Texas Medical School will not use Race in Admissions

originally posted by: grey580
a reply to: JAGStorm

So let me ask you a question.

Let's say that this happens and they only accept students based on merit. And it just so happens that the only people that get in are chinese.

Would you be ok with that?

A long as they are either citizens, or here legally, who cares?

originally posted by: Edumakated
*snip*

So an obviously smart by any measure black kid gets second guessed because he actually wants to go to a top university for a real education, but yet no one complains about black kids who can barely spell their name going to the same universities because they dunk a ball.

I complain about that frequently, and have heard plenty of others do the same. I dislike the very notion of any school being driven by sports teams. If someone can't even barely qualify academically, they shouldn't be given a pass just to play a sport.

a reply to: grey580

Would you be ok with that?

I've been treated by medical professionals who hail from all over the world.

Why the hell does it matter as long as they are competent and proficient in their skills?

originally posted by: Aazadan
Did they graduate medical school due passing the content?
Did they get licensed as a doctor due to completing the necessary training?

I honestly do not give a ****, I want someone who broke their ass to get in and is at the top of their class, not someone who backdoored themselves into school.

a reply to: AugustusMasonicus

My wife works with a Dr they call Dr death, screws up so many patients. He graduated. He passed the license exam.

originally posted by: grey580
a reply to: JAGStorm

So let me ask you a question.

Let's say that this happens and they only accept students based on merit. And it just so happens that the only people that get in are chinese.

Would you be ok with that?

Why wouldn't I be?

We have had too many years of mandatory equality (or what passes for equality anyway).

What if the best person for a job is a single white male? What if the best applicant is not a recognized minority? Why should schools, companies, governments, or anyone else, have to settle for second best?

Civil service exams are the worst. If we have to dumb down the tests to level the playing field then we are playing the wrong game and no one wins.

This is very exciting and refreshing to learn people are actually credited for their intelligence. There are some who aren't a full box of Cheerios that would have been given the same opportunity just because they are different. We are not all the same.

a reply to: Aazadan

There is not enough room to admit everyone who is qualified to these schools. In most of them, you cannot even admit 5% of those who are qualified. Thus, the schools will shape their student body a bit to add diversity, so that demographics more in need of some additional help see some people from their groups attend.

Who the heck says you have to take everyone. You start from the top scores and work down.
I've been around these kids all my life. It's not like people just stop at 4.0. Many kids now have GPA's of 4.5, 4.7- even 5.0 Some already have significant college credits, take those kids and work down. It isn't rocket science.

Diversity is great when it happens organically, it is never great when it is force, for it only means one persons gets opportunity when another is denied the same.

originally posted by: JAGStorm
a reply to: Aazadan

There is not enough room to admit everyone who is qualified to these schools. In most of them, you cannot even admit 5% of those who are qualified. Thus, the schools will shape their student body a bit to add diversity, so that demographics more in need of some additional help see some people from their groups attend.

Who the heck says you have to take everyone. You start from the top scores and work down.
I've been around these kids all my life. It's not like people just stop at 4.0. Many kids now have GPA's of 4.5, 4.7- even 5.0 Some already have significant college credits, take those kids and work down. It isn't rocket science.

Diversity is great when it happens organically, it is never great when it is force, for it only means one persons gets opportunity when another is denied the same.

Because at the very top schools, if you start from the top and work you way down, you still will not have enough seats for all the people with equal GPA & test scores.

Again, Harvard got 42,000 applications for 2,000 seats. They probably have 10,000 applicants with near perfect GPA & test scores. The people who don't get in now, still wouldn't get in...

Sorting the applicants by test scores & gpa does nothing to improve anyone's chances of admittance.

Because of the limited number of seats at certain schools, gaining admission to elite universities is largely a crap shoot after a certain point. This is what those of you who are thinking about his simplistically don't understand.

However, if you are in fact qualified, you will gain admittance to the same tier school. For example, if you have a high achieving Asian kid, he may not get into Harvard, but might get in to Yale. Or maybe Stanford. The odds of getting acceptance to all three is basically zero.

