MCATs, Affirmative Action, and DEI, Oh My

[Gospel]

This actually makes me wonder something. If the problem is preferential treatment, then why does the discussion seem so overwhelmingly concerned with preferential treatment when the beneficiary is Black or Hispanic? White applicants lose positions to other White applicants all the damn time, and some of those people absolutely got an advantage that had nothing to do with being the most qualified person in the room. Legacy status, family connections, referrals, who you know, institutional connections, etc.

Someone else loses that seat or job when that happens too. Yet nobody sees a rejected White applicant and immediately starts wondering which other White guy stole his spot through connections or preferential treatment.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ... Yes, they do. Perhaps marginally less so in initial hiring, but when it comes to promotions, they absolutely do.

But let the person who got the opportunity be Black, Hispanic, or Asian, groups that together make up roughly 38% of the population, and suddenly everybody wants to know whose spot the ‘handout’ supposedly cost.

Let me provide you with an illustration that might shift your perspective. Assume that the hiring agent has made public announcements that they are dedicated to increasing the portion of their workforce that is white, and that having a higher number of white employees is both good for their business and good for society as a whole.

When a white person gets a cushy and lucrative position... don't you think the black and hispanic people who applied for the job might be suspicious of whether that white guy was actually better than them at the job? Or whether they may have been less capable, but had the desired skin color in keeping with the employer's stated objective?

Having more black or hispanic or pick-your-group-of-interest people in a field is not at all a problem. Having employers and universities have a stated objective of intentionally increasing their portion of pick-your-group-of-interest people is the problem.

I agree that things like AA/DEI are a pretty ridiculous and clumsy way of dealing with racism. America has historically been much better at trying to manage the effects of discrimination than actually bringing the hammer down on the people doing the discriminating. Hell, look at Reconstruction. We fought an entire Civil War, then turned around, pardoned a bunch of Confederate thugs and watched many of them walk right back into positions of political power.

So instead of consistently slapping discriminatory behavior with the book, we eventually ended up with policies that basically say, “Okay, since we're not interested in stopping those people from discriminating, let's put something discriminating on paper to give black people a fair shot.”

IMO, AA/DEI is treating the symptom instead of the disease. But I’m actually less bothered by AA/DEI itself than I am by the argument always being about minorities getting positions they didn’t fully earn on merit. Especially considering all the white women enjoying its benefits.

I think AA served a beneficial purpose when it was first introduced, but I don't think it's really necessary any more. At this point, DEI (the modern incarnation of AA) is counterproductive - it ends up calling into question the capabilities of minorities and women hired by a company waving a DEI flag. There's no way around people questioning whether those who were hired or promoted are objectively the best, or whether it's just politically or socially convenient.

The problem with this post is you're taking my crizism and applying it people not a member of this forum. I'm specifically talking about members on this forum that bitch about AA/DEI. It has exclusively been about black and brown people.

This actually makes me wonder something. If the problem is preferential treatment, then why does the discussion seem so overwhelmingly concerned with preferential treatment when the beneficiary is Black or Hispanic? White applicants lose positions to other White applicants all the damn time, and some of those people absolutely got an advantage that had nothing to do with being the most qualified person in the room. Legacy status, family connections, referrals, who you know, institutional connections, etc.

Someone else loses that seat or job when that happens too. Yet nobody sees a rejected White applicant and immediately starts wondering which other White guy stole his spot through connections or preferential treatment.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ... Yes, they do. Perhaps marginally less so in initial hiring, but when it comes to promotions, they absolutely do.

But let the person who got the opportunity be Black, Hispanic, or Asian, groups that together make up roughly 38% of the population, and suddenly everybody wants to know whose spot the ‘handout’ supposedly cost.

Let me provide you with an illustration that might shift your perspective. Assume that the hiring agent has made public announcements that they are dedicated to increasing the portion of their workforce that is white, and that having a higher number of white employees is both good for their business and good for society as a whole.

When a white person gets a cushy and lucrative position... don't you think the black and hispanic people who applied for the job might be suspicious of whether that white guy was actually better than them at the job? Or whether they may have been less capable, but had the desired skin color in keeping with the employer's stated objective?

Having more black or hispanic or pick-your-group-of-interest people in a field is not at all a problem. Having employers and universities have a stated objective of intentionally increasing their portion of pick-your-group-of-interest people is the problem.

