Medical School Acceptance Rates, 2007-2009
For example, for applicants with an MCAT score between 24-26 and a GPA between 3.00 and 3.19, only 1 out of every 25 Asian applicants was accepted, compared to about one out of every 11 white applicants, one of out every three Hispanics, and more than half of black applicants with those same credentials.
Thanks to Walt G. for the help pointing out the links to the data.
31 Comments:
So in other words, if I need medical care in 10 years, I should look for the white guy.
As an asian, I can testify to this data. I applied to med school this past year, had three interviews, but was not accepted anywhere. I had a 31 MCAT (about average for a matriculant) and 3.51 GPA. I have a black friend from college with roughly the same GPA, but a 24 on his MCAT (which is considered very low), who got into med school. It's extremely difficult to get in if you're Asian, much easier if you're black or hispanic.
I wonder if this applies to law school admissions as well.
Unfortunately, "diversity" of color has now lead to "diversity" of standards... based on color.
And one wonders why there is a perceived distortion of everything that made the United States a successful... preeminent... competitor.
will there come a time when patients will be assigned doctors based on "diversity" of color? Think not? You didn't think you'd have to answer to the Federal Government about your insurance, did you?
PC = Politically convoluted.
An old book, Why Americans Hate Politics by E.J. Dionne, explains how liberals lost political favor for decades by favoring policies such as these. But maybe organizations such as the AMA deserve at least some of the blame for convincing government to get rid of so many medical schools. Such organizations will be the real opponents hiding behind our government's coattails when it comes time to let people have the right to heal. Because no one has the right to healthcare if people do not have the right to heal.
IMO, I'm going to be intentionally racist and only select Asian doctors and specialists... and select white people for lawyer representation based on your findings on the LSAT a while back.
By the way, would it be possible that Asians by and large attempt to apply to better schools and thus miss the cut more often?
So if I need an operation and a black doctor walks into the room, I should... (Complete the sentence contest)
BRUCE HALL:
"And one wonders why there is a perceived distortion of everything that made the United States successful...PREEMINENT...COMPETITOR.
BRUCE HALL YOU ARE SO RIGHT!
This statement would make a great election slogan if you could get a political party to believe it and then practice it.
Just because you can get into medical school doesn't mean you're going to be a doctor. Only those who have successfully completed both the medical licensing exams and their multiple-year residencies are legally allowed to practice. These tests don't care about race or affirmative action.
As the old joke goes...
The student with the lowest GPA in each Naval Academy class that is still graduating is called "The Goat."
Do you know what they call the graduating student with the lowest GPA at the worst Medical College in the United States?
"Doctor."
Two things:
First, medical schools themselves are held to extremely stringent accreditation standards, so the "worst" medical school in the US does not necessarily lack in quality education. The variance in education among the ~130 accredited schools is not that great.
Secondly, according to the previous post (and this is true, check aamc.org) there is a standardized medical licensing procedure that holds even the "lowest" GPA to the same level as that of the "highest."
Over the course of a career, what separates good doctors from bad ones is not the medical education itself; it's their ability to learn from their mistakes, work well with patients, and stay technically relevant. Everyone knows from experience that the bad doctor was the one too arrogant to listen to your concerns and rushing to get you out of the clinic.
I'm curious why you chose the numbers you did. You exclude many buckets (the top-scoring/graded students, for example).
I would have chosen the totals. For example, 47.1% of the 78,492 white students were accepted where 39.3% of the 10,147 black students were accepted. But, perhaps that didn't match your narrative?
There are a trivial number of black students compared to white students who even apply, much less get accepted. Look at the data you linked to. There are 725 white applicants in the top-test/top-GPA slot and 5 (FIVE) in the top slot for blacks.
Comparing percentages for hand-picked buckets in such a skewed case will result in very strange results.
Do we have the data on graduation rates by these categories?
I'd never hire a black or mestizo when it comes to my health or representation in a court room.
This is a perfect example of why. Do you real want an Affirmative Action doctor poking around at your insides? Neither do I.
Could it be that we are confusing quantity with quality?
Let's take for example grades with the largest number of white applicants - GPA/MCAT: 3.6-3.79/30-32
Asian 1642
White 4932
Hispanic 122
Black 243
I think with such difference in the number of applicants, whites and asians will have a higher decline rates. If in the whole country only a hundred hispanics with those grades decided to apply to med. school, probably they were well prepared and thorough through the application process. And probably in the 5000 white students there were a lot of people who just randomly applied, didn't care much or applied just because their parents put pressure on them.