When Harvard doesn't accept some Asian kid, it isn't like they are now only stuck going to University of Phoenix. No, they wind up at a peer school that is just as prestigious. Some kids get into Harvard, but may get dinged by Stanford.

a reply to: Edumakated

Again, Harvard got 42,000 applications for 2,000 seats. They probably have 10,000 applicants with near perfect GPA & test scores. The people who don't get in now, still wouldn't get in...

Think about what you wrote, because it is wrong.

Look up how many kids aced the SAT or ACT's. It's actually not very many. Now, how many of those students also have above 4.0, now how many actually applied to Harvard. So you start and the top and start whittling away downward.



www.quora.com...

of all 2014 college-bound seniors, 583 scored 2400 on the SAT.

This is a few years old but I'm sure the ACT's are similar. So right there we are talking only about 1100 kids.
Now how many of those kids have perfect GPAs? How many of those kids apply to Harvard? ect.

So when you think of it like that.. Image an Asian Student, perfect GPA perfect ACT etc and then they get denied, denied and denied. Does that make any sense? It is a very quick search to see this kind of student that got denied, over and over.
Why... skin color (In most cases, Asian skin color).

I'm not arguing with you on why schools do this, I am arguing that it is wrong and I don't agree with diversity in this way.

originally posted by: AugustusMasonicus

originally posted by: Aazadan
Did they graduate medical school due passing the content?
Did they get licensed as a doctor due to completing the necessary training?

I honestly do not give a ****, I want someone who broke their ass to get in and is at the top of their class, not someone who backdoored themselves into school.

What makes you think they didn't work hard to get in? Equal results do not mean equal work to achieve those results. People who grow up in an environment with fewer opportunities have to work harder for a lesser result.

Once they get into medical school, and they're out of that environment that changes. Which is why I asked, if they graduated medical school and did well in medical school... why should it matter what scores they got on their admissions test, in the first place? Medical schools themselves are competitive, a disadvantaged student doesn't get bonus points on their grades in the school, and a privileged student doesn't get penalized.

originally posted by: JAGStorm
Who the heck says you have to take everyone. You start from the top scores and work down.
I've been around these kids all my life. It's not like people just stop at 4.0. Many kids now have GPA's of 4.5, 4.7- even 5.0 Some already have significant college credits, take those kids and work down. It isn't rocket science.

Diversity is great when it happens organically, it is never great when it is force, for it only means one persons gets opportunity when another is denied the same.

Well, first of all there aren't standardized grading systems across the US. Different schools have different policies, and inflation is better or worse at some schools than others. In some high schools it is totally possible to score well above a 4.0, but that education could be much worse than another school where a 4.0 is the max. At the high school I attended for example, we were a private school and a 94% (which would qualify as a high A- in a public school) was our cutoff grade for a D-. In addition to that, we were required to keep a 2.7 GPA or higher, which would be a 97% average. Meaning, our lower tier students who graduated with a 2.7 GPA would have been a 4.0 GPA at another school (or perhaps even higher if they practiced giving bonus points).

Beyond a certain point, GPA really doesn't matter at all. It simply provides an indication that a student is capable of learning. Test scores are similar. Functionally there is very little difference between the 34 I had on my ACT, and the 35's and 36's most of the rest of my classmates scored when I took the test (every 36 in our state that year was in my high school, and there were quite a few).

On top of that, what makes for a good student is more than just solid test scores. A good learning environment introduces different cultures. Be those rural farmers in Iowa or inner city black kids. University is not just about job training... in fact that is the last thing it should be providing. It's about education and experiencing the unfamiliar. This is why universities shape their student bodies, in order to diversify the cultures students get exposed to.

When you complain about the "elites" being out of touch, this is precisely the type of system that helps to prevent that.

originally posted by: JAGStorm
a reply to: Edumakated

Again, Harvard got 42,000 applications for 2,000 seats. They probably have 10,000 applicants with near perfect GPA & test scores. The people who don't get in now, still wouldn't get in...

Think about what you wrote, because it is wrong.

Look up how many kids aced the SAT or ACT's. It's actually not very many. Now, how many of those students also have above 4.0, now how many actually applied to Harvard. So you start and the top and start whittling away downward.



www.quora.com...

of all 2014 college-bound seniors, 583 scored 2400 on the SAT.

