"Race" in College Applications FAQ & Discussion 12

Applying to College
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@OHMomof2 You realize that elite schools like Harvard, Yale et al. did provide the data showing the SAT gaps between races. What do you think Espenshade and others were using to get their SAT gap numbers. They didn’t just make it up.

It was in the early 90’s that these elite schools stopped providing the SAT data for their students sorted by ethnicity. I’ll give you one guess “WHY?”

As to the OCR’s response to a complaint of discrimination against Asian applicants, it found “insufficient evidence” was provided. And strangely, rather than address the specific complaint that Asian student were held to a different standard, OCR’s investigation outlined how difficult it was for anyone to get into Princeton. What OCR did not do was request data from Princeton so they could place the applicants of different ethnicity and place them in similar buckets based upon test scores, grades, ec, etc. to see the relative acceptance rates of each ethnicity.

Had OCR done this, using your example of "that over 50% of 2400 SAT scorers were rejected, then the admit rate should be about the same for any ethnicity with such a score if admission was not affected by racial preferences. But my guess is that nearly 100% of Black students would have been accepted, but less than 50% of Asians and Whites would get their acceptance notices.

I believe that such data would be similar to American Association of Medical Colleges acceptance data which provides a matrix of MCAT scores by College GPA for each ethnicity.

Here is the Matrix for Black students:
https://www.aamc.org/download/321514/data/factstablea24-2.pdf

Here is the Matrix for White students
https://www.aamc.org/download/321518/data/factstablea24-4.pdf

Here is the Matrix for Asian students
https://www.aamc.org/download/321516/data/factstablea24-3.pdf

As you can see, at each bucket (MCAT + GPA) Blacks are accepted at higher rates than similarly qualified Whites and Asians.

Picking a middle bucket of 3.0-3.19 GPA and 27-29 MCAT (but you could take any bucket) the results are as follows:

Asian acceptance rate is 8,5%
White acceptance rate is 15%
Black acceptance rate is 58.9%

Blacks are accepted at nearly 700% higher than Asians and about 400% higher than Whites with similar qualifications. In order for an Asian student to have a similar acceptance rate, she would have to have a 3.2-3.29 GPA and 39-45 MCAT. Conversely, for a Black student to have similar acceptance rate as an Asian student, she would need only a 2.4-2.59 GPA and 21-23 MCAT.

Doesn’t this MCAT data seem very similar to Espenshade’s SAT gap data for college admission?

Elite colleges could and should provide data much like AAMC, but will not because it will show this type of GAP between ethnicity.

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Medical schools very explicitly say they want more black students.

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And again, espenshade’s data is ancient and basically irrelevant to admissions today.

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Professor Sanders has published the recent data from UCLA and nothing has changed. For goodness sakes how could this ever change in ten years. Generally speaking there are significant differences between racial groups for IQ/SAT’s just as there are for running speed quite independent of family income levels. All of this is old news and not remotely controversial among academics who study intelligence. Keep in mind that at HPYS a very large percent of admitted black students are not Americans but rather the children of elites from around the world. Being a URM is always a major hook in admission at every elite college but it takes far more than just that to be admitted to HPYS. The LAC’s are a different matter because far fewer URM’s choose to attend these small schools but admission remains competitive.

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@SAY Off topic, but didn’t you recently say that RD for non-athletes at selective LACs is Ivy-like in admissions difficulty?

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@OHMomof2 Oh yes they are, especially for white (and perhaps Asian) females, especially those from California + the Northeast

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@rlpak14 Since I’m familiar with the AAMC data on race and medical admissions let me weigh in on this argument. First of all your statistic on African Americans being accepted at a higher rate is false.

The acceptance rates for medical school by ethnicity 2015-16 are as follows:

Whites have a 44.2% Acceptance rate(11,087/25,101)

Asians have a 42.0% Acceptance rate(4,249/10,122)

Hispanics have a 42.2% Acceptance rate(1,359/3,259)

African American have a 34.1% Acceptance rate(1,394/4,087)

Native Americans have a 50.4% Acceptance rate(58/115)

Asians and Whites have a higher admit rate than African Americans overall and are atleast 19% more likely to be admitted. Natives seem to have the biggest boost in general mainly because it is super rare to get a Native American applicant since Natives only make up 0.22% of all applicants I doubt this makes a difference.

