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Comment by kyro | Hacker News Reader

A former admissions officer of a good medical school in California once told me that the way it works is that they separate applicants based on ethnicity, and they then look at the top 5% of each stack. His words were "so if you're Asian with a 3.9gpa, good luck, you're a dime a dozen. But if you're an African American with a 3.4gpa, you're getting in." On top of that, many who share my ethnicity -- a minority in even our native country -- put down African American or, what's now the trendy thing to do, Underrepresented Minority, because they know it gives them a huge edge over the competition. I don't fault them for it. The whole application process is one big game and they're learning how to play it to their advantage.

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The procedure you describe was declared illegal in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, so I doubt that the statement you heard accurately describes the medical school's admission procedure. The first comment I posted in this thread, which links to an extensive FAQ about college admission procedures in the United States, gives the citation for the Supreme Court cases on the issue and the current federal regulations.

AFTER EDIT: If, on the other hand, the statement is factually correct about that school's procedure, some denied applicant has a very good basis for a lawsuit under current federal law.

Tokenadult, what the parent said is not necessarily a quota. For many good medical schools, if you sum up the top 5% of every ethnicity of apllicants, you still get far more applicants than there are spaces.

edit: what I said about public schools is incorrect.

I don't think that case applies at all to what I'm saying. What I was told was that the applicant pool that gets looked at is comprised of the top 5% of every ethnic category. There was no implicit or explicit mention of seats allotted for minorities, which seems to be the subject of the lawsuit you mentioned.

When my eldest daughter had her visit at Princeton, it was pretty obvious that there was no cap at 5% Asian. On the other hand, why should they?

My youngest daughter was adopted from Korea, but our family heritage is almost entirely Swiss-German ... She's been part of our family since she was 11 months old, and she loves the ethnic German foods we eat (mostly Pennsylvania-Dutch type cooking), but is also fond of many Korean dishes (such as Bulgogi). What should an admissions office consider her ethnicity? A twist on the classic nature versus nurture conversation.

kyro did not claim there was a 5% cap on the proportion of Asians at schools. He claimed that the admissions pool was drawn out of the top 5% of each ethnic bracket. Those are two different things.

Thanks for pointing that out ... I missed it as I read the article. In that case, I can tell you that the pool of WASP kids (like my daughter) at Princeton consisted of those who had "almost perfect" SAT scores, documented extra-curricular activities, proof of social awareness (best shown by volunteer work with disadvantaged populations) and good interview skills. I'd say it's pretty hard to get into that population as well.

WASP stands for White Anglo-Saxon Protestent. It sounds like your daughter doesn't qualify on at least two counts, and even a biological daughter would fail on at least one.

N.B. Decendents of the Jutes, Angels, and Saxons who remained behind when those tribes invaded England are not referred to as Anglo-Saxons.

If this is the same daughter, I think you just told us that she is not a WASP! (Maybe a 'P'!)

> WASP kids (like my daughter)

white nope anglo saxon nope, and not even if she were your biological daughter. protestant ... maybe. is she religious?

I was referring to my biological daughter.

I almost made that same mistake. I was thinking "are there even 20 racial groups"?

Acceptance rate at Harvard is 5.9% for instance. So you get almost 20x applicants than you can accept.

Actually I'm talking about medical schools, which often have admit rates below 5%. Taking the top 5% of every ethnic group is the same as taking 5% of the entire applicant population, so this only applies to med schools with admit rates below 5%.

I'm not talking about undergrad.

> Taking the top 5% of every ethnic group is the same as taking 5% of the entire applicant population

Except you get an entirely different applicant pool; if the numbers from the article are accurate, the former gives you far fewer Asians and Whites and far more African Americans and Hispanics than the latter.

All other things on parity, your daughter stands to edge ahead of her peers applying to elite universities due to her unique upbringing and the element of life experience quotient it adds to her candidacy.

Unless of course she is in competition with hordes of similar cases of transplanted adoptees.

This is what we call surface diversity. The minority student who gets in to Princeton was adopted by white parents or grew up in a wealthy suburb. It's common enough and a noticeable phenomenon.

That's because Bulgogi is simply amazing. I'm yet to master the recipe.

In seriousness: I think they'd classify her as "Asian". Whether that's good or bad, I don't know. I think it's a shame we "need" to classify anyone at all.

Medical schools have some of the strongest affirmative action:

http://www.aei-ideas.org/2013/04/medical-school-acceptance-r...

Why is that?

