A sad casualty of DEI/Woke at Cambridge University

[ZiprHead]

It does nothing of the sort.

Did you forget who you’re talking to?
All of science and most of what is empirically observed, is “woke nonsense”.

My bad.

 

[Emily Lake]

The AAMC tables I posted include GPA and MCAT scores. Not net worth. Where did you get "filthy rich" from?

Because that's what creates "perfect records". Talent has little to do with it. "Nice schools" in "nice neighborhoods" produce straight A students with glowing test scores, but no guarantee of actual capability.

Sure, sure. So apparently my low-income upbringing in a mixed race household in fairly crappy housing and a mediocre public school was just a fignment of my imagination. All of my records and success are because of some invisible blessing bestowed upon me by your say so? My father's accomplishments were really just handed to him due to his backwater Arkansas public schooling while literally picking cotton in the morning and weekends, living in a shack with a well and no electricity?

Talent and dedication go a long ways toward capability.


+++++++++++++++++++++

Opining that success is only achieved because of unearned privilege is just as insulting and dehumanizing as opining that a person only got a job because of DEI.

Some people achieve success on the coattails of their family's wealth and opportunities not afforded to others, sure. But a whole, whole lot of people attain success through hard work and merit - and you shouldn't denigrate and dismiss that.

Some people attain jobs through DEI practices that favor some minority groups over others, this is also true. But a whole, whole lot of minorities get very good jobs through hard work and merit - and that also shouldn't be dismissed or handwaived away.

In both cases, however, when a person is not qualified for a position they've been given as a result of something other than qualifications and capability, that should be called out.

Sounds like what was being said was exactly the opposite of what you are reacting to.

FWIW, I agree with Politesse: Students with everything going for them: educated parents , upper middle class neighborhood, enviably good schools tend to get great grades and great test scores. I know that I am biased here but imo, people who grew up in more modest circumstances, as I did and as it appears that you did, can still make it, can still achieve stellar GPAs and SAT and ACT scores and be high achievers academically and in our careers and in our lives. I know it’s ego talking but I think the accomplishments of those who came from modest backgrounds don’t get nearly enough recognition. We’re rock stars! We’re resilient, don’t need our hands held. Or all of the attention in the room.

I'm completely on board with celebrating those accomplishments. It was a lot of work, but it's worth it, and it's attainable, and that should be the message we convey.

I'm not on board with reducing standards in order to meet a superficial metric that assumes a difference of outcome can only be due to oppression. And I'm very displeased with the way this keeps being found, because it calls into question the capabilities of everyone who got their education under this system. Especially minorities.

 

[Emily Lake]

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

I find myself asking why the constant need of so many activists and organization to continue pushing the notion that all our systems are irredeemably racist, and racial discrimination is a huge deal that must be actively and constantly combatted. Seems like a whole lot of money being made off of a problem that seems to have been mostly (not completely) solved.

 

[Emily Lake]

That chart seems to imply that there is different acceptance criteria depending on your race. My comment was assuming the same acceptance criteria for everyone, regardless of race.

I'm not sure that follows. It seems to demonstrate that there's a difference in acceptance rates, and that the difference in acceptance rates seems to be correlated with the difference in grades and exams.

The only solid conclusion I think you can draw is that there's a difference in grades and exam scores by race. But since it doesn't include even the most basic credibility measures like standard deviation, it's impossible to determine whether the differences are statistically significant or not.

 

[Emily Lake]

No it doesn't. You would need to not understand what an "average" is to claim that. I'm pretty certain you understand what the word "average" means.

To be fair, the chart isn't labeled as averages.

I think it's possible that @thebeave assumed that those were the required MCAT and GPA for acceptance, rather than the average MCAT and GPA.

 

[Emily Lake]

Unlike those black parents who don’t care enough not to raise their kids in the projects.

Parents, plural? lol. Few and far between these days.

