Was being URM an advantage in the admissions process? I could see that going either way.
There's no silver bullet for MD or SMP admissions. Being URM can help but it is infuriatingly reductive (and common) to attribute an applicant's success solely to that. It is also bad for your process to assume the opposite, i.e. that any lack of success is due to being East Asian... there may be holes in your application other than your GPA and verbal score that you're less likely to notice if you make this fundamental attribution error.
Things that I think helped in the (MD) admissions process:
-spending a year before my SMP writing my AMCAS and thinking about why I actually want to be a doctor
-taking time off after graduation
-submitting on Day 1
-applying broadly
-prewriting secondaries
-4.0 postbacc, so steep upward trend
-balanced MCAT score
-going to an Ivy League undergraduate, receiving a great committee letter from them
-showing commitment to underserved communities, which is not the same as being URM
-interviewing well
-founding a sports team on campus, teaching that team, competing nationally and internationally in that sport
-being a sexual health educator on campus
-consistent volunteering at food banks, even after I graduated
-having parents who are doctors
-shadowing
-showing further commitment by doing an SMP
-being URM
I think this is just a general warning to people going the SMP route, based on things that I've seen: don't treat grades as a misfortune handed down by the universe that you had no part in. For the majority of my classmates they have some clear flaw that landed them there such as time management, excessive partying, emotional issues, and complete lack of self-awareness in professional settings. Even people who spent time taking care of a sick relatives admit that, perhaps, they spent too much time worrying about them and not enough time thinking about the implications of doing poorly in undergraduate.