Do they implicitly acknowledge that it doesn't take a smart person to become a doctor as long as they get admitted and can get a loan?

one justification I've heard is that doctor like to serve communities they came from. thus, affirmative action ensures minorities have access to doctors.

Why not make admissions based on geography, then?

Serving the community is a different thing than serving in a community. "The" community tends to be "people like the people I've grown up with and lived around most of my life." I can find a community almost anywhere I live.

In other words, a Hispanic doctor from LA might find a comfortable life in Miami serving the Hispanics there[1], whereas he may be completely uncomfortable serving a largely white, affluent neighborhood in the LA basin.

1. I have no idea if this is true or not; I'm just laying out the hypothetical of my GP.

By "geography" do you mean separate urban neighborhoods as well as large rural tracts? Not everyone goes home after they graduate.

It's easy to game this, and there's overwhelming evidence that this already happens in related fields. In countries with state schools with geographic catchment (i.e. most of most English speaking countries), the housing market becomes a proxy for education choice.

This entrenches class concentration. You end up with entire geographic regions that are exclusive, and others that are outcast. People who want their kids to be able to be at a certain school value catchment housing higher than others would. As a result, there's a slide of people who care about their kids' education towards certain regions. By consequence, there's a drain of people who are focussed on their kids' education in poorer areas. This pushes parents who would otherwise have been easy-going to join in the same game, which re-enforces the pattern.

There are plenty of crazy people with a burning, status-seeking ambition to have their child go to medschool (regardless of the wishes of the child). They would absolutely move their address to a catchment for easy access to med school. In the list of the crazy things these crazy people do, this would be among the least surprising.

Regarding schools - there's a policy that would kill this and lead to better schools, called vouchers. In this case, parents apply to schools (anywhere) and the schools choose who they take.

But it's very difficult to introduce this when you have a large, highly educated segment of your voting population who are struggling with a huge mortgage that they took on to secure their children access to a certain school catchment. As they see it - they've paid for something, and now the evil government is stealing that from them and leaving their children to compete on an even footing with the children of parents who haven't made the same sacrifices. "Outrageous!"

Teachers unions also come out hard against vouchers, because it makes the sector more competitive, and that leads to bad teachers getting fired, and wage discrepancy, which undermines the union interest of bringing the sector towards collectivised bargaining.

There's social-engineering arguments that say it's better for people use facilities near them to reduce load on transportation or the like. This is petty rubbish, and also often wrong (mass transit gets more efficient and nicer to use with scale, and that leads to less cars), but it gets trotted out in vouchers debate.

Public universities tend to operate on a voucher arrangement at the moment. Their example is a tangible example that vouchers is good policy, and that is very valuable in the campaign to bring good policy to public schools.

> Teachers unions also come out hard against vouchers, because it makes the sector more competitive

No they are against them because the money for vouchers comes out of the public school budget. In poor areas this can be quite devastating. Unlike the Harlem Children's Zone, most school districts don't have a rich, billionaire uncle giving them millions of dollars each school year. Teacher's also recognize that charter schools have one ability they do not, unload disruptive and under-performing students before test time.

> Public universities tend to operate on a voucher arrangement at the moment. Their example is a tangible example that vouchers is good policy, and that is very valuable in the campaign to bring good policy to public schools.

Please explain? I've gone to public universities and don't remember vouchers at any point. You were accepted on merit. Tuition was paid based on merit and need. But, unlike public schools, they were free to kick you out at any point.

From some of your criticism, I think you're arguing against a particular attempt to introduce vouchers (one that I'm unfamiliar with) rather than the policy of vouchers.

    No they are against them because the money for vouchers
    comes out of the public school budget

Maybe they did in a particular campaign. But the public school budget is not a fixed amount of money, and there's no reason that a drive to vouchers couldn't be accompanied by a net increase in money to schools. Your argument is not against vouchers.

    Teacher's also recognize that charter schools have one
    ability they do not, unload disruptive and
    under-performing students before test time.

You don't need to have both models. All schools could be voucher schools. Eventually the better ones will chase the others out of business. For disabled students, have a special voucher load for them and let schools specialise.

    Please explain? I've gone to public universities and
    don't remember vouchers at any point.

It changes from region to region. But in general, there is an applications process where potential students indicate an intention to enter a university. The university has a certain number of spaces available, and tries to fill them. If students don't meet a standard, or it has more demand than there are places, it rejects people. It gets funding based on how many students it gets in. That's a voucher model: student choice + school choice + per-unit funding.

