I’ve blogged about the non-preferred minority status of Americans of Asian descent a few times. For example, I mentioned the University of California (UC) system’s admissions changes, designed to accept more preferred minorities. Parents of students and groups of Asian descent called foul.
The state legislature’s Asian and Pacific Islander caucus asked UC’s Board of Regents to postpone voting on the changes, but the board overwhelmingly approved the policy. Ward Connerly, former UC regent and current president of the American Civil Rights Institute (ACRI), wrote an op-ed for the Sacramento Bee about what Asians faced at UC:
“I asked [a fellow regent] why he considered it important to tinker with admissions instead of just letting the chips fall where they may. In an unguarded moment, he told me that unless the university took steps to ‘guide’ admissions decisions, UC would be dominated by Asians. When I asked, ‘What would be wrong with that?’ I got an answer that speaks volumes about the underlying philosophy at many universities with regard to Asian enrollment.’
“The UC administrator told me that Asians are ‘too dull – they study, study, study.’ He then said, ‘If you ever say I said this, I will have to deny it.’ I won’t betray the individual’s anonymity because to do so would put him in a world of trouble. Yet, it is time to confront the not-so-subtle hand of discrimination against Asians that masquerades as ‘building diversity’ at many campuses.”
Americans of Asian descent are a non-preferred minority. Because they tend to score higher than whites and blacks on standardized tests, the powers that be don’t lower the bar for them. In fact, as some suspect, the bar is raised higher to limit their numbers so as not to overrun college and university campuses.
John Rosenberg at Discriminations posted this about medical school admissions statistics:
1. An Asian American with a GPA of 2.8 to 2.99 and a MCAT score of 36 to 38 has a 36.8% chance of being admitted to a U.S. medical school.
2. A White with a GPA of 2.8 to 2.99 and a MCAT score of 36 to 38 has a 40.7% chance of being admitted to a U.S. medical school.
3. An African American with a GPA of 2.8 to 2.99 and a MCAT score of 36 to 38 has a 100% chance of being admitted to a U.S. medical school.
These are racial preferences in their purest form. Blacks with lower scores and grades stand a much better chance of admission than whites and Asians with higher scores and grades.
The practice is prevalent. Last year, the Center for Equal Opportunity (CEO) released two reports that showed the extent of racial discrimination at the University of Arizona and Arizona State University law schools. The studies describe the discrimination as “severe.”
For example, black and Hispanic students are admitted with “significantly lower undergraduate” GPAs and LSAT scores. CEO chair Linda Chavez said the odds favor black applicants over whites at the 250 to 1 at the University of Arizona and 1115 to 1 at Arizona State.
Part of ACRI’s mission is to end such practices at taxpayer-supported schools.
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Although this may be very true, we should take a moment to look at the hard facts.
1. More white, asian, etc…are accepted into medical school every year.
2. Studies show that the majority of african american households cannot afford a 2,000-4,000 MCAT/LSAT prep course and are forced to find other means to study and thus score lower on the exam in some cases.
3. Not saying that I agree, but other studies show that the average score for a minority group such as american indian, african american, etc…on a standardized exam is much lower in general for various reasons.
with all of that said I think that there has always been racial pref….and depeding on the situation these racial pref. benefit all parties. Honestly there are medical and law schools in the USA that an african american student with a 4.5 GPA and a 38 on the MCAT with 10 years of volunteer work abroad would still not get into; however those same stats on a white, asain, or dare I say african ( kenyan, nigerian, etc..) would get an immediate acceptance. All in all I feel as though there does need to be some kind of balance, but at the same time let us not forget all of the FACTS.
http://www.nas.org/documents/Taming_the_River_2.pdf
Selling Merit Down the River
July 06, 2009 By Russell K. Nieli
Excerpted from pages 21 and 22
The River Pilots’ concern here may be misplaced, however, for even if black and
Latino students do earn substantially lower grades than whites and Asians, they may have
just as good a chance as the members of those higher-performing groups of gaining
entrance to competitive graduate and professional schools. The admissions boost for
being black at many of the most competitive law schools, medical schools, business
schools, and graduate programs is often huge — larger even in standard deviation terms
than the undergraduate college boost — and black undergraduates all know this. The
post-graduate boost for being Latino is less but still substantial. Mediocre grades for a
black or Latino student is not the same impediment to getting into a good graduate or
professional school as it is for a white or Asian.