I agree that things like AA/DEI are a pretty ridiculous and clumsy way of dealing with racism. America has historically been much better at trying to manage the effects of discrimination than actually bringing the hammer down on the people doing the discriminating. Hell, look at Reconstruction. We fought an entire Civil War, then turned around, pardoned a bunch of Confederate thugs and watched many of them walk right back into positions of political power.

So instead of consistently slapping discriminatory behavior with the book, we eventually ended up with policies that basically say, “Okay, since we're not interested in stopping those people from discriminating, let's put something discriminating on paper to give black people a fair shot.”

IMO, AA/DEI is treating the symptom instead of the disease. But I’m actually less bothered by AA/DEI itself than I am by the argument always being about minorities getting positions they didn’t fully earn on merit. Especially considering all the white women enjoying its benefits.

I think AA served a beneficial purpose when it was first introduced, but I don't think it's really necessary any more. At this point, DEI (the modern incarnation of AA) is counterproductive - it ends up calling into question the capabilities of minorities and women hired by a company waving a DEI flag. There's no way around people questioning whether those who were hired or promoted are objectively the best, or whether it's just politically or socially convenient.

Me thinks you’re reading “nobody” much more broadly than I meant it. I’m talking about this discussion and the people making the AA/DEI argument here, not claiming that nobody anywhere complains about nepotism, favoritism or White people benefiting from connections. My point is that here, when people talk about somebody receiving an opportunity they supposedly didn’t earn, the example keeps becoming a Black or Hispanic applicant taking a spot from a White or Asian applicant. Of course people complain about nepotism and favoritism involving White people. That actually reinforces my point. We recognize all kinds of reasons someone might get an advantage over a supposedly “better” candidate without immediately turning it into a demographic grievance. What I’m questioning is why, here, the outrage over AA/DEI preferential treatment has been so specifically attached to Black and Hispanic people as the “spot takers.” Your hypothetical explains why an explicit racial preference could create suspicion. Fine. I’m against that kind of preference too. But it doesn’t really answer the selective framing I was talking about.

This is exactly why I tend to avoid debating you. You seem to have a real problem paying attention to the details of what I actually wrote. Bomb does the same thing, he took my specific point about White women, where race was part of the point, and quietly turned it into an argument about women in general. It’s a silly way to argue. If you don’t want to address the point I actually made, fine. Just don’t address it. I’d much rather that than have you rewrite my argument into something easier for you to respond to and then argue against that instead. It's not like I'm not willing to concede when my argument is flawed or when I’m wrong. But I can’t do that when the argument being criticized isn’t actually the one I made.

 

[laughing dog]

They aren't suggesting how to measure it, they have a history of discrimination, why should we trust them to be telling the truth??

What is "it" and who are "they"?

 

[laughing dog]

There isn't some one-trick-pony "metric" that can magically tell you whether someone is a good candidate for medical school or not.

Of course there isn't. But if you want to get rid of or deemphasize MCAT and GPA you have to replace their part in the admissions framework with something else.

That’s already occurring. It’s the reason for your whining.

No. We were objecting to the unfairness. And the response was to look for ways to not test rather than actually mend their ways. [/quote}

I get that you object to what you perceive is unfair to white men.

 

[laughing dog]

So you think banks should be required to incur higher risk just to give more people in worse risk neighborhoods "fucking houses"?

Yes. Obviously. People need homes.

And herein lies the problem that a lot of us have with the left. You want things to happen but you don't actually want to incur the costs, instead pushing them off onto some other so you can pretend they disappear.

And the problem with the humane people have with people like you is that you wish to ignore the problems of homelessness.

No, I don't with to ignore it. I just expect any solution to first pass the test of whether it's feasible. And the left consistently ignores this.

Once you start in with "left", history indicates your post is going to be ridiculous.

The underlying problem that caused the housing collapse is decreeing high risk loans were no worse than normal loans.

The underlying problem that caused the housing collapse was the greed by lenders and the subsequent fraudalent securitization in the bundling of mortgages

The intended effect was more loans for blacks, but when you force something to be mispriced people jump on it.

Wow.

 

[Bomb#20]

The notion that an Asian with an MCAT of 509 who gets turned away for being Asian from the same school that delightedly snaps up a Native American with a 509 MCAT has received "fair treatment", and is "represented" because the school accepted some other Asian with a 515 MCAT, is absurd on its face. The guys who got in represent no one but themselves; and claiming the guy who got rejected on account of his race was treated fairly because of what color some other guy is is an utter betrayal of the whole concept of fairness.

