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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Check out this chart to see exactly how this effect plays out in admissions to medical schools.

[img]http://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/medschool.jpg[/img]

Article discussing it is here:

[url]http://www.aei.org/publication/acceptance-rates-at-us-medical-schools-in-2015-reveal-ongoing-discrimination-against-asian-americans-and-whites/[/url][/quote]

You seem to believe this chart demonstrates a problem But it's important that we have doctors from different backgrounds/experiences, because it absolutely affects their practice of medicine and their ability to connect with patients. Men on average have higher MCAT scores than women--should they get preference in med school admissions? Isn't it important that we have female doctors as well as male ones?

There is so much that goes into being a good doctor that is not about achievement scores. You need some baseline level of intelligence to be a good doctor, but beyond that baseline, being a good doctor is about so much more than test scores or even innate intelligence--perhaps especially in the primary care specialties, where we have a shortage of providers. In fact, as discussed in the piece below, personality tests are more highly correlated with medical school success than are measures of cognition.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/15/health/14chen.html

High performance on multiple choice tests is not what makes someone a good doctor.[/quote]

So someone having dark pigmentation in their skin helps you determine that he or she has these other important, non-score-related traits?[/quote]

No, but recommendations, volunteer work and extracurriculars, and interviews might. [/quote]

Am I to believe that there is such a high concentration of these other good traits among Hispanics and Blacks compared to Whites and Asians that they get accepted into medical school at 5-10x the rate with similar college grades and MCAT scores?[/quote]

The AEI article takes data from the American Association of Medical Colleges and reformats it in the most inflammatory way possible, and then leaves off some pretty critical information. The original data from the American Association of Medical Colleges can be found here:

https://www.aamc.org/download/321498/data/factstablea18.pdf

And specifically, if you look at this table, some crucial facts can be gleaned:

https://www.aamc.org/download/321498/data/factstablea18.pdf

The average total MCAT score of applicants:

All applicants--501.8
White--504.0
Asian--503.1
Hispanic--496.2
Black--494.1

IOW, the average black applicant had an MCAT score that was 2 percent lower than the average white applicant. Not exactly scandalous.

What is also shown in this table (conveniently omitted from the AEI piece), is the racial make-up of the total applicant pool and the total matriculant pool:

All applicants--53,042
White--25,544 (48%)
Asian--10,906 (21%)
Hispanic--3,300 (6%)
Black--4,344 (8%)
Mixed race/ethnicity--4,734 (9%)

All matriculants--21,030
White--10,828 (51%)
Asian--4,475 (21%)
Hispanic--1,335 (6%)
Black--1,497 (7%)
Mixed race/ethnicity--1,858 (9%)

So admission rates (matriculants divided by applicants) are:

White--42%
Asian--41%
Hispanic--40%
Black--34%
Mixed race/ethnicity--39%

And the average total MCAT scores of matriculants are:

White--510.1
Asian--510.5
Hispanic--503.0
Black--502.5
Mixed race/ethnicity--508.1

In 2016-2017, the average black matriculant had a total MCAT score that was [b]1.5 percent lower[/b] than the average white matriculant.

Happy to be corrected if my math or reading of the AAMC's data is off.[/quote]

Your data doesn't seem to match up the data from this chart.  Granted the chart is from 2013-2016 (a different date range) but just looking at the average matriculant MCAT scores from this chart, Blacks score 27.3 and whites score 29.2  that is a 7% difference, not 1.5%.  Also you don't touch on grades at all, which is another big difference.

What the chart is attempting to show, and does show quite well I believe, is that it is much easier to get into medical school with the same MCAT score and GPA as a black of Hispanic applicant than it is as a white or Asian applicant.[/quote]

Yeah, that's another thing that's interesting about AEI's "analysis." The MCAT scoring scale appears to have changed recently, but according to this chart/article:

http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Medical_College_Admission_Test

the average scaled MCAT score of test takers in 2015 was 499 (which is very close to the average of 2016 applicants I noted above--502). According to the wiki chart, a score of 500 is equal to a score of 25 on the previous scale, which are the scores at the 50th percentile. AEI's chart shows the acceptance rates over a 3 year period with MCAT scores from 24 to 32, or roughly the 47th percentile to the 89th percentile. This is not the full range of scores. Presumably as you drop down below the 50th percentile of scores, you will see acceptance rates decline precipitously for all races, as even the AEI chart suggests. IOW, as I stated in a previous post, there is likely some baseline level of "smarts" that med schools think you need to demonstrate to get in, and below that you probably aren't getting in. But once you meet that baseline, the score itself becomes less important and other factors become more important.

I don't touch on grades at all because grades cannot be standardized. There is rampant grade inflation at some schools and very little at others. There's no way to know if a 3.5 at one school is any different from a 3.6 at another.

What the AEI chart shows is that, at any MCAT/GPA (at or above the 47th percentile), it is easier to get into med school if you are black or Hispanic. What the AEI chart doesn't show is the racial composition of each column. Since only 8% of med school applicants are black, and black students have, on average, lower test scores, it's entirely possible (likely even) that in the top group of applicants shown in the AEI chart, those who had MCAT scores between 30-32 and GPAs between 3.6-3.79, a disproportionate number of them were white or Asian vs. black or Hispanic. In that category of applicants, maybe only 2 or 3 percent are black--at any rate, some number a fair bit smaller than 8%. That small percentage of black students constitutes the creme de la creme of black applicants to med school, based on scores and GPA. Med schools are deciding to take almost all of those applicants. If we want some of the nation's doctors to be black, those are the applicants we want to be accepted, no? Alternatively, if we want to admit students just on GPA and scores, then we might be effectively deciding that only 2% of the nation's doctors are going to be black, even though 13% of the population is black and a significant share of these people have been shown to prefer black doctors.

What the chart also doesn't show is whether a difference in average MCAT score of 27.3 (for blacks) vs 29.2 (for whites) or a difference in average GPA of 3.48 (for blacks) vs. 3.73 (for whites) has any meaningful impact on success in med school and beyond.[/quote]

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