Source 1(Applicants and Acceptees by race 2013-14 through 2015-2016):
https://www.aamc.org/download/321480/data/factstablea12.pdf

What your doing is cherry picking specific MCAT scores and GPAs for different ethnic groups and comparing them. You have to realize that there are a number of historically black medical schools that account for many of the African American admits and the fact that African Americans rarely have a +3.8 GPA/36 MCAT score in comparison to Asians or Whites. This is very misleading on your part.

For instance, there are 3,350 White applicants, 1,832 Asian applicants, 161 Hispanic applicants and 46 African Americans who have a 3.8+ GPA and a 36+ MCAT score. As a percentage, 4.2% of White applicants, 5.96%of Asian applicants, 1.2% of Hispanics and 0.37% of African American applicants have these scores. It is a lot rarer to find an African American with these top scores than any other ethnicity and since they are great/rare scores African Americans would have the highest admission rate among this group of applicants. The acceptance rate for this groups is as follows:(Apps/Acceptances)

Whites have a 90.4% acceptance rate(3,028/3,350)

Asians have a 90.8% acceptance rate(1,663/1832)

Hispanics have a 94.4% acceptance rate(152/161)

African Americans have a 95.7% acceptance rate(44/46)

In this case, Asians with the same GPA and MCAT scores have a slightly higher admit rate than Whites. I just don’t see much of a difference here at all.

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@Ali1302 Nice try at spinning the facts and cherry picking top GPA and top MCAT as your baseline. You conflate overall acceptance rate per ethnicity to acceptance rate by qualifications. You even admit that Asians and Whites have the highest number of the most qualified students in absolute terms and by percentage of students sorted by ethnicity.

Here are the acceptance rate by MCAT Scores and ethnicity.

Blacks 5-14=0%, 15-17=0.9%. 18-20=3.2%, 21-23=19.7%, 24-26=54.7%, 27-29=73.5%, 30-32=82.9%, 33-35=86.0%
Asians 5-14=0%, 15-17=0.6%. 18-20=0.8%, 21-23= 3.6%, 24-26=11.9%, 27-29=28.3%, 30-32=50.6%, 33-35=68.2%
Whites 5-14=0%, 15-17=0.6%. 18-20=1.5%, 21-23= 5.6%, 24-26=18.1%, 27-29=37.8%, 30-32=57.8%, 33-35=72.6%

Here are the acceptance rate by GPA and ethnicity.

Blacks 1.47-1.99=5.9%,2.0-2.19=1.4%,2.2-2.39=5.1%,2.4-2.59=6.5%,2.6-2.79=10.6%,2.8-2.99=17.5%,3.0-3.19=24%
Asians 1.47-1.99=0.0%,2.0-2.19=0.0%,2.2-2.39=1.8%,2.4-2.59=2.8%,2.6-2.79=5.0%, 2.8-2.99= 6.7%,3.0-3.19=10.9%
Whites 1.47-1.99=0.0%,2.0-2.19=0.0%,2.2-2.39=3.8%,2.4-2.59=6.8%,2.6-2.79=8.3%,2.8-2.99=10.9%,3.0-3.19=15.5%

At each level whether by MCAT or GPA, Asians are accept at a lower rate than both Whites and Blacks. Blacks have the highest admission rate at each level of MCAT and GPA.

Affirmative Action benefit is HUGE. The above data shows that Blacks get a 0.4 bump in GPA and about 7 points in the MCAT compared to Asians. The AA benefit is so large that a few Black student with less than a 2.0 GPA can get into medical school while ZERO White and Asians students that GPA range.

The data also shows that Asians are accepted at a lower rate than Whites with similar MCAT and GPA. One could argue that Asians don’t even get the AA benefit when compared to Whites. In fact, the data could be interpreted to show Whites get AA benefits when pitted against Asian students.

These are the same type of results espoused by Prof. Espenshade et. al. Asians seem to get the short end of any admission decision whether undergraduate or post graduate.

The good/bad thing for Asians is that they must work harder, score better and get better grades to compete with URM and Whites. This might explain why as @granny2 pointed out that SAT scores have risen in the past 10 years for Asians while every other ethnicity saw a net drop in scores.