Okay, see, that's kinda racist. I know it's not necessarily incorrect, but you're playing on a negative stereotype in a derogatory way.

 

[Emily Lake]

No it doesn't.

Of course it does.

You would need to not understand what an "average" is to claim that. I'm pretty certain you understand what the word "average" means.

The real question is: do you?

If the acceptance rate was equivalent despite the difference in MCAT / GPA scores or the acceptance rate was random or reversed as shown relative to MCAT / GPA, that would provide evidence of your claim.

Not necessarily.

Instead, the stats above show that higher score/GPA means you have a better chance at acceptance.

Slightly better chance of acceptance, yes. But because the applicant pools have very different stats, the slightly different acceptance rates do not begin to compensate for that. That means that among matriculants, not applicants, there are still vast differences in grades and scores. I did an analysis of the MCAT data earlier. Let me post it again.

View attachment 55053
Look at the vast difference of where the black and Hispanic confidence intervals are compared to white and Asian ones. American Indian and Alaska Native have an even worse mean MCAT, but their numbers are so low, the confidence interval is wide and approaches black and Hispanic CIs.

Okay, look - they're different. Some of them look like they're even statistically significantly so. Here's what's missing:

• What is the overall mean and standard deviation of the population as a whole, and how representative is the sample?
• Do the ranges of the cohorts fall within the range of the population as a whole in a way that suggests sampling error is the more likely explanation for the differences?
• Is there bias or skew in the sample selection criteria, either intentional or inadvertent?

And most importantly:

• Is the difference material?

It's a constant annoyance to me. There are tons and tons of things out there where you can create a division on some identifiable characteristic, and if you look at the results for each cohort, find a statistically significant variance. But if you step back and look at the range of possible outcomes, the absolute difference between the means and their ranges is only a very small wedge. The difference is not material.

 

[Emily Lake]

...
Data show that black, Hispanic and American Indian applicants are admitted with significantly lower scores and grades than white and Asian ones. That should not be allowed. Same standards should apply to everybody.

If you look at the data, blacks have a 505.7 and standard deviation of 6.6 [yes, SD is appropriate here since we are just looking at population distributions and not doing hypothesis testing]. That means that ~16% of all black matriculants have the MCAT score of 499 or less. Asian students the mean is 514.3 and the SD is 6.0. That means that only ~2.5% have an MCAT of 502 or less. That is a huge difference in academic preparedness.
...

...
You are further assuming that GPA and MCAT scores are the only criteria that matter.

You are assuming that higher GPAand higher MCAT scores = better doctors.
...

He is assuming nothing of the sort. This has been explained to you many times. Why do you persist in misrepresenting your opponents on this issue? At some point it stops looking like an innocent misunderstanding on your part and starts looking like a deliberate strawman.

One more time. When a black guy with a 506 MCAT has a good chance of getting admitted and an Asian guy with a 506 MCAT has a negligible chance of getting admitted, it follows that either the admissions officers are discriminating against Asians or else that Asian applicants are systematically worse than black applicants on some other criterion of student desirability being applied. There is no value judgment involved here, no reliance on anyone's opinion about whether MCAT is important or whether something else is more important or whether there's any correlation with doctor quality -- you could bloody well assume the only important criterion is birth order and a middle child makes the best doctor if you like and the admission probability argument is still decisive. It is an inference about what admissions officers do, not about what they ought to do.

Funny. This person said: "He is assuming nothing of the sort." regarding "You are further assuming that GPA and MCAT scores are the only criteria that matter."

And then spends the rest of the post actually relying solely on MCATs regarding admission into schools.

So if you think medical schools aren't discriminating against Asians, what criterion do you think admissions officers are applying alongside their reliance on MCAT that's making up for some students' lower MCAT scores?

Did it again!

To answer the question, probably curriculum (what did they major in if not that stupid pre-med bs degree), in school activity, out of school activity, jobs, internships, letters of recommendation, etc...

And why do you think Asian students are worse than black students at satisfying that criterion?

