The judge soundly rejected Pierce’s argument stating, “The Sherman Act was certainly not intended to provide a forum wherein disgruntled applicants to medical school could challenge their rejections.”
For those interested, the plaintiff, Samuel Pierce, who graduated with 3.52 GPA from Penn in 2008, was rejected from every medical school he applied to between 2009 and 2015, despite a 40 MCAT.
Besides Yale, he has also sued SUNY-StonyBrook, UCLA, Hofstra, for failing to accept him.
MCAT 40 is super high but 3.52 GPA is a bit low. One kid with 3.5 GPA (also UPenn) haven’t gotten any II this MD cycle (MCAT 516), so the bar keeps rising…
The legal documents are both fascinating and sad.
He accuses Yale for discriminating against him because he was a republican, against UCLA because he didn’t speak Spanish, and against Hofstra because he wasn’t Jewish.
In 2008-2011 when the plaintiff first applied to the med schools, the median accepted student GPA was 3.5 so his GPA wasn’t a “bit low.” It was right on target.
And he wasn’t shut out. He had interviews at a number of schools, but was rejected outright or permanently waitlisted post-interview at all of them. His basic argument is that he was equally or more qualified based on objective factors (GPA, MCAT) than most of those who were accepted so he too should have been accepted and the MARs was the reason why he wasn’t.
A quick reading of this thread has me musing that his personality probably came through in the interview - and turned everyone off. It’s just a guess, of course. I know a fair number of people who have the “qualifications” for various jobs, but not the personality to get (or keep) them. People skills are pretty darn important in life, esp competitive fields.
A 9th grader just asked me yesterday what I thought the most valuable class he could take in high school was. Being a math/science person and in a math class I think I floored him by telling him Public Speaking. Regardless of career choice knowing how to approach people, deal with situations, think on your feet, and get over any fear factor is a huge plus for both future interviews and jobs - any interview or job. Other classes are important for their field. That one crosses all sorts of boundaries.
I agreed with Creekland, it must be his personality/interview skill since he did get many interviews. I’ve heard many high stats applicants got rejected because of arrogance/entitlement attitude.
School districts in texas have it at a grade level GPA and putting students competing for ranks at a disadvantage. Many take it in middle school to avoid lowering their high school GPAs.
The school where I work is nowhere near competitive enough to make that a problem. It’s far more important for kids who really don’t have a chance to learn these things elsewhere to be exposed to the knowledge/skills. I doubt doing it during middle school would provide the same comprehension in the mind. So much reasoning is developed during the high school years.
I feel for kids who are in a super competitive high school environment where course selection like this affects them.
We had a young lass admitted to Stanford a couple years back who was in the Public Speaking class as a junior. (It’s a junior/senior class here.) She had multiple other free ride offers (all merit based). I can’t see where taking that class was dissed by those making the decisions. What she learned in the class could very well helped considerably with the interviews.