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@rlpak14

I never spun the facts the acceptance rates overall by race were given. There is barely that much of a difference between Asian and White admit rates. African Americans have the lowest overall acceptance rate of 34.1%, Asians 42%, Whites 44% as stated previously.

Also, I disagree with the huge bump in GPA or MCAT score factor. You have forgotten about historically black medical schools that are 80%-90% African American that account for around 10%-15% of African American admits that may skew the numbers in the lower end. Especially the 2.0 GPA students you mention most likely got into historically black medical schools.

There is barely any difference in Asian or White admit rates at the upper or lower end. In addition to this you present your data unclearly in this case so its difficult to read. In either case, Asians with a +30 MCAT score and 3.6+ GPA have about the same chances of admission as White applicants with the same scores. I could care less for those with below a 27 or a 3.4 GPA in my opinion everyone in that score range should be rejected and I’m surprised any Asians or Whites were admitted with those scores at all.

Also since when did MCAT score and GPA alone account for why specific students are admitted? You act as if these are the only factors medical schools consider and that it is a similar trend for all other factors. Also being consistent with a specific medical schools mission, minorities may be favoured because they are more likely to work in underserved areas and enter primary care fields. This is the case since historically black medical schools such as Howard and Morehouse lead rankings in measure of social mission and the more African Americans the higher the medical school ranks in social mission.

Your assumptions and speculation unfortunately are not definitive proof of any favouritism and as it stands Asians have a higher acceptance rate than African Americans overall and a near equal acceptance rate to Whites. Most African American applicants score below a 30 and below a 3.6 GPA while the opposite is true for Asians. That is why the admit rate for African Americans is 34.1% while the admit rate for Asians is 42%. If medical schools were as ignorant as you are and rejected all students with scores below a 30 and a GPA below a 3.6 there would barely be any minorities in medical school except for historically Black/Hispanic medical schools.

There are many factors other than MCAT scores or GPA that are considered important by medical schools such as personal qualities for being a doctor, diverse interests/extracurriculars and having students goals be consistent with the mission of the medical school(which in some cases is improving primary care/working in underserved communities). You look at numbers with a very narrow minded perspective and interpret them as such which is very misleading and only contributing to the already pervasive paranoia among Asian college students.

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Were SAT/MCAT/[insert SE of your choice here] an accurate measure of intelligence, academic potential, or human worth that also took into account disparities correlated with socioeconomic circumstance - as so many on CC seem to think they are, your argument, @rlpak14, assuming the statistics you’ve provided are valid (which has been contested), would hold water. Because they aren’t, it isn’t.

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@SirPepsi I guess I’ll take your belief that high GPA and high Test Scores are not good predictors of future success with a grain of salt because all the studies show that they are good predictors. Colleges and Universities differ with you. We all understand that there is no perfect way to judge the worthiness of individuals to attend elite schools but GPA and test scores are much better than anything else out there. If you have a better way please let us know.

BTW you would agree that students with high GPA and high test scores are generally more worthy of elite school admission than those with low GPA and low test scores. If not, you are disingenuous and feigning.

@Ali1302 Your distorted use of the data is what I challenge. You disregard the quality of the applicant pool of each ethnicity. You even go as far as stating that Asian and White students who have MCAT scores lower than 27 and GPA lower than 3.4 should not be admitted into medical school. But you have no problem with Blacks and Hispanics with low MCAT and low GPA being admitted to medical school. That is the very definition of racial discrimination.

Acceptance rate of students with GPA over 3.4 and MCAT over 27 sorted by ethnicity.

Asian 11413/18616 = 61.3%
Black 1610/1816 = 88.7%
White 30492/48011 = 63.5%

Acceptance rate of students with GPA under 3.4 and MCAT under 27 sorted by ethnicity.

Asian 1550/12111 = 12.8%
Black 2836/10473 = 27.1%
White 5297/31239 = 17.0%

Percentage of medical school admitees with lower than 3.4 GPA annd 27 MCAT by ethnicity.