Am I wrong?
Any Black or Hispanic admitted to med school by way of affirmative action should be forced to accept ONLY Black or Hispanic patients.
Anonymous said...
Any Black or Hispanic admitted to med school by way of affirmative action should be forced to accept ONLY Black or Hispanic patients.
6/29/2010 8:58 AM
No, the should be employed as doctors for the federal government treating members of Congress.
Any Black or Hispanic admitted to med school by way of affirmative action should be forced to accept ONLY Black or Hispanic patients.
Why should these patients have to suffer? If anything it should be divided by political support. Liberals get the less qualified doctors, independent of race.
American medical schools have been systematically excluding fully qualified pre-med graduates for decades with the excuse that small class sizes produce better doctors. This keeps the doc numbers down and the fees up. Many of the rejected applicants wind up in foreign medical schools like the one in Guadalajara, Mexico where there are 1500 students in each graduating class. They don't seem to have trouble passing the med boards when they return or getting into a residency program. You do not have to be a genius or an expert in protein chemistry to be a surgeon. Surgeons used to be barbers.
As mentioned above, your analysis is flawed, since you are looking only at a small group of the pool of applicants.
Besides, there are other factors you are not taking into account: Medical school acceptance is not just based on MCAT scores and the GPA. Other important factors include essays and activities. I think it is indeed likely that Asian students have worse essays compared to white students (e.g. first or second gen asian immigrants wouldn't write English essays as fluently, on average), also it is also very likely that Asian students would get lower score on activities section. Again, consider typical second gen immigrants, where the controlling parents INSIST that their kids become doctors, and shouldn't waste time on doing any other activities. ("A girlfriend? You dishonored our family! Go back to your study!"). I actually had a chance to meet many of these fellas in my school, and I think it is a bit sad to see how much pressure the family exerts on these young kids, to the point of brainwashing.
Now, for blacks, I think it is completely the other way around: They don't get as much family and community support as whites and Asians, and have to deal with a load of other types of social injustice. So, when comparing a black kid with the same GPA and MCAT as an Asian or white guy, I say it is very likely that she worked harder to earn that.
The amount of black people who actually even apply to med school is so ridiculously low that even numbers like these don't really surprise me. In fact, I'd be worried if med schools WEREN'T accepting a higher percentage of black applicants. For every black guy who applies to med school, theres at least 200 other Asian or white guys who apply. Theres a reason why the term "black doctor" is sometimes said as a joke...
Is there similar numbers available for Canadians? I applied with a 32 MCAT/3.5 GPA which was too low for most school here and was rejected based on the cutoffs. I think at UofT, the average MCAT/GPA acceptance is 31/3.96
The asian above whit his lack of math intuition and arrogance certified why he(she) wasn't accepted to med school.
It was easier to be the victim of racial injustice than to use his brain to figure out why the numbers were skewed.
Shortly thereafter the similarly minded jump in to illustrate that no matter how far a black or mexican travels it is still not enough for them.
also it is also very likely that Asian students would get lower score on activities section. Again, consider typical second gen immigrants, where the controlling parents INSIST that their kids become doctors, and shouldn't waste time on doing any other activities. ("A girlfriend? You dishonored our family! Go back to your study!").
I know a decent number of Asian (of all stripes, including Subcontinent Asian) med school applicants. They don't seem to be neglecting activities, though it's possible my sample is skewed (these are kids from a top 5 public university). Volunteering in hospitals, lab work, volunteering doing basic medical work in foreign countries, frats, jobs are all on their resumes along with solid MCAT scores. Honestly, a lot of it is the result of intentionally trying to craft their resumes for med school, but it's impressive nonetheless. If this factor explains anything, I'd bet it doesn't explain much.