I'm going to paraphrase a wise person by saying she is assuming nothing of the sort.

The better question is, why in the heck do you think you know anything regarding medical school admission applications and the things any particular applicant have to offer?

The statistics indicate that on average Asians have the higher scores and have the higher rate of acceptance. Blacks have lower scores and notably lower rate of acceptance.

I don't think that's what @Bomb#20 did. I could be wrong, but I think he's making the case that MCAT might not be the only criteria being used. I think he's implying that there are, in fact, other criteria being used beyond MCAT. Bomb#20 hasn't opined on what those other criteria are, but I think it's clear that Derec implied that race is one of those other criteria.

 

[Emily Lake]

Those national averages could be masking the effects of how students by race seek admission by university.

Here is a hypothetical example to illustrate a point. Two candidates with identical GPAs and identical scores- one black and one white - apply to medical school. The black applicant gets into Howard while the white doesn't get into Harvard. The black applicant did apply to Harvard and the white student didn't apply to Howard.

Now think about if the application rates to schools not only differ by race or schools but by region. It is very possible that the "discrimination" is really the outcome of other factors.

That is something to think about, especially by those who use other factors to explain away discrimination against minorities.

I'm confused by your post. Are you implying that discrimination against minorities is the cause of difference in applying patterns?

Because you provided an explanation that is independent of race (and therefore not disrimination) as a mechanism to critique people who say that the observed differences are NOT due to discrimination, and that therefore we do not need specific programs to fight racism embedded in the system.

 

[Emily Lake]

I think that admissions to medical schools is not the same thing as winning a race, with the highest GPAs and MCAT scores across=fastest speeds.

I think that many high achieving students apply to all the ‘ best’ medical schools based solely upon the perceived status of the medical school instead of whether a particular small set of medical schools is actually a good match for what they envision their future career to be. However it is unlikely that medical schools are as blinded by perfect scores as you seem to be and such students are unlikely to be admitted to every school they apply to.

I thu k looking solely at average scores obscures a great deal of detail about students who are admitted. And feeds the bigotry of those who think that only test scores do matter.

I'm gonna provide a plausible mechanism that would support Derec's argument, but wouldn't cause your argument to fail. In short, it would result in both of you being right. This is speculative, and mostly because I see a scenario that produces this outcome, and it amuses me to share it. I feel clever.

But I also feel lazy, so I'm not going to go back and find the numbers to make sure I'm moderately in line with them and I'm not going to do the actual math. I'm just going to keep it high level and conceptual to demonstrate that it's possible.

Let's assume that there's a fixed threshold for admittance. When applied to applicants stratified by race, that threshold consistently results in a lower proportion of admitted black students than the proportion that applied. For argument's sake, let's say the admittance threshold of 8/10 results in 80% white students and 20% black... but the proportion of applicants is more like 65%/35%. Turns out that the average score for black applicants was lower than the average score of white students, and they had different standard deviations, and maybe even some skew.

Let's say that you have a desire to have an admission rate that mirrors that of the applicants, or is at least much closer. How can that be accomplished?

Well, there are probably lots and lots of things that could be done that would have some marginal effect, but for the most part the things that are likely to have a material effect fall into two camps: influence the root cause of the difference or lower the criteria in order to attain a representative admission rate.

One of those approaches is really, really, persistently, and confoundingly hard to do. The other is very easy to do, and in many cases can be done without being expected to tell anyone.

That would satisfy your assertion: the applicants aren't being selected in descending order from the highest scores to the lowest, and you are correct. It also satisfies Derec's assertion: the standards are being manipulated in order to achieve a non-academic and non-competence goal that reduces the expectation of academic merit.

 

[Emily Lake]

Using an anecdote of a milliennium year old complaint does not change the bigotry of your position.

Are you talking to yourself? You are the one who brought up the "millennium year old[sic] complaint" [two and a half millennia, surely]. You are also the one whose position is bigoted.

