Maybe it's just that the accepted applicants were of the same quality or better, in terms of their predicted suitability to practice medicine. The fact is that not everyone can get into such highly competitive programmes, and unfortunately some have to lose out.
That wouldn't explain my observations, where excellent non-Asian applicants were shoe-ins on their first try and Asian applicants of the same quality had to try multiple times, some of them never making it in at all. If it was just a numbers issue and not everyone could make it in, you wouldn't expect such a clear racial difference.
Of course my anecdotes could just be flukes or I could be misinterpreting the quality of various candidates. But given what we know about undergrad admissions, it's not a stretch to imagine the same thing in med school. It's just that med school acceptance is much more impactful than undergrad.
> Of course my anecdotes could just be flukes or I could be misinterpreting the quality of various candidates.
The beauty of commenting on HN is that you don't need to provide data or citations, you can just write down anecdotes (made up or not), and you'll be upvoted by those who like what you say. And you can feel good about it, because the community thinks it has an intellectual side, engaging in deep conversations about a variety of topics.
> The beauty of commenting on HN is that you don't need to provide data or citations, you can just write down anecdotes
You didn't finish your thought. The beauty of HN isn't just that. Because immediately after doing that, someone jumps out and points out that you didn't write a research paper backing up your comment on the internet. Thanks for keeping the HN culture alive and strong.
As an aside, if you're genuinely curious about this subject, there has been a lot written about it, a lot of research done into it, and a clear bias has been show against certain minorities which tend to outperform other populations (asians, jews, etc.). If I actually cared about convincing you, I would cite a few, but I don't actually care what you think and this is the internet ... so please use Google.
I think that unless you're privy to all the information that the admissions staff are using to judge acceptance, including the quality of the competition and a myriad of other factors that you or I may not have considered, it's a bit of a stretch to assume your friends were racially discriminated against. I don't know how many people you're talking about, but assuming it's a relatively small number, the rejection of most/all of your Asian friends to study medicine could just be down to chance.
I would agree for you, except it's well known that Asians are discriminated against in undergrad college admissions, so it's not a stretch for me to imagine the same thing in med school admissions. Indeed, one of the comments replying to me showed MCAT distribution by race for accepted med students is similar to the SAT distribution by race for accepted undergrad students.
Yes but even if it could be confirmed that racial quotas that are significantly unfavourable toward Asian applicants exist for some medical school admissions, that doesn't mean it was the reason for your friends being rejected.
We just don't know if they would have been accepted in an equivalent system without these alleged discriminatory policies, because gaining a medical school offer depends on such a myriad of other factors.