From memory, in Swizerland, it's more pronounced. I think students say where they want to go, and the university has to accept them and find a way to make it work. But they get commensurate funding for it. If this is correct, this is quite remarkable. If you live in Switzerland and want to go to the most prestigious university, you just say so and you're there. They're not obliged to give you passing marks once you're there. It takes all the snobbery out of things!

If you live in Switzerland and want to go to the most prestigious university, you just say so and you're there. They're not obliged to give you passing marks once you're there. It takes all the snobbery out of things!

Interesting way to do things. I think as long as standards weren't watered down, it would be a way to make it work. People could fail fair and square, and it would cut down on "I coulda been a contender" sour grapes.

However, in the case of medical education, it's extremely expensive to have everybody who thinks they might want to be a doctor "give it a try". So the college grades and extracurriculars is a way to filter people out who would not likely be successful.

No they are against them because the money for vouchers comes out of the public school budget.

I know of one state in which vouchers were opposed by the teachers' union, even though public schools would still receive full funding for every voucher student they didn't have to educate.

"Teacher's also recognize that charter schools have one ability they do not, unload disruptive and under-performing students before test time."

Actually, there are a fair number of social programs around the country that like these students since they tend to generate more revenue (you get paid more for disabled / problem). It happens a lot in social programs (I remember a lecture by a man from Chicago). I can see this working well for a voucher system if properly done.

"money for vouchers comes out of the public school budget"

Technically, it comes from the taxpayers. If the public school was good, then they get to keep the money.

To the person below me--admissions are based on geography. One way they do it is with ridiculous out-of-state fees. When I was thinking about transferring to NEOUCOM in Ohio the tuition was $110k/yr for out of state for the 3rd year...compared to 40k/yr in state. However, thats only one aspect of it. See: https://www.amherst.edu/campuslife/careers/students/gradstud...

I think it's that, but there's some subtlety to it. A minority person seems to be more likely to open a clinic to serve low-income people, perhaps as a side job to doing surgeries. There's also the trust issue between patients and doctors, so having someone who understands a community's needs might achieve better outcomes.

Another interpretation is that it appeases politicians.

the numbers are pretty misleading without context. you gotta compare it to class composition (very low for blacks/hispanics) and raw admissions numbers, not just percentages out of who applied. med school really is a holistic admissions process and that's not just code for affir action. you have to write tons of essays on your values, experiences, obstacles, and interview everywhere you want to go - this is a huge part of the admissions process and a lot of smart kids can't interview for shit. Not to say that it divides along race lines, but the only two metrics listed are GPA and MCAT which aren't the most telling or important things and it's likely that certain groups have more justifiable excuses for low performance than others which are taken into consideration.

As the medical school, they decide what it takes to become a doctor. I wouldn't mind it terribly if they decided doctors must be smart people.

Which is scary as hell.

That's a potentially life-saving bit of information. Thanks! I shall take steps to avoid letting any doctor who might possibly have been a beneficiary of affirmative action treat me or mine.

Were you planning on using this site for anything other than spreading your racist, sexist, and xenophobic views? Because looking through your posts so far that about sums them up.

Throw in some homophobia and you can try for bigot of the year.

Your question isn't really a question, just a clumsy attempt to use shame to stifle open discussion, a technique that goes WAY back. Priests in the Middle Ages used it to keep the peasants in their place, although I imagine that they employed it more effectively than you do.

But here is a real question, one that actually rises to the level of being thought-provoking, just for you:

You have a six-year-old girl who has recently begun to complain of headaches, dizziness, and double-vision. Tests show that she has a tumor in an especially difficult-to-reach part of the brain. If left untreated, she will die, but any attempt to remove the rapidly growing mass has a significant chance of leaving her a vegetable. You must choose between two neurosurgeons, both of whom seemingly have very similar resumes, but one of whom is non-white/non-Asian, the other of whom is white/Asian. Do you choose the former to operate on your little girl, knowing that affirmative action policies may well have greased the skids for him all the way from college to medical school to his residency, or do you pick the latter, for whom no such programs exist?

If you pick the former, then your commitment to egalitarianism is on a par with Abraham's to Yaweh when he bound Jacob to the sacrificial altar.

I was kinda shocked when I saw you didn't fault people for putting down african americans... until I re-read your comment and realized you didn't mean put down as in "insult" them... you meant put down as in write down in the college application that they are african american when in fact they really weren't.

Well, I'm referring to Egyptians specifically, who aren't technically African-Americans. According to the consensus, we're Caucasian.

An Egyptian who immigrated to America fits the criteria for being considered African-American.