Is your example fact based or simply hypothetical?

Both -- it's a hypothetical specific example of what's implied by the statistical facts. A Native American with a 509 MCAT is 1.0 standard deviation above the average admitted Native American, so he's very likely to be accepted. An Asian with a 509 MCAT is 0.9 standard deviations below the average admitted Asian, so he's very likely to be rejected.

What about the Asian with 505 on the MCAT that worked while going to college to help support his mother and brother getting in over the Asian with a 511 that didn't have to manage any level of adversity?

What about him? He’s 1.5 SD below the MCAT mean, which means he’s way the heck out on the tail, which means he and people like him are so rare they have little impact on the overall statistics. So good for him for being awesome and good for the school for being open-minded and looking at the whole picture, but I’m not following what point you’re making.

For people that aren't making this about race, all you are talking about is race.

It’s the thread topic, dude. If you think we shouldn’t talk about race, take it up with Don.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

But I’m actually less bothered by AA/DEI itself than I am by the argument always being about minorities getting positions they didn’t fully earn on merit.

That's the whole idea of AA/DEI though.

No, it is not the whole idea of AA/DEI. The idea of the two is to promote fair treatment and representation for all people, especially historically underrepresented minorities. ...

And that's a perfectly coherent argument for racial gerrymandering. But a school or a profession is not a bleeding legislature. People don't become students or doctors or whatever in order to represent anyone.

The notion that an Asian with an MCAT of 509 who gets turned away for being Asian from the same school that delightedly snaps up a Native American with a 509 MCAT has received "fair treatment", and is "represented" because the school accepted some other Asian with a 515 MCAT, is absurd on its face. The guys who got in represent no one but themselves; and claiming the guy who got rejected on account of his race was treated fairly because of what color some other guy is is an utter betrayal of the whole concept of fairness.

Of one must choose between two candidates with the same MCAT score, why shouldn’t the one who is from a group with less representation be admitted?

But they aren't remotely equal in this case.

Make the case.

Make the case that MCAT plus GPA should be the only things that count.

As I’ve said, I know people who are quite intelligent t n the science way, with stellar GOAs and MCAT scores who dud not get into Ned school because they were not particularly good at the people portion of the job. I like them, abd respect them but no one who knew them thought they’d be good doctors despite everyone being blown away by their brilliance.

I don't see anyone saying it should only be MCAT and GPA. We are saying it should be things that can be measured with a consistent yardstick. None of us are rejecting other yardsticks, we are just asking that they be fair. And we are noting that no such fair yardstick has been suggested.

 

[laughing dog]

I don't see anyone saying it should only be MCAT and GPA. We are saying it should be things that can be measured with a consistent yardstick. None of us are rejecting other yardsticks, we are just asking that they be fair. And we are noting that no such fair yardstick has been suggested.

So in the absence of the holy grail of admissions as seen by you, you are saying those are only metrics that should be used.

 

[Politesse]

But I’m actually less bothered by AA/DEI itself than I am by the argument always being about minorities getting positions they didn’t fully earn on merit.

That's the whole idea of AA/DEI though.

No, it is not the whole idea of AA/DEI. The idea of the two is to promote fair treatment and representation for all people, especially historically underrepresented minorities. ...

And that's a perfectly coherent argument for racial gerrymandering. But a school or a profession is not a bleeding legislature. People don't become students or doctors or whatever in order to represent anyone.

The notion that an Asian with an MCAT of 509 who gets turned away for being Asian from the same school that delightedly snaps up a Native American with a 509 MCAT has received "fair treatment", and is "represented" because the school accepted some other Asian with a 515 MCAT, is absurd on its face. The guys who got in represent no one but themselves; and claiming the guy who got rejected on account of his race was treated fairly because of what color some other guy is is an utter betrayal of the whole concept of fairness.

Of one must choose between two candidates with the same MCAT score, why shouldn’t the one who is from a group with less representation be admitted?

But they aren't remotely equal in this case.

Make the case.

Make the case that MCAT plus GPA should be the only things that count.

As I’ve said, I know people who are quite intelligent t n the science way, with stellar GOAs and MCAT scores who dud not get into Ned school because they were not particularly good at the people portion of the job. I like them, abd respect them but no one who knew them thought they’d be good doctors despite everyone being blown away by their brilliance.