Asian 1550/30727 = 5.0%
Black 2836/12089 = 23.5%
White 5297/79250 = 6.7%

Percentage of accepted students with low scores and low GPA of total accepted of each ethnicity

asians 1550/12963 = 12.0%
blacks 2836/4446 = 63.8%
whites 5297/35789 = 14.8%

Percentage of accepted students with high MCAT and high GPA of total accepted of each ethnicity

Asian 11413/12963 = 88.0%
Black 1610/4446 = 36.2%
White 30492/35789 = 85.2%

Asians have the highest quality of applicants and Blacks the lowest based upon MCAT and GPA but Asians have the lowest rate of acceptance at each bucket (GPA + MCAT levels) even compared to Whites.

BTW It is no coincidence that the highest medical school drop out rate is among Black students and that Black students are the bulk of the bottom quarter of each medical school class. This I believe is the product of admitting students who are not adequately prepared for the rigors of medical school. This is similar to the Mismatch Theory of Richard Sanders et. al. as well as cited by Malcom Gladwell.

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@rlpak14, performance on these exams is not a predictor of intelligence or of human worth, and you’ve conveniently neglected to address what I said regarding adjustment for socioeconomic circumstance. The theory is, with a generational history of illiteracy, housing and job discrimination, familial instability, etc. due to institutionalized racism, Black and Hispanic kids (both of which are underrepresented in domestic universities) have much higher barriers to success to overcome than do Whites and Asians (like me, and, I assume, you), who are well-off in comparison.

The statistics will show that at need-blind schools, there is still a remarkable difference between the acceptance rate for kids in lower income brackets and kids in higher income brackets. Why is this? Is success genetic? Of course not! What it is is access to resources that foster that level of performance. When you don’t have to worry about your single mother working three jobs to feed you and your four siblings, while you spend all your free time doing odd-jobs to supplement that income and practically raising your siblings, you tend to be better able to do well in school, invest time in extracurriculars, and refine your passions. If, in addition to poverty, you are a minority with an history of victimization by police, of social marginalization, etc., the struggles you must surmount are even greater. When so many on the East Coast pay thousands for private tutors, services like IvyWise, or essay consultations, while so many in Middle and Lower America can barely conceive of COLLEGE, let alone elite colleges, there is an intolerable disparity that we must immediately rectify.

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@rlpak14

Have you read any of my posts clearly because I’ve made a lot of points that you seem to completely ignore in pursuit of proving Asian supremacy in academics.

First of all, Do you know what historically black medical schools are???

Medical schools like Morehouse and Howard are historically black medical schools that take only African American students these schools largely skew the numbers and acceptance rates for African American applicants making up 15%-20% of all enrolled African American medical students.

In addition to this you ignore my point in terms of social mission of a medical school. Morehouse medical school and Howard medical school are the highest ranking medical schools in the united states in terms of social mission. Morehouse even ranks in the top 35 among medical schools for primary care. This proves my point that URMs especially black medical graduates are most likely to work in underserved communities and enter primary care fields.

Moreover, I make a point that MCAT scores and GPA are not the only factors medical schools consider. Personal qualities for being a doctor, diverse interests/extracurriculars and having students goals be consistent with the mission of the medical school(which in some cases is improving primary care/working in underserved communities).

If you get rid of the boost from having exclusively black medical schools and the boost given for URMs tht work in underserved communities/primary care then the statistics and acceptance rate of African Americans would be similar to that of Asians and Whites. You remain very narrow minded in the way you interpret data and ignore all other factors related to admission.

You ignore my points and then proceed to present me with statistics I already know of since I’ve already told you I’m familiar with the AAMC data. I honestly feel like I’m arguing with a kid here. Please don’t cherry pick certain stats and think they alone prove anything, you have a lot to learn when it comes to debating. Address these points I made first, then I’d consider your statistics and Hypothetical theories of how medical school admissions work.

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@SirPepsi My comments are about qualifications for admission into elite schools. It has little if anything to do with “human worth”. Believe it or not, poor Whites and Asians collectively outnumber poor Blacks and Hispanics. How does race based Affirmative Action address this problem of socioeconomic disadvantage? It doesn’t.

I don’t know if success is genetic, but being born into a wealthy family, I agree, does give a person advantages that will help them to achieve success. You seem to have a complaint that elite schools are not enrolling enough lower socioeconomic students. If that is the case, I would agree. Unfortunately, elite schools are consistently composed of mostly wealthy students even when the schools have huge endowments.