As I pointed out, teachers have complained about their students lack of knowledge for millenia. Your professors probably complained about your cohort. I recall mine complaining about my cohort. My grandfather recalls the same happening to him.

So your anecdotal evidence from a current professor is not informational. So it really support your ilk’s racist hobby horse.

Food for thought. It occurs to me that that those complaints might have been legit. Perhaps not for the reasons stipulated, but for the overall core concept involved.

Think about it - prior to about a millenia ago, the criteria to be recognized for knowledge of a topic was extremely hard to attain. Almost everyone was competent at most of the things expected to be done. Nearly everyone knew how to cook food from scratch, how to grow and store food safely over a longer period of time, how to make and maintain their own clothing and tools, etc. As our technology evolved, the expectations shifted and got more specific - but not necessarily more difficult. How many different credentialed fields of study do we have now, compared to the number of identifiable fields of a millenia ago? I kind of thing that things have become so borderline-bespoke that the objective value of the knowledge acquisition process is decreasing. There are so many specialties and focuses and intersectional niches now that there's reduced credibility that the speciality is useful for any application, nor for the advancement of knowledge that helps the species. The requirements have become so vague and so inclusive of subjective assessment that it is losing meaning.

Don't get me wrong - to an extent, allowing some flexibility in criteria as new technologies and skills evolve within society has been a good thing. On the whole, I think the more citizens we have who are able to attain that knowledge, the better our society will be. That I don't think that satisfying a metric is a worthwhile approach, when the means by which that metric was met reduces the value of the knowledge to society as a whole. I know there are all sorts of very specific exceptions and all, but for all intents, I stick to a very "first do no harm" approach to implementing change. If a method to achieve that goal can only be accomplished by harming a material portion of the people who are unharmed in the current system, then it's extremely unlikely that it's actually impacting the root cause of the difference.

 

[Emily Lake]

satisfying y=kx, or inverse - satisfying xy = k.

That's a weird way to write that. Or at least its a way I've never seen before. I always saw the concept of inverses being explained as

x*y = k being the inverse of x/y = k.

They're the same, mathematically. It's just a different way of expressing it than I've seen in the past.

 

[Bomb#20]

That chart seems to imply that there is different acceptance criteria depending on your race. My comment was assuming the same acceptance criteria for everyone, regardless of race.

I'm not sure that follows. It seems to demonstrate that there's a difference in acceptance rates, and that the difference in acceptance rates seems to be correlated with the difference in grades and exams.

The only solid conclusion I think you can draw is that there's a difference in grades and exam scores by race. But since it doesn't include even the most basic credibility measures like standard deviation, it's impossible to determine whether the differences are statistically significant or not.

Here's a table that includes standard deviations.

The difference between the MCAT averages is greater than one standard deviation.

 

[Emily Lake]

That chart seems to imply that there is different acceptance criteria depending on your race. My comment was assuming the same acceptance criteria for everyone, regardless of race.

I'm not sure that follows. It seems to demonstrate that there's a difference in acceptance rates, and that the difference in acceptance rates seems to be correlated with the difference in grades and exams.

The only solid conclusion I think you can draw is that there's a difference in grades and exam scores by race. But since it doesn't include even the most basic credibility measures like standard deviation, it's impossible to determine whether the differences are statistically significant or not.

Here's a table that includes standard deviations.

The difference between the MCAT averages is greater than one standard deviation.

I'll take your word for it. I don't have the brain space right now to do the calculations and get them laid out in a way that will let me see it. I need to be able to visualize it.

 

[Bomb#20]

All this blather about MCAT, SAT, and GPA is utterly irrelevant to the topic of the thread. ... any discussion of US qualifications, and US university admissions policies, doesn't seem to me to have a single iota of relevance to the admission of a British citizen with English qualifications to Cambridge, and US biases in university entrance are highly unlikely to be closely duplicated in English universities, or in any way relevant to Oxbridge...