I don't see anyone saying it should only be MCAT and GPA. We are saying it should be things that can be measured with a consistent yardstick. None of us are rejecting other yardsticks, we are just asking that they be fair. And we are noting that no such fair yardstick has been suggested.

What do you propose?

 

[Bomb#20]

... You seem to have a real problem paying attention to the details of what I actually wrote. Bomb does the same thing, he took my specific point about White women, where race was part of the point, and quietly turned it into an argument about women in general. It’s a silly way to argue. ...

I'm sorry, maybe your point flew unheeded over my head. I took you to be hypothesizing that your observation was caused by Derec being racist, so I pointed out a couple of simpler explanations*. If you had a larger purpose you'd like me to address, let me know what it was and where you want me to go with it.

(* Which I apparently did hoping Derec would repay me with sexual favors. [/whiteknight])

 

[ZiprHead]

The notion that an Asian with an MCAT of 509 who gets turned away for being Asian from the same school that delightedly snaps up a Native American with a 509 MCAT has received "fair treatment", and is "represented" because the school accepted some other Asian with a 515 MCAT, is absurd on its face. The guys who got in represent no one but themselves; and claiming the guy who got rejected on account of his race was treated fairly because of what color some other guy is is an utter betrayal of the whole concept of fairness.

Of one must choose between two candidates with the same MCAT score, why shouldn’t the one who is from a group with less representation be admitted?

But they aren't remotely equal in this case.

How so?

 

[Bomb#20]

Make the case that MCAT plus GPA should be the only things that count.

I'm not going to go around this loop with you yet again. Stop strawmanning infidels.

Strawman'ing? The entire thread has generally focused on four metrics for medical school admission.

Yes, strawmanning. What the thread focuses on does not tell you whether I said MCAT plus GPA should be the only things that count. I didn't. Toni knows perfectly well that I didn't. She knows I didn't say it, or imply it, or tacitly rely on it, or even think it. She is propagandizing shamelessly instead of trying to make a substantive case, because she is who she is and that's her schtick. She makes that accusation over and over against a lot of people, and explaining to her that that's not her opponents' position, and clarifying what their position is, and explaining exactly why their position does not entail that MCAT plus GPA should be the only things that count, does not convince her to stop misrepresenting them. I have already been around this loop with Toni more than once. So has Derec. So has Loren. And in her many autobiographical posts she has repeatedly related her strong math and science background, so the possibility that she just isn't good enough at STEM stuff to ever be able to grasp the difference between what people have been saying to her and her caricature of their position is not plausible. She is not an idiot and this is not her first rodeo.

We know medical schools are having to choose between a lot of very good candidates. Candidates have to include:

• Transcript
• Standardized Test Scores
• Resume including
  • Internships
  • Work
  • Community Service
  • Other Extra-curricular activities
• Recommendation Letters
• Essay?
• Interview(s)
• Personal History

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.

For example, if someone says "They reject Asians and accept Native Americans with 509 MCATs; that sure looks like racial discrimination.", then to reply, "But they look at recommendation letters too." explains nothing. It isn't a counterargument. It's immaterial. It's noise. It's no different from saying "But they also flip a coin and give extra points if it comes up heads". Adding a random factor cannot cause a systematic discrepancy. Schools can throw in as many random factors as they please but if after all of them are added in they still reject Asians and accept Native Americans with the same MCATs, then it still looks like racial discrimination. 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?

Job interviews often don't care as much about metrics (if at all), as much as personality, compatibility, and competence. Interviewers are often measuring intangibles, signs that they look for in a good match for employment. The graduation rates for medical students in spite of the MCAT is incredible. While some have spun 92% graduation rate for a relatively meager MCAT score as awful, 92% is empirically high, all things considered. Which implies the medical schools are looking for and finding the right attributes for medical school students even if the MCAT and/or GPA wasn't as shiny.

That's a bizarre inference. Graduation rates for med students were high in the 1950s too; do you think that implies the medical schools were looking for and finding the right attributes for medical school students back then? They were discriminating against black students! All a high grad rate means is they're good at excluding students who can't cut it. It doesn't show they aren't also excluding a lot of students who can cut it -- and when they also exclude students who can cut it, the grad rate tells us nothing about how they choose which capable students to exclude.

