<p>Well, they do clearly state that they use affirmative action to help compensate for the fact that standardized testing demonstrates certain racial disparities. So they do, indeed, openly state that numerical standards are lower.</p>
<p>The magnitude of the effect, however, is something that people have simply noticed over time as they watch their friends and other people on the Internet go through admissions cycles. This is definitely not scientifically rigorous, but it also seems vaguely correct to me.</p>
<p>That’s understandable, but I just don’t think it’s an accurate enough judgment. Those who post on these message boards and websites probably make up a very small percentage of the minorities who apply to these top schools. I’m not denying that Affirmative Action is a factor in admissions (as you said, these schools clearly state them), but so many people make it seem as if a minority with a crap stats have such an edge over a non-URM with decent stats. It sort of undermines the hard work of the URMs who’ve been accepted into these schools.</p>
<p>Well, we do in fact have documentation in medical school and undergraduate admissions, where the test-score gap makes up 20% (240 out of 1200) and 24% (10 out of 42) of the testable range. 10 out of 60 would be 17%, which would be smaller than either of those.</p>
<p>Moreover, we also know that approximately 100 AA’s score 165+ in any given year. If we assume that 7% of the T6 are AA’s (it was 14% in 1992), then that’s already 150+ slots, meaning that any AA who gets 165+ is basically guaranteed a T6 spot.</p>
<p>“As a rough rule of thumb, African-Americans average 10 points below, Hispanics 5 points below, and American Indians 3-5 points below” (Montauk 163).</p>
<p>It’s not so much a “10 point bonus,” but that the standard by which African-Americans applicants are judged is ten points lower than the standard that applies to typical applicants, since “African-Americans average 10 points below” the latter.</p>
<p>Technically I suppose it could be 1600 if we thought somebody could get EVERY SINGLE question wrong. But a blank SAT is scored as 400 points (on the 1600 scale), so I figured it made more sense to start there.</p>