But, but the USA is the world leader in everything, even British universities.

You jest; but in fact that's correct. Ideas that become fashionable in European leftist circles usually got that way by first becoming fashionable in American leftist circles -- "Imitation is the sincerest form of plagiarism." This is a case in point. Cambridge explicitly states that it seeks faculty "diversity", and that is a goal the British did not invent for themselves.

The pursuit of "diversity" is a meme that was first adopted at Harvard; it spread from there to the rest of the U.S. as a consequence of uniquely American historical accidents; subsequently the rest of western civilization copied America. If America hadn't had a race-blind equal-protection amendment in our Constitution in tension with our leftist academic culture, plus a 4-to-4 split on affirmative action in its 1970s Supreme Court, hardly any of us today would have ever heard of "diversity". But the University of California racially discriminated against a doctor wannabe, so he sued for admission to the medical school. Four justices said equal protection means the state can't discriminate against white people, four justices said discriminating against white people is a necessary remedy for a long history of discriminating against black people, and one justice who was up on his Harvard trivia said past wrongs aren't a good enough reason to violate the rights of innocent people now, but if the goal is to improve everyone's education by exposing them all to a more diverse student body then it's okay. So he cast the deciding vote, ruled in favor of the student and against the university on the narrow grounds that they were running a fixed quota system to fix past discrimination instead of kinder-gentler one-factor-among-many discrimination for the sake of diversity like Harvard was practicing, and then the entire American left pivoted and decided if they had to say the magic word "diversity" in order to legally get the affirmative action programs they wanted then they would say that magic word. That's how the "diversity" meme went from a Harvard curiosity to an America-wide phenomenon, and thence to the rest of the world.

 

[Toni]

I think that admissions to medical schools is not the same thing as winning a race, with the highest GPAs and MCAT scores across=fastest speeds.

I think that many high achieving students apply to all the ‘ best’ medical schools based solely upon the perceived status of the medical school instead of whether a particular small set of medical schools is actually a good match for what they envision their future career to be. However it is unlikely that medical schools are as blinded by perfect scores as you seem to be and such students are unlikely to be admitted to every school they apply to.

I thu k looking solely at average scores obscures a great deal of detail about students who are admitted. And feeds the bigotry of those who think that only test scores do matter.

I'm gonna provide a plausible mechanism that would support Derec's argument, but wouldn't cause your argument to fail. In short, it would result in both of you being right. This is speculative, and mostly because I see a scenario that produces this outcome, and it amuses me to share it. I feel clever.

But I also feel lazy, so I'm not going to go back and find the numbers to make sure I'm moderately in line with them and I'm not going to do the actual math. I'm just going to keep it high level and conceptual to demonstrate that it's possible.

Let's assume that there's a fixed threshold for admittance. When applied to applicants stratified by race, that threshold consistently results in a lower proportion of admitted black students than the proportion that applied. For argument's sake, let's say the admittance threshold of 8/10 results in 80% white students and 20% black... but the proportion of applicants is more like 65%/35%. Turns out that the average score for black applicants was lower than the average score of white students, and they had different standard deviations, and maybe even some skew.

Let's say that you have a desire to have an admission rate that mirrors that of the applicants, or is at least much closer. How can that be accomplished?

Well, there are probably lots and lots of things that could be done that would have some marginal effect, but for the most part the things that are likely to have a material effect fall into two camps: influence the root cause of the difference or lower the criteria in order to attain a representative admission rate.

One of those approaches is really, really, persistently, and confoundingly hard to do. The other is very easy to do, and in many cases can be done without being expected to tell anyone.

That would satisfy your assertion: the applicants aren't being selected in descending order from the highest scores to the lowest, and you are correct. It also satisfies Derec's assertion: the standards are being manipulated in order to achieve a non-academic and non-competence goal that reduces the expectation of academic merit.

It ignores the absolute fact that admissions are not based solely upon test scores and MCAT scores.