This is a few years old but I'm sure the ACT's are similar. So right there we are talking only about 1100 kids.
Now how many of those kids have perfect GPAs? How many of those kids apply to Harvard? ect.

So when you think of it like that.. Image an Asian Student, perfect GPA perfect ACT etc and then they get denied, denied and denied. Does that make any sense? It is a very quick search to see this kind of student that got denied, over and over.
Why... skin color (In most cases, Asian skin color).

I'm not arguing with you on why schools do this, I am arguing that it is wrong and I don't agree with diversity in this way.

I didn't say perfect... I said NEAR perfect. There were 28,000 students who scored in the 98.7% percentile on the SAT. I'd be a steak dinner at least half of the 28,000 applied to Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Princeton or some combination thereof proving my point that mathematically, they can't select just based on test scores alone as they'd still wind up rejecting the exponenitally more students than they have spots even for the absolutely bes test takers.

The Raw Facts
Here is the table showing data for scores from 2200 to 2400, and below is more explanation of what each of the columns show.

Score Number of Students Cumulative Number Precise Top Percentile
2400 583 583 0.0348%
2350 630 2969 0.1775%
2300 1371 8812 0.5269%
2250 1914 17225 1.0299%
2200 2574 28834 1.7241%


Your Score = The SAT 3-Section Score (out of 2400)

Number of Students = Number of students in 2014 who got exactly your score. This number is not cumulative and isn't the best measure of performance.

Cumulative Number = This is the total number of students in 2014 who got the same score as you or more. This is the group you're competing with.

Precise Percentile = Here we include the precise percentile this score puts you in. The College Board represents percentiles only roughly — they just tell you 99%+ in your score report. We use their exact numbers to re-run the calculation and tell you what exact top fraction you're in.

Cumulative Numbers
Back to absolute numbers — 2,574 students got a 2200. But that doesn't mean that if you got a 2200, you're within the top 2,574 students. You have to count all the people who got 2200 or above. In statistics, this is called the cumulative number. This is important because you're not just competing against people who got a 2200 exactly — you're pretty much neck-to-neck with those who got 2210, 2220 and so forth. That's why you want to look at people who got a score or above.

This number is most useful to figure out the sort of colleges you're competitive for. For example, if you're in the top 3000 or so, you're competitive for every college, since the top two to three colleges together accept that many per year. Likewise, wherever you place, you can count the slots colleges have above that.

While perfect score is nice, it is hardly guarantees acceptance. Adcoms know that there is little to no difference in ability between someone who scores in the 95% percentile and even a perfect score. They are still competing against applicants above a certain level.

originally posted by: Aazadan
What makes you think they didn't work hard to get in?

If you're weighting people's ethnicity into the equation the chances are they didn't work as hard as the un-weighted person they bumped to get the position.

Which is why I asked, if they graduated medical school and did well in medical school... why should it matter what scores they got on their admissions test, in the first place?

'Did well' is relative. Anyone who graduated 'did well' enough to get a degree, I still prefer having the person who graduated first operate on me than the person who 'did well'.

a reply to: Edumakated

In 2018 there were 2.1 million SAT takers. The top 1% of students would therefore be 21,000 students. The top 5% would be 105,000 students. The ACT had 1.9 million test takers. So combined 4 million students means the top 1% would be 40,000 people.

By standardized test scores alone, the top 1% of test takers (which are all more or less equal anyways) still results in 10 times more potential students than there are seats.

Here's the number of admissions by school for the Ivy League (for the 2022 year, a quick search didn't find 2018's but it shouldn't be too different)
Brown 2566
Columbia 2214
Cornell 5288
Dartmouth 1925
Harvard 1962
Penn 3731
Princeton 1941
Yale 2229

That's 21,856 students in total. Slightly less than half of 1% of the students who will take standardized tests in 2021.

Even if you went purely by the grades of that test, which is quite foolish, even a very high score wouldn't guarantee admission.

originally posted by: AugustusMasonicus
If you're weighting people's ethnicity into the equation the chances are they didn't work as hard as the un-weighted person they bumped to get the position.