Consider, for example, medical schools. According to the American Association
of Medical Colleges, the average college GPA in the pre-med college science courses for
all whites who entered an American medical school in 2007 was 3.63, and for Asians a
near-identical 3.62. For blacks, however, it was only 3.29. This is by itself a very
significant difference but the spread of the black scores was much wider than that of
either the whites or Asians (black SD .43, white and Asian SD each .29), indicating that
significant numbers of blacks with science GPAs as low as 2.9 or 3.0 were accepted into
medical schools, scores that would virtually preclude whites or Asians. Latino science
GPAs were roughly halfway between those of the blacks and the higher-scoring whites
and Asians (3.45 mean).
Scores on the Medical College Admissions Test (MCAT) tell a similar story. The
median score on the basic science part of the MCAT for a black admitted to medical
school in 2007 was equal to that of a white at only the 14th percentile of white admits, and
of an Asian at only the 10th percentile of Asian admits. In other words, 86% of whites
and 90% of Asians entering medical schools did better on the MCAT basic science
section than the median black. Once again, Latino scores were roughly halfway between
the blacks and the higher-scoring Asians and whites.20 This same pattern was shown in
earlier studies of MCAT scores. For instance, a Rand Corporation study of admissions
policies at ten medical schools in the late 1970s found a black/white gap in MCAT scores
well over a standard deviation, a Chicano/white gap slightly less than one SD. The Rand
study calculated that a black or Chicano applicant with a better then 50% chance of
admission to these ten medical schools, had that applicant been held to the same entrance
standards as whites, would have reduced his admissions chances to only about one-intwenty,
or 5%.21 From a 5% admissions chance up to a 50% or better chance as the bonus
for being black or Chicano — can anyone imagine that this will have no effect on many
of those seeking to gain entry into the medical profession?
The law school story is similar. Consider for instance the University of Michigan
Law School, one of the ten most prestigious in the nation. Like virtually all competitive
law schools, Michigan places a great emphasis on the LSAT, a test of several kinds of
aptitudes needed for the successful completion of a rigorous law school curriculum.
Scores on the LSAT range from 120 to 180 (much like the 200 to 800 scoring system on
the SAT) with the average score of those admitted to the highest ranking schools being
around 170 (at the lowest ranked schools admits average around 150). In 2004, a year
after the Supreme Court’s Grutter decision approving Michigan Law’s racial preference
program, the median LSAT score for both white and Asian admits was 169, just under
the typical score earned by whites at top-rated Harvard and Yale. For black admits,
however, the average score was only 160. Now a 160 is certainly a respectable LSAT
score, but for a white or Asian such a score might gain an entry ticket to a middle-range
law school like Boston University, the University of Washington, or Rutgers, but never to
a top-ten school like Michigan. Blacks essentially compete only with one another for
entry to the nations’ top law schools, all of which practice a system of de facto race
norming and (slightly flexible) quota admissions (though none of them will admit this
publically). Black LSAT scores need not be, and usually are not, competitive with those
of whites and Asians. Indeed, at Michigan in 2004, a 75th percentile black admit had an
LSAT score (164) significantly lower than that of a 25th percentile white (167) or Asian
(167) admit. Latino LSAT scores were much better than those of the blacks (mean 166)
but still significantly behind the whites and Asians.
The lowering of the bar for underrepresented minorities extends to the college
GPA as well. A study of Michigan Law School applicants submitted during the litigation
over the Grutter case indicated that in 1995 the average GPA for white admits was 3.68,
that of blacks only 3.33. Of students with college GPAs in the 3.25 to 3.45 range and
LSAT scores near the 75th percentile of the national distribution, 51 whites applied to
Michigan in 1995, 14 Asians, and 10 blacks. But only one of the whites in this credential
range was admitted to Michigan’s elite law school that year, while none of the Asians
were. Blacks had a much easier time of it: all of the blacks in this credential range were
accepted though their grades and test scores would have virtually precluded them from
admission were they white or Asian.23 How reasonable is it to think that knowledge of
such lowered standards will not filter down to the black sophomores and juniors at
various Michigan colleges who plan on attending Michigan or some other elite law
school? And given the knowledge of such lowered standards, how reasonable is it to
think that this will not negatively affect the behavior of many of those who know they
can get into great law schools like Michigan’s without having to match the performance
of their white and Asian classmates?
Less than 50% of the blacks pass the Part I of the USMLE (U.S. Medical Licensing Exam) on the first try nationwide on the average. Some blacks never pass and cannot become practicing MDs, even if they had graduated from Harvard, and the other blacks who pass score below Asians/whites by over one standard deviation below the mean scores of Whites/Asians. Today, about 95% of Whites/Asians do pass on the first try and I don’t have the current exact figures, but JAMA (Journal of the AMA) did a study of this over 15 years ago. The actual numbers of the total failures were not given by race/ethnicity, but it is not rocket science to say that if 10% of the test takers were black, and only 50% passed, then the blacks are 25% of the all the failures, if only 5% of all test takers failed. The USMLE results are the direct result of race preferences in admissions with the lowering of standards (GPA and MCAT score) for blacks. Medical students admitted with lower academic markers have lower pass rates on the USMLE.
