MCATs, Affirmative Action, and DEI, Oh My

[Jimmy Higgins]

What do you call it when Asian students are presumed to be good in math, black students better at basketball, girls better at tending children?

If the people groups mentioned are 'better' at those things than other groups on average it is not racism to point that out. Rather an acknowledgement of reality.

Early 20th Century on line 5 for you, they want their eugenics back.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

What do you call it when Asian students are presumed to be good in math, black students better at basketball, girls better at tending children?

If the people groups mentioned are 'better' at those things than other groups on average it is not racism to point that out. Rather an acknowledgement of reality.

Better at taking tests is not the same thing as being better at treating patients, which is what most physicians do.

Yet we give aspiring physicians tests to see what they have learned, or not.
Tests are by no means perfect but still one of the best ways to determine what knowledge has been imparted.

Those are during medical school. People in this thread are whining about the testing regarding admission into medical school.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

What do you call it when Asian students are presumed to be good in math, black students better at basketball, girls better at tending children?

If the people groups mentioned are 'better' at those things than other groups on average it is not racism to point that out. Rather an acknowledgement of reality.

Individuals are not groups, though.

 

[Toni]

What do you call it when Asian students are presumed to be good in math, black students better at basketball, girls better at tending children?

If the people groups mentioned are 'better' at those things than other groups on average it is not racism to point that out. Rather an acknowledgement of reality.

Better at taking tests is not the same thing as being better at treating patients, which is what most physicians do.

Yet we give aspiring physicians tests to see what they have learned, or not.
Tests are by no means perfect but still one of the best ways to determine what knowledge has been imparted.

I think you mean: knowledge retained and comprehended.

What has been under discussion is MCAT, a test given to those who aspire to medical school.

The USMLE exam ( United States Medtcal Licensing Exam) is administered during different phases of medical school: Renew

What is the USMLE®?​

Jan 3, 2025 | 3 Min Read
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CONTENTS

1. What experts are saying about the USMLE
2. Explore other AMA resources on USMLE

The United States Medical Licensing Examination® (USMLE®) is the exam administered by the National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME). The Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB) and the NBME sponsor the USMLE. The USMLE provides state medical boards with a common evaluation system for licensure applicants.

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USMLE consists of three separate exams, known as steps.

• Step 1 assesses the basic sciences taught during preclerkship curriculum.
• Step 2 CK assesses clinical knowledge and skills that can be applied to patient care under supervision.
• Step 3 assesses in-depth clinical knowledge and decision-making to be able to care for patients independently.

When is the exam taken?​

• Step 1 is generally taken upon completing the preclerkship curriculum.
• Step 2 CK is generally taken after concluding clinical rotations.
• Step 3 is generally taken after the first year of residency.

 

[Playball40]

I do think MCAT scores should be adjusted. That said, in order to graduate with an MD, there should be an EXIT EXAM that everyone must pass regardless of race, gender, age, nationality. MCATs are to GET INTO med school and since we know that public and private education systems are not equal, there would be unfair advantages that have little to do with actual intelligence or ability to be a doctor.

 

[Toni]

I do think MCAT scores should be adjusted. That said, in order to graduate with an MD, there should be an EXIT EXAM that everyone must pass regardless of race, gender, age, nationality. MCATs are to GET INTO med school and since we know that public and private education systems are not equal, there would be unfair advantages that have little to do with actual intelligence or ability to be a doctor.

There IS an exam or rather set of exams that one must pass in order to obtain a medical license in the US:

I linked it in the post just above yours. But gets a repeat from Wiki:

United States Medical Licensing Examination - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) is a three-step examination program for medical licensure in the United States, sponsored by the Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB) and the National Board of Medical Examiners(NBME).[9] Individuals with a Doctor of Medicine (MD) degree are required to pass the USMLE for medical licensure. Those with a Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine degree (DO) may take either the COMLEX-USA or the USMLE for medical licensure, with the COMLEX-USA being required for osteopathic licensure.

The USMLE is considered to be more difficult than the MCAT, as one would expect .

 

[Playball40]

What do you call it when Asian students are presumed to be good in math, black students better at basketball, girls better at tending children?

I don't know. What do you call it? Forget it. I don't care. Why are people putting so much more into what I said than what I actually said?

I'll help. I call them sterotypes.