It ignores the fact that very high scoring applicants apply to abd are accepted at multiple schools but can attend only one.

Which means the schools not chosen have to fill spots down their list.

And of course this ignores the fact that every application comes with personal statements, recommendations from professors and those who have worked with the applicants in relevant work.

Also consider that medical schools need to turn out physicians who intend and have demonstrated a commitment to serving as general practitioners, internists, pediatricians, especially in underserved communities —positions that do not pay nearly as well as cardiovascular surgery or neurosurgery or some oncology specialties or even anesthesia.

Also consider: There are very many extremely bright parents who would make poor physicians because they lack requisite skills such as team work, listening skills, complex priblem solving and soft skills.

My very intelligent husband once told me that if he wanted, he could have gone to med school. I laughed in his face because as smart as he is, he struggled to get through dissections in high school biology. He struggles not to faint at the site of blood. He’s not necessarily the best listener and has little grasp of basic biology. A firmer classmate at university is one of the most intelligent people I’ve ever known. She decided to take a bunch of biology classes and go to med school. For fun she took math and physics classes. She had a stellar GOA and MCAT scores…. And is now happily a Ph.D in mathematics and a tenured professor at a university—where she belongs. I have nothing but admiration for her but she would not have been a good doctor —and the med schools she applied to thought the same.

 

[laughing dog]

Those national averages could be masking the effects of how students by race seek admission by university.

Here is a hypothetical example to illustrate a point. Two candidates with identical GPAs and identical scores- one black and one white - apply to medical school. The black applicant gets into Howard while the white doesn't get into Harvard. The black applicant did apply to Harvard and the white student didn't apply to Howard.

Now think about if the application rates to schools not only differ by race or schools but by region. It is very possible that the "discrimination" is really the outcome of other factors.

That is something to think about, especially by those who use other factors to explain away discrimination against minorities.

I'm confused by your post. Are you implying that discrimination against minorities is the cause of difference in applying patterns?

Because you provided an explanation that is independent of race (and therefore not disrimination) as a mechanism to critique people who say that the observed differences are NOT due to discrimination, and that therefore we do not need specific programs to fight racism embedded in the system.

I provided a thought experiment to illustrate that the data shown that some claim show discrimination for blacks and against whites may not do so.

In the case of medical school admissions, I presume medical school personnel at each institution have a better idea of the qualities and characteristics that shape good physicians within the mission of the school than internet discussants who think only standardized test scores and GPAs count.

 

[Bomb#20]

You are further assuming that GPA and MCAT scores are the only criteria that matter.
You are assuming that higher GPAand higher MCAT scores = better doctors.

He is assuming nothing of the sort. This has been explained to you many times. Why do you persist in misrepresenting your opponents on this issue? At some point it stops looking like an innocent misunderstanding on your part and starts looking like a deliberate strawman.

One more time. When a black guy with a 506 MCAT has a good chance of getting admitted and an Asian guy with a 506 MCAT has a negligible chance of getting admitted, it follows that either the admissions officers are discriminating against Asians or else that Asian applicants are systematically worse than black applicants on some other criterion of student desirability being applied. There is no value judgment involved here, no reliance on anyone's opinion about whether MCAT is important or whether something else is more important or whether there's any correlation with doctor quality -- you could bloody well assume the only important criterion is birth order and a middle child makes the best doctor if you like and the admission probability argument is still decisive. It is an inference about what admissions officers do, not about what they ought to do.

Funny. This person said: "He is assuming nothing of the sort." regarding "You are further assuming that GPA and MCAT scores are the only criteria that matter."

And then spends the rest of the post actually relying solely on MCATs regarding admission into schools.

In the first place, no, I'm doing nothing of the sort. I explicitly brought up the existence of additional criteria. In the second place, even if I were "relying solely on MCATs", how the bejesus do you figure that conflicts with Derec assuming nothing of the sort? Derec isn't responsible for my posts.