Should a rich Black student with lower GPA and test scores be accepted over a poor Asian or White student who achieves a much higher GPA and test scores? I would hope that you would agree that the less privileged poor Asian or poor White student should be given a nod in admissions over a rich Black student. Unfortunately, under Affirmative Action, that is not the case. Race base AA needs to be replaced by socioeconomic based AA with the caveat that the added benefit is not so great to create an academic mismatch that will negatively affect achievement and success.

I got involved in this thread because @NickFlynn inaccurately stated that the Average SAT score of Blacks at Harvard is 2218, which would not be far from the average of 2250 for all students and 2300 for Asian students. In this case, any AA advantage is small and I would wholeheartedly support it. But since the data is incorrect, I wanted him to correct the error, but he clearly wants the misinformation to persist. So I tried to clarify the data and the flaws in the methodology of data in light of data from other researchers such as Prof. Espenshade et. al.
Contrary to the likes of @OHMomof2 who believe Espenshade’s research is useless, I believe his research is valid and still applies today. The race gap in academic achievement has increased, not decreased since 1990.

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@SirPepsi In this case it’s not even socio-economic factors, it’s the assumption that the only factors that matter are MCAT scores and GPA. African Americans have certain historically black medical schools that are exclusive to them and account for a significant percentage of enrolled African American applicants.

In addition to this the mission of certain medical schools is to work in underserved areas and improve primary care. Since URMs are most likely to have goals consistent with this mission it gives them a boost in medical school admissions and this has been proven by the fact that Morehouse medical school and Howard medical are highest ranked in social mission.

Source: http://annals.org/data/Journals/AIM/20208/9TT1.jpeg

As you can see in this table the top 3 medical schools in terms of social mission in the united states are Morehouse, Meharry and Howard all three are historically black medical schools.

If you remove historically black medical schools and schools with a social mission of improving primary care for underserved communities then you remove around 40% of enrolled African American students. The acceptance rate would be similar to that of Asians and Whites.

Also keep in mind that medical school admission isn’t simply based on MCAT scores and GPA but is a holistic admissions process. Personal qualities for being a doctor, diverse interests/extracurriculars are considered. You may look like a good student on paper but demonstrate bad characteristics unsuitable for the medical profession during your interview for instance.

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@Ali1302 The average GPA and MCAT of all medical schools is 3.5 and 28. If your theory is correct about HBCU medical schools taking many of the low achieving Blacks then the average profile of Meharry, Morehouse and Howard student would be substantially lower than the overall average, but they are not. The average GPA and MCAT of the HBCU schools is 3.5 and 27.

HBCU medical schools enroll approximately 350 students per year of which approximately 60% are Black, this amounts to about 200 Black medical students every year. This is less than 5% of all Black medical students. Even if you were correct that the lowest achieving Black students go to HBCU the impact would be minimal to the overall data I already provided.

Your mission argument is also flawed. You somehow come to the conclusion that only Black students want to work in underprivileged communities without any data to support this. Believe it or not, there are many White and Asian students who would practice in these neighborhoods if they were admitted to medical school. You just assume that only Blacks want to, but there are many White and Asian students with less than stellar GPA and MCAT, but higher than many Blacks who were admitted, who want to serve those communities, but they don’t get into medical school.

You stated “if you remove historically black medical schools and schools with a social mission of improving primary care for underserved communities then you remove around 40% of enrolled African American students. The acceptance rate would be similar to that of Asians and Whites” please provide data to prove that the Black acceptance rate would be similar to that of Asians and Whites. Good luck with that.

As to your holistic argument that medical school admission is more than just GPA and MCAT, I would agree, this is why a few high achieving students do not get into medical school and why some low achieving students get into medical school. But medical school admission is mostly about GPA and MCAT. The data bears this out. If you are nice person with low GPA and MCAT you are most likely not getting into medical school but if one is Black you are many times more likely to get accepted with low stats than if you were White or Asian. The data bears this out as well.

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@rlpak14 If the data does, as you claim, “bear out,” please tell us why this is important. I’ve not jumped onto Ali’s wagon primarily because I concede unfamiliarity with the precise figures that have been collected with respect to Affirmative Action in Universities and Medical Schools - I have, however, sought to identify your motivation…

What is it you’d like this data to demonstrate? If it does demonstrate what you feel it does, what do you propose be done? Acknowledge what I’ve said regarding historical context and understand that even if the statistics align with what you’ve asserted, it’s justified.