 

[Colonel Sanders]

I don't think I've had a white doctor of any kind in the last... damn, I don't know when. My current guy is Asian. I've had at least a dozen neuros since I was a teenager and with one exception they've been either Asian or from somewhere in the ME. The only exception was a white guy who wanted to drill into my skull--that guy was a fucking idiot.

Whatever the case, the only thing I've ever thought was that the physician standing in front me was a helluva lot smarter than I am so I'll just shut up, listen, and do what I'm told.

Are white people being kept out of medical school and/are standards being lowered; and if that's at all true, is it lowering the standard of care for patients?

Hell if I know, but I think it's safe to say it's highly unlikely there's some unknown Jonas Salk working at McDonalds because he wasn't allowed into medical school due to his whiteness.

 

[Playball40]

I do think MCAT scores should be adjusted. That said, in order to graduate with an MD, there should be an EXIT EXAM that everyone must pass regardless of race, gender, age, nationality. MCATs are to GET INTO med school and since we know that public and private education systems are not equal, there would be unfair advantages that have little to do with actual intelligence or ability to be a doctor.

There IS an exam or rather set of exams that one must pass in order to obtain a medical license in the US:

I linked it in the post just above yours. But gets a repeat from Wiki:

United States Medical Licensing Examination - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) is a three-step examination program for medical licensure in the United States, sponsored by the Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB) and the National Board of Medical Examiners(NBME).[9] Individuals with a Doctor of Medicine (MD) degree are required to pass the USMLE for medical licensure. Those with a Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine degree (DO) may take either the COMLEX-USA or the USMLE for medical licensure, with the COMLEX-USA being required for osteopathic licensure.

The USMLE is considered to be more difficult than the MCAT, as one would expect .

Thanks for the info. In that case, I have no issue with the MCAT adjustments.

 

[Derec]

I’m going to type this very slowly and patiently: Please try to hear it in your head as I type this:

You keep repeating this even though we keep telling you that you are misrepresenting our positions.
I shall type equally as slowly in the hope you stop erecting these tired old strawmen.

It is not discrimination against whites, Asians, or makes to no longer be automatically considered the best candidate for all good things.

Nobody is saying they should be. But they should not have to line up at the back of the line either. And that goes whether your justification is some idea of transgenerational payback for past wrongs or "diversity über alles".

It us not racist ( or sexist) to recognize that it was once the presumption that all Hugh paying, highly skilled and prestigious and desirable positions and benefits were by rights, designed for males, preferably white ( or more recently, Asians) and the entire selection process was built on that presumption—how to select the best suited white or Asian ) male for whatever spot was available.

Again, what was in the past is in the past. You cannot fix wrongs from the past by yourself discriminating in the present. You just keep introducing more injustice.

But now too ma y women and darker than pasty white people started making noise and wanting to push in and darn it if a lot of them were not just as good or even better than the white guys— Plus patients really like them

Better based on what metrics? Certainly not by academics, since whites and especially Asians accepted to med schools have much better academic metrics than blacks and Hispanics.
Btw, AAMC does not disaggregate data by sex. At least not in the tables I was looking at. So let's leave women out of this discussion.

No longer having first place or the first 100 places) reserved for you does not mean you are now being discriminated against. It means that others are now being given a fair chance and sometimes they are the better candidate.

You are getting worse with your ridiculous strawmen! Nobody is advocating for anything of the sort.
We just want applicants to be seen as individuals. That means that skin color or ancestors who spoke Spanish should not make up for middling academic performance.

Sorry Llren: The era of white male ( supposed) suprenacy is fading.
Y’all still get plenty of chances but now so do other people.
Guess what: Competition got stiffer.

Your typing is getting worse along with your strawmen. I thought you were going to type extra slow. What happened?

 

[Derec]

I’d ask why you are assuming that black and Hispanic candidates are less qualified but we all know the answer .

Not all of them, of course, but on the average, they are less academically qualified.
That is because of average both applicants and accepted students have significantly lower GPAs and MCAT than white and Asian students.

Unless you argue that blacks and Hispanics best whites and Asians in some other metrics (which would those be? what is the evidence?) the ONLY explanation is discrimination by race and ethnicity.
That's because while GPA and MCAT are not the only things that matter, even if you apply other things (experience, volunteering etc.) they would not counteract the academic advantage unless the distribution of those is similarly different between racial and ethnic groups. And I have not seen any evidence that this is so. So it must be the discrimination.