So in conclusion:

• Asians are admitted at near the highest rate of any class of people (and represent a much high percentage (300% or greater) of students relative to their percentage of population)
• There is a clear relation of higher scores means higher acceptance rates
• An insanely high super-majority of accepted medical students graduate
• We know for a fact we have a terribly incomplete data set regarding Med School applicants to even consider the ability to compare them

I can't even see what the problem is, let alone evidence to support it being a "problem".

I doubt you care about the problems I pointed out -- that Toni used strawmen and that LD's justification for AA made no sense; so I presume you mean you can't see what the problem with AA is. You should probably ask the people griping about AA -- that's not me. But if you want my take on it anyway, you know what the problem is -- you said it yourself in the other thread: "DEI at most is thumbing the scale at times." The people griping about AA are griping about the thumb on the scale. Asians being admitted at high rates isn't a reason to think there isn't a thumb on the scale against them; Asians being admitted at high rates is precisely the reason schools put a thumb on the scale against them. It's a rerun of the 1920s, when schools put a thumb on the scale against Jews because they were getting admitted at such high rates.

As for why people keep treating the thumb on the scale as a problem, it looks to me like there are two basic issues people have with it. Some people are just philosophically opposed to thumbs on scales -- they see it as unfair or dishonest and they prioritize fairness and honesty. And some people have a rule-of-law issue with it -- whatever one might think of the merits of thumbs on scales in the abstract, this particular thumb on this particular scale is illegal. Congress passed a law against it in 1964, the Civil Rights Act: the same law that says you can't thumb the scale against black people says you can't thumb the scale against any ethnicity. So when the government condones the thumb on the scale, it's choosing not to enforce the law when the victim is Asian. That's an Equal Protection of the Law violation, same as if they had a law against stealing but never arrested people as long as they only stole from Asians. Some people think it's a bad idea to let governments do that sort of thing.

 

[Toni]

They reject Asians with a 509 but accept NA with a 509 is completely made up.

It’s a complete fantasy that Asians are being discriminated against in medtcal school admissions. They are accepted at the second highest rate, with only a tiny difference between Asian and White admissions.

A whole lotta people are awfully invested in keeping black, Hispanic and Native American students ts out of med school.

 

[Bomb#20]

They reject Asians with a 509 but accept NA with a 509 is completely made up.

If so, then tell us, what usually happens when those two apply? Are they usually both admitted? Are they usually both rejected? Is the Asian accepted and the NA rejected?

It’s a complete fantasy that Asians are being discriminated against in medtcal school admissions. They are accepted at the second highest rate, with only a tiny difference between Asian and White admissions.

It’s a complete fantasy that you can tell whether a group is being discriminated against just from its acceptance rate when you mush all the different preparation levels together and only look at the lump sum.

A whole lotta people are awfully invested in keeping black, Hispanic and Native American students ts out of med school.

You're awfully invested in trumping up baseless ad hominems against unbelievers.

 

[Gospel]

... You seem to have a real problem paying attention to the details of what I actually wrote. Bomb does the same thing, he took my specific point about White women, where race was part of the point, and quietly turned it into an argument about women in general. It’s a silly way to argue. ...

I'm sorry, maybe your point flew unheeded over my head. I took you to be hypothesizing that your observation was caused by Derec being racist, so I pointed out a couple of simpler explanations*. If you had a larger purpose you'd like me to address, let me know what it was and where you want me to go with it.

(* Which I apparently did hoping Derec would repay me with sexual favors. [/whiteknight])

I appreciate the opportunity to clarify. My point wasn't that Derec is secretly racist, and it wasn't about women in general. That's exactly why changing “White women” to “women” changes the argument. I'm talking specifically about the framing in this thread. The title is “MCATs, Affirmative Action, and DEI, Oh My.” Nothing about that limits the discussion to Black and Hispanic beneficiaries. Yet when people here start talking about preferential treatment, lower qualifications, or somebody “taking” somebody else's position, the beneficiaries being scrutinized are overwhelmingly Black and Hispanic.

That's why I brought up White women specifically. They have also benefited from affirmative-action/equal-opportunity efforts aimed at discrimination, yet nobody here seems interested in figuring out which White or Asian man had his position “taken” by a White woman. I'm not saying that proves anybody is racist. I'm asking why the rhetoric about supposedly undeserving beneficiaries is so selectively focused on Black and Hispanic people when the subject we're supposedly discussing is AA/DEI more broadly.