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Just a minor point here - the HBCU colleges and med schools accept students of any race, not only AA students. They are the majority I’m sure, but it is not the policy of Howard (just one example) to not accept white, Asian, etc students.

http://healthsciences.howard.edu/education/colleges/medicine/admissions

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@rlpak14 I’m not sure what the GPA or MCAT score for HBCU is but could you at least add a source to the 3.5 GPA and 27 MCAT score claim. HBCUs would usually interview African Americans with atleast a 24 MCAT and a 3.0 GPA as the schools state thisis the minimum to be considered on there websites.

I believe the percentage URMs at HBCUs is around 75%-78% not sure if your 60% stat is accurate could you provide a source for that aswell. If the percentage is around 5% as you claim then it certainly has an impact on the statistics considering most of these students would be in the 24-30 MCAT score and 3.2-3.8 GPA range.

“You somehow come to the conclusion that only Black students want to work in underprivileged communities without any data to support this”

I never made such a claim, if you read my previous comment I stated that African American students were more likely to work in underserved communities not that they were the only group to work in underserved areas. This is proven by the fact HBCUs are the top medical schools in the country in terms of social mission and they are majority African Americans. If Asian or white students were as keen to work in underserved areas then why don’t Michigan or UCLA medical school rank among the best in the list especially since they rank well in terms of primary care? As a result of this African American applicants would get a boost for having goals of improving healthcare and working in underserved areas which are more consistent with some medical schools missions.

“Please provide data to prove that the Black acceptance rate would be similar to that of Asians and Whites. Good luck with that.”

I just did. The fact that historically black medical schools are the best in terms of social mission and the strong correlation between social mission rank and URM percentage clearly demonstrate that most African American students have the goal of working in underserved areas.

I’m sorry but MCAT and GPA although I would hold the most weight in admission do not hold all the weight. Other subjective factors would result in students being rejected or accepted to medical schools, there is just no assurance that you would be admitted simply because you’re academically suitable. Students have to demonstrate they have the qualities of a doctor and medical schools like to fill there classes with students of diverse interests and extracurriculars. There is also the issue of being consistent with a medical schools mission and as a result being a good fit for a specific school. The fact is African Americans have the lowest overall admit rate to medical schools and are given a boost mainly because of their commitment to underserved communities aswell as primary care.

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@rlpa14 I would like to address your comments on @SirPepsi in terms of Socioeconomics. You are right that in pure numbers terms poor Whites and Asians would out number blacks, however African American applicants and URMs have a much higher poor/poverty RATE.

In order to have a fair system of considering students for a socioeconomic boost in admission you have to consider demographics. View it this way since URMs have the highest poverty rates they get a larger share of the socioeconomic boost in admission, this doesn’t mean Whites or Asians don’t get a boost they still would but it would be a smaller share according to each groups poverty/low income rate. Using this method you can ensure that both URMs, White and Asian low income applicants have the same likelihood of getting a socioeconomic boost in admission.

If you don’t consider demographics, the system would be unfair since URM low income applicants would have a lower likelihood of being considered in comparison to Whites and Asians. In order to evenly distribute socio-economic benefits demographics has to be taken into account. That is why low income URMs would get a higher share of the boost regardless to evenly distribute consideration of low income groups of all ethnicities equally.

Also, your rich black kid example is baseless. A very low percentage of African American applicants are in a high enough income bracket to be considered rich. Even rich black applicants suffer from disadvantages there rich White or Asian counterparts don’t so the boost even in this category applies. Also, I agree with a socioeconomic Affirmative action based system which is basically what we have in university admissions today.

I don’t believe the 2200+ figure is inaccurate at all, keep in mind that most African Americans enrolled at Harvard are infact first/second generation black migrants that tend to do very well in terms of SAT scores and GPA. Anywhere from 60% to 70% of African Americans enrolled in ivies are first/second generation migrants.

Finally, your insistent on latching on to a research conducted during the late 90’s demonstrates you ignorance on this topic since race disparities have changed over time. The wealth gap between African Americans and Whites has also increased. I also highly doubt that the score gap has increased since recent studies have shown that the mean African American IQ has increased to 89 up from 85. How could African American IQ increase yet test scores decrease???