 

[Derec]

Note that unlike most of your Ilk, at least ZiprHead is honest that he wants to discriminate against whites and Asians and thinks that it's the right thing to do.

Ziprhead is, first of all, not saying that exactly,

What do you think ZiprHead is saying here?

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

Why not?

and second of all, not the policymaker for a university medical program.

No, but they still discriminate by race and ethnicity. If adcoms looked at applicants as individuals, the average MCAT and GPAs of accepted students would be similar among different groups. Unless, of course, there was some legitimate metric that was different in the opposite way and compensated for the academic advantages. But nobody has proposed what those metrics might be. Note that for undergrad admissions, Harvard created such a metric, i.e. their infamous "personality scores". But that was a bogus metric only intended to limit the number of Asians accepted.

 

[Toni]

I’d ask why you are assuming that black and Hispanic candidates are less qualified but we all know the answer .

Not all of them, of course, but on the average, they are less academically qualified.
That is because of average both applicants and accepted students have significantly lower GPAs and MCAT than white and Asian students.

Unless you argue that blacks and Hispanics best whites and Asians in some other metrics (which would those be? what is the evidence?) the ONLY explanation is discrimination by race and ethnicity.
That's because while GPA and MCAT are not the only things that matter, even if you apply other things (experience, volunteering etc.) they would not counteract the academic advantage unless the distribution of those is similarly different between racial and ethnic groups. And I have not seen any evidence that this is so. So it must be the discrimination.

Derec, again, you cannot know that they accepted lower scoring black and hispanic applicants. We only know the average score by demographic. As far as we know, the highest score for any incoming med student was scored by a black student and the lowest by an Asian student.

Not only that but as has been pointed out ad nauseum, GPA and MCAT scores are not the only qualities that matter in order to succeed at medical school.

MCAT plus GPA provide a threshold that all must meet in order to be considered. After that threshold is met, then other qualities come into play, including actual intention to become a physician and what kind of physician one wishes to be.

 

[Derec]

This is why a lot of schools are placing a lower emphasis on SATs. Plus fewer college age prospective students.

Let's be honest. The reason so many universities deemphasized SATs is that is is an objective measure that is harder for admissions people to manipulate in order to get the class composition they want. Compare that with "personality scores" which can be anything the admissions officer wants it to be.

Students whose parents graduated from university have a leg up on their fellow students, aside from the expected bump in family income: their parents know the system and are in a better position to help their offspring choose the correct classes in high school and college and are more likely to see value in and pay for prep classes.

It's easy for anyone to find that information online. There are also free and low-cost prep materials.
Of course more educated parents confer advantages for their offspring. But you are pretending that those advantages are all illegitimate and only concern the testing artifacts rather than affecting genuine aptitude and preparedness for college. A more educated home is also likely to nurture an environment where learning is encouraged from an early age. And while the Left loves to pretend that the human beings are a tabula rasa, there are genetic differences in intelligence that are also correlated with parental education levels.

I do not think it is any coincidence that colleges dropping or deemphasizing SATs proceeded an increase in students who are ill-prepared for college education.
Colleges see surge in students needing remedial math courses

We are seeing a crisis in our education system, and I think it is closely linked to this war against objective measures in education and overreliance on vibes and feels. That this also allows admissions people to game admissions to get the racial composition they want is just one of the problems with this approach.

Which also helps explain why elite schools admit students with slightly less impressive test scores/gpas if they are the first or first generation of students to attend college.

When it comes to racial preferences, the differences are not "slight". Not by any definition of that word.

 

[Derec]

Here's a snapshot of a part of a runprint from my work:

Ok, so your workplace reports the output of some mileage calculation with too many digits.

Am I being racist by disregarding the last four digits, and considering other factors, when I have been provided with data accurate to 6.89655% of the length of the vehicle? Is the data really that accurate?

You are assuming the MCAT data is similar to that. But is not nearly that bad as that.

This is an example of a random MCAT score report which I got form the MCAT subrreddit.

Poor kid choked on Psych/Soc but nailed CARS.
So for each individual score, there is a 4 point confidence band (or ±2 if you prefer). You cannot confidently say this student genuinely did better than somebody scoring 508 or 509, but we can say that he scored better than somebody who got e.g. a 505.

But that is just for individual scores and test takers. If you have thousands of MCAT test takers and scores to aggregate, the bands shrink by square root of the sample size. So, yes, the differences in average MCAT scores and GPAs are very much real and significant.

