how big the difference is!" It's not big. It's not meaningful. It's noise.

 

[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.

You're right - I do NOT understand you. I don't understand you because despite you saying you would never contest that knowledge is a requirement... you actually and literally disagreed with me when I said it's a requirement, and that social skills are an added bonus.
So no, I don't understand you. And this has happened multiple times, across a wide variety of topics. I make a statement - not a controversial or novel or even challenging statement - and you disagree with me. I try to restate what I said, because your disagreement makes no sense to me, so I assume I'm not communicating clearly. And you continue to disagree with me. And you go on disagreeing with me. And eventually at some point you will restate yourself...

At which point it's clear that you actually agree with me.

But now we've spent several posts of you disagreeing with me about the thing you agree with.

You did that with this.

I said "Social skills and empathy are nice to haves. Body of knowledge, ability to accurately diagnose and treat are foundational requirements."
You disagreed with that. And now... after multiple back and forths, you have confirmed that body of knowledge is essential.

So no. I don't understand your persistent need to disagree with me vociferously about things you agree with.

No, you dud not understand me. Still.

And I’m ok with that.

If I understand you correctly you belief that if I do not completely agree with every part of an assertion that I do not agree at all.

That seems to be a you problem.

 

[Emily Lake]

Why are you taking their side on this? My impression is that you support basically my position--colorblind.

Probably because you're doing messy and misleading math about it.

I also advocate for race, sex, and everything else not being a consideration in education and hiring. But that's not going to stop me from pointing out when your arguments are fallacious.

 

[Toni]

It is very possible to be an excellent test taker —and a less talented professional in any field you care to name.

You're not joking. I know I'm a bit biased... but some of the absolute worst practicing acturaries I've know breezed through exams like they were nothing. Great test takers, really crappy at doing the job. Some are good at both.

Doing well on tests doesn't guarantee success post exams. On the other hand... doing poorly on tests rarely results in success at the other end.

Exactly.

However, there is ZERO evidence that medical schools are admitting ANY students who do not meet their thresholds for admissions.

You somehow still believe that they do.

And that is where we seem to differ.

 

[Emily Lake]

If I understand you correctly you belief that if I do not completely agree with every part of an assertion that I do not agree at all.

I think you do not agree at all when you 1) express not even a teensy bit of agreement and 2) actually say you disagree.

It's a pretty reasonable approach.

Perhaps you might consider altering your approach and saying something like "I agree with XXX but I don't agree with YYY because ZZZ". That would be helpful and would likely save us both a lot of annoyance.

 

[Toni]

If I understand you correctly you belief that if I do not completely agree with every part of an assertion that I do not agree at all.

I think you do not agree at all when you 1) express not even a teensy bit of agreement and 2) actually say you disagree.

It's a pretty reasonable approach.

Perhaps you might consider altering your approach and saying something like "I agree with XXX but I don't agree with YYY because ZZZ". That would be helpful and would likely save us both a lot of annoyance.

Or perhaps you could simply read my posts and figure that out for yourself

I’m ok if we interact and ok if we don’t.

I’m not ok with someone dictating terms.

 

[Emily Lake]

You do realize people drop out of school for all sorts of non-academic reasons.

I dropped out for a few years because I got married and my spouse joined the military and they moved us to a different state.

 

[Emily Lake]

Why do you keep bringing up irrelevant things?

Of course people drop out for various reasons. The question is why there is the big racial difference.

The question is why you think there's a "big" racial difference, when the absolute difference is actually quite small.

 

[Toni]

I know it is an extremely small set—and should be. I’m surprised it even exists. Ivies are notoriously proud of their unique special schools and I would think they’d reject as being unserious anyone they knew applied to all the Ivies…

How would they know?

For one thing, academia is a pretty small world, and the Ivies are a very small set within that world. There are professional conferences and pauses and journals. There are long standing relationships between professionals at different institutions. And people talk. To each other. Quietly. Oh, I’m not saying the head of admissions at Yale talks to the head of admissions at Harvard and they compare notes about individual candidates. That would not be professional. And reputation is everything.

Indeed, it is assumed that students, especially this with the best stores are. They are advised to do so.

If you have not yet done so, read Din2’s excellent post about admissions

 

[Toni]

You do realize people drop out of school for all sorts of non-academic reasons.

I dropped out for a few years because I got married and my spouse joined the military and they moved us to a different state.

Actually very few students drop out of medical school. Those who do almost always do fir personal or financial reasons, not academic ones

 

[Emily Lake]

Yes, that is the right way to look at things. That's how we deal with other risk factors. If chance of an Airbus crashing was 250% higher than a Boeing, you wouldn't say - it's only 5.7% risk, so what?

This is only relevant when you're actually dealing with marginal risk, and the value at risk is very large.

Having migraines with aura increases your risk of stroke by 2 to 3 times. If you also take oral contraceptives, it increases the risk of stroke by 5 times.

The risk of stroke in females under 50 is 6 in 100,000.
The risk of stroke in females under 50 who get migraines and take oral contraceptives is 30 in 100,000.

Yes, it's 5 times higher, that's accurate. It's also extraordinarily misleading, as the risk of stroke is still extremely low and the 5X factor is not material to the overall likelihood of a stroke.

Me and my doctor went round and round about this when she decided I shouldn't take oral contraceptives in my 30s. I found a different doctor because the actual risk is low enough to be negligible no matter what.

 

[Emily Lake]

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.

Honestly, I'm pretty well fed up with all of you.

I don't think that either Loren or Derec are racists. I do think they both oppose double standards and preferential treatment. I think they're both so invested in that view that they engage in flawed reasoning quite regularly, and see reverse racism where it doesn't necessarily exist.

On the other hand, youse will see any disagreement with policies that result in race-based preferences as being racism automatically, regardless of whether they result in such.

Both of youse are stuck in your own beliefs. Affirmative action served a purpose for a while, but that purpose is no longer needed and continuing to elevate race and other non-merit and non-capability characteristics accomplishes nothing good. In fact, it reduces trust in our institutions and it leaves ALL minorities facing the constant question of whether they got where they are through their own accomplishments or whether they were given special privileges denied to others.

But that argument cannot be successful when it is based on flawed reasoning and shoddy statistics.

The overall inability of people to just have an open conversation without someone hollering racism or fascism or wokism or some other idiotic "ism" is exhuasting.

 

[Emily Lake]

I find it difficult to believe that white and Asian students are being discriminated against when they represent the greatest proportion of students admitted.

If the NBA openly started trying to recruit white players, made statements about the need to overcome their systemic and historical racism in order to be more diverse... and then black basketball players came out and said "hey, this is discriminatory, you're accepting white players that aren't as good as some of the black players that you're turning away"...

Would you have the same view?