And in the third place, I'm trying to explain a point of mathematics to you which you appear to be determinedly trying not to understand. I could perfectly well explain the mathematics without any reference to MCATs, but if I did that, you'd just say "No, let's not talk about ridiculous hypotheticals. Let's talk about the real world, not analogies.", wouldn't you?

So if you think medical schools aren't discriminating against Asians, what criterion do you think admissions officers are applying alongside their reliance on MCAT that's making up for some students' lower MCAT scores?

Did it again!

Did what again, mention non-MCAT criteria?

To answer the question, probably curriculum (what did they major in if not that stupid pre-med bs degree), in school activity, out of school activity, jobs, internships, letters of recommendation, etc...

Thank you. So in your opinion, how do Asian students compare with black students on curriculum, in school activity, out of school activity, jobs, internships, letters of recommendation, etc.? Do black students major in harder subjects, participate in more impressive in and out of school activities, have more jobs and internships, and submit better letters of recommendation than Asian students?

And why do you think Asian students are worse than black students at satisfying that criterion?

I'm going to paraphrase a wise person by saying she is assuming nothing of the sort.

It was a rhetorical question. My point was that if she's assuming nothing of the sort, then additional criteria being applied cannot account for the MCAT discrepancy. Black students typically being better than Asian students on, say, internships, would result in an Asian student typically needing that higher MCAT score to gain admission, to make up for not having an internship. Black students typically being equal to Asian students on internships, in contrast, would not result in an Asian student typically needing a higher MCAT score to gain admission, because there's no internship discrepancy to make up for.

Saying something like "Asians needing higher MCATs doesn't show anti-Asian racial discrimination because there's another criterion also being taken into account." is only half an argument. To make it into a whole argument, one would need to say "Asians needing higher MCATs doesn't show anti-Asian racial discrimination because there's another criterion also being taken into account and black students score higher on that criterion." I asked Toni that rhetorical question to challenge her to turn her half-argument into a whole argument.

The better question is, why in the heck do you think you know anything regarding medical school admission applications and the things any particular applicant have to offer?

I think I know anything regarding medical school admission applications and the things any particular applicant has to offer because I am able and willing to do math. Are you?

The statistics indicate that on average Asians have the higher scores and have the higher rate of acceptance. Blacks have lower scores and notably lower rate of acceptance.

Blacks appear to have a lower rate of acceptance because the difference between their average scores and what they need to gain admission is greater than the corresponding difference for Asians. Black applicants on average have 0.20 lower GPA and 8.2 lower MCAT than what they probably need; Asian applicants on average have 0.13 lower GPA and 5.2 lower MCAT than what they probably need. Which is to say, relatively low scoring Asians are observed to be more likely to self-select out of applying in the first place. Black students with mediocre credentials are observed to be more likely to roll the dice and apply anyway. I suspect this is because the former expect admissions officers to be looking for an excuse to reject them and the latter expect admissions officers will be looking to cut them slack, but that's speculation.

 

[Bomb#20]

He is assuming nothing of the sort. This has been explained to you many times. Why do you persist in misrepresenting your opponents on this issue? At some point it stops looking like an innocent misunderstanding on your part and starts looking like a deliberate strawman.

One more time. When a black guy with a 506 MCAT has a good chance of getting admitted and an Asian guy with a 506 MCAT has a negligible chance of getting admitted, it follows that either the admissions officers are discriminating against Asians or else that Asian applicants are systematically worse than black applicants on some other criterion of student desirability being applied. There is no value judgment involved here, no reliance on anyone's opinion about whether MCAT is important or whether something else is more important or whether there's any correlation with doctor quality -- you could bloody well assume the only important criterion is birth order and a middle child makes the best doctor if you like and the admission probability argument is still decisive. It is an inference about what admissions officers do, not about what they ought to do.

So if you think medical schools aren't discriminating against Asians, what criterion do you think admissions officers are applying alongside their reliance on MCAT that's making up for some students' lower MCAT scores? And why do you think Asian students are worse than black students at satisfying that criterion?