The passing of the USMLE means that one is qualified, but being qualified does not mean being the most qualified, when one passes with the highest score. There is also a direct straight line correlation between one’s MCAT scores used for admissions to med school versus one’s USMLE scores. Blacks test over one standard deviation below the mean of most standardized testing, including the USMLE, SAT I, MCAT, GRE, GMAT, and LSAT. Blacks *DO NOT TEST WELL* compared to Whites/Asians. Blacks are admitted to medical schools with this Black-White Test Score Gap for many decades, including the ones graduating from the Ivies. Nothing has changed with race based AA for decades
Below are links to the study for a better description of the racial pass rates on the NBME (USMLE) for the years ‘86, ‘87. and ’88 published by JAMA in 1994.
http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/testing.htm
Need a Doctor?
Medical school admission is uncommonly competitive, there being many more applicants than slots. The competition is so intense that if black applicants were held to the same admission standards as whites and Asians, we would turn out almost no black physicians.
We now have a double standard for admission to medical school brought about by affirmative action. As a result, two tiers of American physicians have emerged separated by race and ability.
We have seen that law students admitted under affirmative action do not measure up to their white and Asian peers as law-school graduates. Can we say the same for doctors? We will quantify the performance gap for physicians.
A benchmark for medical competence is the National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME) Exam Part I. Every medical student in the US must pass it to become a physician. Students take the exam two years before graduation. It is one of several ways the profession keeps itself honest. The most comprehensive study of NBME pass rates was published in 1994 by Beth Dawson et al (JAMA 1994 272:9 674-9). The authors examined the performance of every medical student in the US taking the June exam for the first time over the years 1986, 1987 and 1988. Dawson and her colleagues found that white medical students passed the NBME test at a rate of 87.7 percent and blacks at 48.9 percent. Again, using methods described in Appendix A, we found these pass rates equivalent to a black-white mean difference of 1.19 SD. Mean differences for the bar and NBME exams are conspicuously similar. The one-plus SD gap does not yield easily.
Notably, when Dawson’s study looked at entering students with similar academic credentials, the pass rates on the NBME exam were independent of race, pointing an accusing finger directly at affirmative action. For all its good intentions, affirmative action has created two levels of competence in American medicine, separated by a bit more than one standard deviation. When you are wheeled into the ER at 2:00 a.m., if you pray, pray that the black doctor who greets you entered medical school through the front door.
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https://www.researchgate.net/publication/15487672_Performance_on_the_National_Board_of_Medical_Examiners._Part_I_Examination_by_men_and_women_of_different_race_and_ethnicity
Publication details
Performance on the National Board of Medical Examiners. Part I Examination by men and women of different race and ethnicity
Authors: B Dawson, C K Iwamoto, L P Ross, R J Nungester, D B Swanson, R L Volle
Impact factor: 25.55, Cited half life: 6.8, Immediacy index: 7.97
Journal: JAMA The Journal of the American Medical Association
OBJECTIVE–To investigate the performance of men and women from various racial and ethnic backgrounds on the National Board of Medical Examiners Part I examination, controlling for any differences in measures of educational background and academic performance before entering medical school. DESIGN–A retrospective analysis of existing records from the National Board of Medical Examiners and the Association of American Medical Colleges. SETTING–National Board of Medical Examiners. PARTICIPANTS–All students taking the June administration of Part I for the first time in 1986, 1987, or 1988 and who were 2 years from graduation from an accredited medical school. METHODS–Multiple regression methods were used to estimate Part I examination group differences in performance that would be expected if all students entered medical school with similar Medical College Admission Test scores, undergraduate grade point averages, and other prematriculation measures. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE–Performance on the Part I examination. RESULTS–There were substantial differences in performance, with white students scoring highest, followed by Asian/Pacific Islanders, Hispanics, and blacks; within all racial and ethnic categories, women scored lower than men. Controlling for dissimilarities in academic background greatly reduced Part I differences among most racial and ethnic groups, except Asian/Pacific Islander men; unexplained differences remained between men and women. Results were consistent for the 3 years examined. CONCLUSIONS–The results of this study do not imply that physician performance varies among racial and ethnic groups or between men and women; no written examination can measure all the abilities that may be desirable to assess. Validity research investigating reasons for the reported gender and racial and ethnic differences in performance on the National Board examinations should be continued.
JAMA : the journal of the American Medical Association. 01/10/1994; 272(9):674-9.
ISSN: 0098-7484
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