That's the point I wanted addressed. Turning “White women” into “women” removes the very comparison I was making.

Anyway, even if someone argues that White women, on average, have higher MCAT scores than Black or Hispanic applicants, that doesn’t really address my point. A higher group average doesn’t mean every White woman admitted had a higher score than every person who was rejected. If a White woman with a 510 gets a seat over an Asian or White man with a 515, then by the logic being used throughout this thread, somebody with a lower score just “took” a higher-scoring applicant’s spot. Yet nobody here seems remotely interested.

And White women aren't outsiders to the history of affirmative action and equal-opportunity policy. Women were explicitly included in federal affirmative-action requirements decades ago. So my question remains: in a thread supposedly about affirmative action and DEI as a whole, why does the discussion of supposedly undeserving beneficiaries keep revolving around Black and Hispanic people?

 

[Gospel]

They reject Asians with a 509 but accept NA with a 509 is completely made up.

It’s a complete fantasy that Asians are being discriminated against in medtcal school admissions. They are accepted at the second highest rate, with only a tiny difference between Asian and White admissions.

A whole lotta people are awfully invested in keeping black, Hispanic and Native American students ts out of med school.

This is actually the part of the argument I find more interesting. I don’t have a problem saying that if a school is explicitly giving someone an advantage because of race, that’s a thumb on the scale. I’m against that. However we can't look at racial averages and act as though we can reconstruct individual admissions decisions from them.

An Asian applicant averaging higher MCAT scores than a Native American or Black applicant doesn’t tell me that this particular Asian applicant lost his seat to this particular lower-scoring minority applicant because of race. To establish that, I’d want to know what the school actually considered in those two applications and whether race changed the outcome.

Bomb is right that simply saying “there are other criteria” doesn’t automatically explain a systematic racial difference. But the reverse is also true: a systematic racial difference in aggregate outcomes doesn’t automatically tell us the causal reason for each individual decision. If we have evidence that a school deliberately gave racial preference, criticize the racial preference. Hell, I’ll join you. But if all we have is “Group A averaged 515 and Group B averaged 505,” that does not establish that some identifiable 515 applicant was rejected because a 505 applicant of another race took his seat.

Those are two different claims, and I don’t see why opposing AA/DEI requires me to pretend they’re the same one.

Maybe part of what we’re seeing is simply competition within different score ranges rather than race. Applicants aren’t distributed evenly across the MCAT scale, and schools have a limited number of seats. If one group is heavily concentrated in a particular score range, applicants in that range could face much more competition from one another than applicants in another range. In that case, different acceptance rates by race could emerge even if race itself never entered the decision.

Especially when we’re looking at aggregate data, how do we know we’re not seeing differences in where applicants cluster, which schools they apply to, or how competitive those particular applicant pools are?

 

[Elixir]

I have never felt I should be first in line. I just don't like being pushed to the back because of the sins of others.

Oh boo hoo.
Do tell - when has that happened to you, and what harm did you suffer as a result?
Did some black girl get “your” job because DEI? Did they tell you “sorry Loren, you were the better candidate, but just barely, and not being black put you in second place.”

 

[Gospel]

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.

For example, if someone says "They reject Asians and accept Native Americans with 509 MCATs; that sure looks like racial discrimination.", then to reply, "But they look at recommendation letters too." explains nothing. It isn't a counterargument. It's immaterial. It's noise. It's no different from saying "But they also flip a coin and give extra points if it comes up heads". Adding a random factor cannot cause a systematic discrepancy. Schools can throw in as many random factors as they please but if after all of them are added in they still reject Asians and accept Native Americans with the same MCATs, then it still looks like racial discrimination. 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)_/¯

 

[Politesse]

I have never felt I should be first in line. I just don't like being pushed to the back because of the sins of others.

Oh boo hoo.
Do tell - when has that happened to you, and what harm did you suffer as a result?
Did some black girl get “your” job because DEI? Did they tell you “sorry Loren, you were the better candidate, but just barely, and not being black put you in second place.”

Every straight white guy in America who is ever told "no" believes firmly in his heart that it was because of discrimination against straight white guys.

I recently had a student challenge me on a SPELLING error on the grounds that it was racial discrimination. Well, he claimed it was a spelling error. He's written a slur in the discussion board. Accidentally.