I think that admissions to medical schools is not the same thing as winning a race, with the highest GPAs and MCAT scores across=fastest speeds.

Everybody here agrees with that. You keep arguing against a policy no one advocated.

I think that many high achieving students apply to all the ‘ best’ medical schools based solely upon the perceived status of the medical school instead of whether a particular small set of medical schools is actually a good match for what they envision their future career to be.

If it's true that what Asian students are worse at than black students is applying to "safety" schools instead of "best" schools, then yes, that could in theory account for some or all of the discrepancy in test scores without anti-Asian racial discrimination by schools. But I'll have to ask, do you have any actual evidence for this hypothesis? It seems staggeringly implausible. Medical student wannabes apply to sixteen or more schools on average; and the average Asian student applies to even more than the average black student does. The notion that Asians systematically don't have the wit to deploy at least a few of those sixteen-plus applications to lower-tier schools they have the best chance of getting into strains credulity.

However it is unlikely that medical schools are as blinded by perfect scores as you seem to be

You are not a competent judge of what others seem to be blinded by. I am not blinded by perfect scores; moreover, I do not seem to be. You trumped that accusation up out of whole cloth for the purpose of giving yourself permission not to think about my actual argument.

I thu k looking solely at average scores obscures a great deal of detail about students who are admitted.

Very true. To get unassailable proof we'd need individual schools to publish their breakdowns of how many students of each ethnicity applied and how many were accepted at each score level. But of course schools invariably choose not to publish that information, because it would open them up to endless discrimination lawsuits.

And feeds the bigotry of those who think that only test scores do matter.

That's a bigoted thing for you to say. Nobody thinks only test scores matter; you're simply peddling a stereotype your ideology puts out about the infidel.

 

[Politesse]

All this blather about MCAT, SAT, and GPA is utterly irrelevant to the topic of the thread. ... any discussion of US qualifications, and US university admissions policies, doesn't seem to me to have a single iota of relevance to the admission of a British citizen with English qualifications to Cambridge, and US biases in university entrance are highly unlikely to be closely duplicated in English universities, or in any way relevant to Oxbridge...

But, but the USA is the world leader in everything, even British universities.

You jest; but in fact that's correct. Ideas that become fashionable in European leftist circles usually got that way by first becoming fashionable in American leftist circles -- "Imitation is the sincerest form of plagiarism." This is a case in point. Cambridge explicitly states that it seeks faculty "diversity", and that is a goal the British did not invent for themselves.

The pursuit of "diversity" is a meme that was first adopted at Harvard; it spread from there to the rest of the U.S. as a consequence of uniquely American historical accidents; subsequently the rest of western civilization copied America. If America hadn't had a race-blind equal-protection amendment in our Constitution in tension with our leftist academic culture, plus a 4-to-4 split on affirmative action in its 1970s Supreme Court, hardly any of us today would have ever heard of "diversity". But the University of California racially discriminated against a doctor wannabe, so he sued for admission to the medical school. Four justices said equal protection means the state can't discriminate against white people, four justices said discriminating against white people is a necessary remedy for a long history of discriminating against black people, and one justice who was up on his Harvard trivia said past wrongs aren't a good enough reason to violate the rights of innocent people now, but if the goal is to improve everyone's education by exposing them all to a more diverse student body then it's okay. So he cast the deciding vote, ruled in favor of the student and against the university on the narrow grounds that they were running a fixed quota system to fix past discrimination instead of kinder-gentler one-factor-among-many discrimination for the sake of diversity like Harvard was practicing, and then the entire American left pivoted and decided if they had to say the magic word "diversity" in order to legally get the affirmative action programs they wanted then they would say that magic word. That's how the "diversity" meme went from a Harvard curiosity to an America-wide phenomenon, and thence to the rest of the world.

That... entire history is remarkably out of touch with reality. Where do you get this stuff?