If they were just result of random chance, you'd also expect the curves to shift from one application cycle to the next. Asians on top one year, perhaps Hispanics the next. But that's not what we see. That's because despite all your handwaving, these differences are not a result of random fluctuations or spurious accuracy.

There may well be some discrimination. But analysing these spuriously accurate figures cannot detect it for any given case, even if it is blatant.

Of course it can. Because the figures are far from spuriously accurate.

 

[Derec]

The bigger point of the data is that it implies that variation in MCAT scores are NOT particularly indicative of success in Medical School.

Why do you keep saying that when the actual data says the opposite?

I already posted a similar matrix of Step 1 pass rates by MCAT and GPA. Here is the 5 year graduation rate (i.e. taking up to one extra year) by MCAT and GPA.

12% of those with an MCAT of ~500 fail to graduate within 5 years, but only 4% of those with MCAT of 510 or more. That's a 3x higher chance! And it gets even worse for sub-500 MCATs, which are a lot of black, Hispanic and American Indian students as evidenced by means and SDs of their MCAT scores.

 

[Toni]

This is why a lot of schools are placing a lower emphasis on SATs. Plus fewer college age prospective students.

Let's be honest. The reason so many universities deemphasized SATs is that is is an objective measure that is harder for admissions people to manipulate in order to get the class composition they want. Compare that with "personality scores" which can be anything the admissions officer wants it to be.

Students whose parents graduated from university have a leg up on their fellow students, aside from the expected bump in family income: their parents know the system and are in a better position to help their offspring choose the correct classes in high school and college and are more likely to see value in and pay for prep classes.

It's easy for anyone to find that information online. There are also free and low-cost prep materials.
Of course more educated parents confer advantages for their offspring. But you are pretending that those advantages are all illegitimate and only concern the testing artifacts rather than affecting genuine aptitude and preparedness for college. A more educated home is also likely to nurture an environment where learning is encouraged from an early age. And while the Left loves to pretend that the human beings are a tabula rasa, there are genetic differences in intelligence that are also correlated with parental education levels.

I do not think it is any coincidence that colleges dropping or deemphasizing SATs proceeded an increase in students who are ill-prepared for college education.
Colleges see surge in students needing remedial math courses

We are seeing a crisis in our education system, and I think it is closely linked to this war against objective measures in education and overreliance on vibes and feels. That this also allows admissions people to game admissions to get the racial composition they want is just one of the problems with this approach.

Which also helps explain why elite schools admit students with slightly less impressive test scores/gpas if they are the first or first generation of students to attend college.

When it comes to racial preferences, the differences are not "slight". Not by any definition of that word.

SAT’s are far less an objective measure of academic ability than they are a measure of parental socioeconomic status.

It’s been discussed before.

One also must account for the fact that students attending high school during the pandemic frankly are behind what their older peers would be at the same age.

 

[laughing dog]

I’d ask why you are assuming that black and Hispanic candidates are less qualified but we all know the answer .

Not all of them, of course, but on the average, they are less academically qualified.
That is because of average both applicants and accepted students have significantly lower GPAs and MCAT than white and Asian students.

A number of participants have demonstrated how the averages are may be misleading along many dimensions so that they are not reliable indicators. Yet you cling to them as if they are the holy grail,

 

[laughing dog]

The bigger point of the data is that it implies that variation in MCAT scores are NOT particularly indicative of success in Medical School.

Why do you keep saying that when the actual data says the opposite?

Since dtopping out may have many factors unrelated to preparation and ability, using drop out rates as a measure of success seems a bit shaky.

 

[Toni]

The bigger point of the data is that it implies that variation in MCAT scores are NOT particularly indicative of success in Medical School.

Why do you keep saying that when the actual data says the opposite?

Since dtopping out may have many factors unrelated to preparation and ability, using drop out rates as a measure of success seems a bit shaky.

Actually, statistics given upthread, I believe, indicate that of the very small number of students who drop out, most cite financial pressures and the remainder due to personal stresses, etc. No demographics are attached to reasons for leaving the program,

Gaining admissions to medical school is an extremely arduous, highly competitive process. Only very well qualified candidates succeed in gaining a spot in any med school. This is true no matter the demographic/ethnicity/race.

What is driving this fever to demonize black and Hispanic med students? It is not based on any data demonstrating that certain demographics of med school graduates make poor doctors.