Is it really this hard?

mcat2
Thu, 03 May 2012 13:41:24 +0000

I think it is true that quality URM’s (not all kinds of URMs though – some are more URM than others) are indeed rare and therefore there are fewer URM med school students.

As an example, the link posted by WOWMOM in post #2 above shows that:

Acceptance rate
Black applicants 27-29 30-32 33-35 36-38 39-45

GPA 3.8-4.0 93.5% 94.3% 94.1% 100% 100%
GPA 3.6-3.79 96.8% 93.0% 95.2% 95.7% 100%

It is almost as though, as long as MCAT is >=27, MCAT is not a distingushing factor here. For applicants of white and ORM, they may need both GPA and MCAT, but it appears for this particular ethnic group, they need either GPA or MCAT-- and it appears med school adcoms search high and low for any merit they may have, e.g., successfully overcome the disadvantage environment in which they have been growing up.

You may argue that all tests (including MCAT and the tests in college) are biased against certain ethnetic groups though. (More likely, I think the system is against the students who grew up from a family and/or a community that does not have the means to supprt them when they were growing up. It is indeed very challenging for anybody to distinguish themselves if they were growing up in that kind of environment, no matter what ethnic group they belong to.)