Actually, they weight by background and SES. Ethnicity alone doesn't determine that. A white guy from rural Iowa gets bonus points too because again, these schools are trying to add a bit of diversity to the mix.

'Did well' is relative. Anyone who graduated 'did well' enough to get a degree, I still prefer having the person who graduated first operate on me than the person who 'did well'.

Ok, do you think the person who scores top in the class is at all determined by an acceptance policy that takes some factors other than grades into consideration?

Environment matters a lot. Let me give a historical example. Srinivasa Ramanujan is arguably the most gifted mathematician to have ever existed. He was born in India and for being in India he was quite privileged, however he still had severe gaps in his knowledge of basic mathematical principals that western scholars were well aware of. Because of his relative privilege in India he managed to catch the eye of people who recognized his talent, but he still died young, and accomplished far less than he could have with the resources his European counterparts had. Had he been a commoner in India, his gifts would have gone completely unknown.

Yes, he worked hard and studied, but the position he was born into was a far bigger influence on his life than anything he personally was able or wasn't able to accomplish.

When you shape your admissions policies such that they recruit from the families of those who are already successful and influential (which is what going purely by test scores does), you completely miss talent that could be smarter or harder working that wasn't born with such luck.

What you are advocating for, and seem to prefer is a pure meritocracy, but you're discarding merit and replacing it inheritance.

originally posted by: Aazadan
a reply to: Edumakated

In 2018 there were 2.1 million SAT takers. The top 1% of students would therefore be 21,000 students. The top 5% would be 105,000 students.

By standardized test scores alone, the top 1% of test takers (which are all more or less equal anyways) still results in 10 times more potential students than there are seats.

Here's the number of admissions by school for the Ivy League (for the 2022 year, a quick search didn't find 2018's but it shouldn't be too different)
Brown 2566
Columbia 2214
Cornell 5288
Dartmouth 1925
Harvard 1962
Penn 3731
Princeton 1941
Yale 2229

That's 21,856 students in total. Slightly less than the top 1% of students who will take the SAT for 2022.

Even if you went purely by the grades of that test, which is quite foolish, even a very high score wouldn't guarantee admission.

CORRECTO MUNDO!

Affirmative action has little to no effect on keeping anyone out of these schools. The same students who get rejected now, would still be rejected. The freshman class at Harvard only has about 150 black students. If you removed all 150 of those students, it would hardly move the needle for improving anyone's chances of acceptance.

People just want to find someone to blame for why they didn't get accepted to their school.

As I have pointed out, if someone is "qualified" to attend an elite school, they will get accepted to one in that tier. If you are truly qualified to attend an Ivy, you will gain admission to one or two of them. However, which one is where it get's murky.

Asian kids who don't get into Harvard are still gaining admission to peer schools. After a certain point, admissions is random.

Everyone knows the hardest part about any of these schools is gaining admission. Elite schools are primarily social clubs hence why we have the case with rich people trying to buy their way in even though objectively, it shouldn't matter to their kids since they are already rich.

a reply to: Aazadan

What you are advocating for, and seem to prefer is a pure meritocracy, but you're discarding merit and replacing it inheritance.

Life is also not a pure meritocracy. That notion is a complete fantasy. Outside of professional sports, pure meritocracies don't really exist.

The old adage A students work for C students has a lot of truth in it. Many top schools are not only looking for academic talent, but the drive and ability to do bigger things.

Students with solely high GPAs / test scores often tend to be conformist and don't think out the box or take risks. Schools know this.

I tend to support affirmative action because I benefited from it as a black male. As a first generation blue collar family college graduate, I got opportunities and exposure to things that I would have never seen had I not been actively recruited. I also saw too how the system was stacked against folks like me, fair or not.

originally posted by: Aazadan
Actually, they weight by background and SES. Ethnicity alone doesn't determine that.

Ethnicity shouldn't even be a factor.

Ok, do you think the person who scores top in the class is at all determined by an acceptance policy that takes some factors other than grades into consideration?

My point is the person who could have scored at the top might not even be there because of some cooked up racial composition nonsense.