number one -- there is no citation to this data. number two -- acceptance rate says NOTHING about the quality of the applicant pool. unlike, say, the law school admissions process, in medicine the weak applicants are eliminated through courses that weed out students that can't handle it. it could be that urm's that actually make it threw orgo, chem, physics, bio, calc, biochem, the mcat etc. are more likely to be highly qualified group because the students that couldn't hack it are eliminated early on and the urm's that do make it are truly exceptional. unlike non-urm applicant pools, usually the only urm's that end up making it to the application stage are the cream of the crop. it's sort of like saying i'm going to avoid urm harvard grads because the acceptance rate is higher...because you are dealing with such a small group, the intelligence of those students will be just as high as non-urms because you are dealing with the tippy top of the urm pool. also, it has nothing to do with how well they are trained or how knowledgeable or capable they are in their specialty (which is determined by residency -- and they must demonstrate competency fyi through step scores, specialty exams, evaluation by non-urm attendings and program directors, etc.) so for those of you that are saying you will avoid certain doctors based on race, your health will be seriously negatively impacted by that kind of ignorance. many of the best physicians with the most impressive and objective statistical records of success are urm's (particularly in the surgical field where the most significant advances in the field arguably have been made by urm's - particularly in neurosurgery and cardiothoracic surgery).
There are a few problems here: When you look at this small section of the applicant pool, it does seem biased towards Blacks and Hispanics, but when you look at the actual numbers it is not as impressive. There are 5 times as many Asian applicants, and aroun 15 times as many white applicants. The overall acceptance rates across all combinations slightly benefit Asian and white candidates. But when you look at the student composition in Medical schools what you see is that only around 8% of the student body in medical school is black and hispanic, while they make up 30% of the overall population, and Asians make up 15% while only making up around 6% of the population. White and Asian applicants make up around 110,000 applications as opposed to around 20,000 for blacks and hispanics. And in this, what's missing is the discussion of other factors, such as research, internships, majors, gpas in science as opposed to non-science, economic conditions (those from poorer families may work their way through college and do get lower GPAs as a result, but are no less capable of students).
Simple question.. Does anyone know what their doctor(s) scored on their mcat? NO! Performance in med school and boards thereafter, and further performance in residency and so on are much better predictors of ones success as a doctor than how one answers questions based on some passages. Id argue that GPA is even more correlated... The MCAT is only useful to a point, and as med schools should, other factors are necessary in order for acceptance of an applicant to occur...
okay well i do agree that it is not fair at ALL to discriminate but just think about it, I'm black and i don't know more than 3 black people who are willing to go pre-med. Lets be honest, many black people do not choose this career path, so though the acceptance rate may be high, you also have to look at how many black people are ACTUALLY APPLYING . and also just because someone gets into medical school doesn't mean they'll succeed. Whoever is meant to be a doctor will come out on top, whoever is not will not succeed as well.
As an Asian or white, it is much harder to get in. I thought all people are equal in U.S according to the contitution.
I wish someonce can take it to the
Supreme Court!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I am a current asian medical student at a top 10 US school, and I can verify from personal experience that this data proves a fact=actice discrimination in medical admissions based on race.
I had to apply to medical school three times before I finally was accepted. The first two times I applied with a 3.6GPA/34MCAT, and only got 2 interviews total out of 30 schools/cycle. Finally based on the advice of an Asian physician friend that told me about the racial influence in medical admissions, I decided on retaking the MCAT to improve my profile and ended up with a 40(99.9%). That’s when I finally got many interviews (I ended up getting accepted to 90% of the schools I received interviews from). Even during my interviews, questions about my race were brought up(as I look Hispanic and many of the interviews are supposedly “blind” and thus trying to idenitfy as a way to tailor the interview questions(easy if Mexican/black, hard if not). Two of my friends, both Mexicans, were admitted to even higher ranked medical schools than me with substantially lower scores(3.0/25 MCAT, 3.3/28MCAT) on their first attempts.
There is active reverse discrimination in medical school, ironically, it is more so against nonhispanic immigrant communities(asians, middle easterns, etc) than against whites. Moreover, the minorities groups that are benefitting from this policy are not even those that it was intended to help. From the demographics of my medical school class, 90% of the blacks are actually either 1st or 2nd gen Africans (usually from Nigeria), that usually come from educated and wealthy families and have little identification with most African Americans. As for the Hispanic students, most are often 1/8-1/16 hispanic(and usually Spanish or Cuban American descent). Many cant even speak Spanish.
Ironically, even during my interviews, there were questions about my race(I look hispanic)
Does this data account for the fact that there are some medical schools that are made to attract minorities? The GPA/MCAT standards at these schools are, undeniably, lower than those of most medical schools that are not a part of historically black institutions. People who fall into the category of "non-minority" are less likely to apply to these historically black medical schools. They apply to more schools that are more competitive to get into. Thus it makes sense to me that their acceptance rates are lower.
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