IMHO Skin color isn't the only designation.

For most of these cases, skin color is the lowest common denominator that allows them to game the system.

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/education/story/2011-12-...

The term African-American is just out-and-out silly. I've seen American media refer to a black British model who worked in France as 'African-American' - despite her being neither African nor American. Born in England, but labelled American because of her skin. Isn't that an own-goal?

Heh heh. Who was it that referred to people in Chad as "African American Africans"? Some politician.

And who is more African American that someone like Teresa Heinz Kerry, who was born in Mozambique and is a naturalized citizen?

Yeah, it's a stupid term.

I hear it is a particular problem for jamaican people as well, with their shall we say, complex relationship to african identity.

We do live in America, so your actual ethnicity matters, but not as much as what people think you are on first glance (i.e. police, interviewers, etc).

Race is something that affects people's lives in the real world, beyond boxes on applications. This argument is becoming a little academic.

I disagree. Arabs are considered Caucasian in some parts.

An anecdote: Egyptian friend studies abroad in the US, gets arrested visiting New York state for very overdue parking tickets he was unaware of (studying elsewhere in the US). They bring him to the station, and the cops attempt to fill in the paperwork, and they admit to my friend they are not sure what to fill in. In the end, they look in their procedure book, and said he is Arab and that is considered a subset of Caucasian in their definition. I was actually surprised by this.

Whether Arabs are caucasian or not is not GP's point: it's that someone who was born in Africa, and lives in America, can fairly consider themselves to be African-American, just on that basis.

I thought Egyptians were ethnically Arabs?

Arabs are classified as Caucasian

Race in America is such a messy clustering of arbitrary phenotypic and cultural features. I wonder what our "racial" categories would look like if people treated these groupings as a statistical problem, rather than some sort of given natural phenomenon. Maybe we'd just give up on the concept all together?

People do display distinct genetic clustering based on ancestral geography. If someone has your DNA, they can tell with high certainty where your ancestors came from.

Of course, a substantial number of white Americans would be surprised by discovering they had ancestors from Africa in the recent past. (Most African-Americans, on the other hand, wouldn't be too surprised to find out many of them have European ancestry.)

>People do display distinct genetic clustering based on ancestral geography.

For sure! But I suspect the most meaningful coarse clusters might end up being some large number of divisions of sub-saharan africa and then everyone else. Definitely not the "White", "Black", "Asian" categories people in the states take for granted. And even ignoring the amazing diversity of Africa (compared with the rest of the world), did the Irish become more genetically white when they became culturally accepted as white? Did Latin Americans of European descent become less genetically white when people further North stopped viewing them that way? Why do some races trump others (i.e., why is Barack Obama considered black)? The boundaries of these categories seem very arbitrary and not derived by any rigorous means at all.

I think i have seen this before, it came out basically pretty well aligned with the generally accepted racial groups, except there were i believe 2 groups for sub saharan instead of one group of 'blacks'. Has been a few years since i saw the study so dont quote me on it.

Find the citation please. I'm not even sure what you mean by generally accepted racial groups. In the UK, unlike the US, you would probably distinguish between Indian & Pakistani vs. all other Asians. You might also distinguish Irish as a separate ethnicity and probably would not think of Arabs or Turks as white. This stuff is very culturally dependent and I don't know which set of "racial groups" would be considered canonical.

Despite a lying Senator, checking the Native American box is a pretty simple exercise. Are you enrolled with a federally (or state in some cases) recognized tribe? Yes, check box. No, pick something else.

One of the main confounds seems to be "large immigrant group". For example, even ethnically-100%-Spanish Latinos in the U.S. are considered different from "Anglos", in significant part because it's a large group. That sometimes leads to significant differences between countries. I'd say that for the past 50 years or so, Greek-Americans have been considered part of the undifferentiated majority "white" population. But Greek-Australians are still considered different in Australia, not really properly white, or at least white with an "ethnic" asterisk.

"I wonder what our 'racial' categories would look like if people treated these groupings as a statistical problem, rather than some sort of given natural phenomenon."

The outcome would no doubt have a lot in common with the ugly and ill-fitting suit made for Gulliver by the tailors of Laputa, who used quadrants, rules, and compasses rather than a simple tape measure.

What if you put down "underrepresented minority" and you aren't one?

I mean, I could claim that there are "too few" (whatever that means) Estonians in a given medical school and claim minority status.

Given that this is illegal, either they're making it up, or this is why they are no longer an admissions officer.

Is there a verification process after application process ends?

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