Application process for minorities

[Dr.Narcos]

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Sorry but I posted this in the underrepresented minority forum and it wasn't answered.

Recently I have been curious to know how the admission committee sorts applicants. It is known that underrepresented minorities are accepted with lower stats.

That is when I started to think. How exactly does the admissions committee sort through applicants if they have a specific cut off score for GPA or mcat.

Ex. School A has a median MCAT score of 505 and a average GPA of 3.6. School A received 5000 applications. 3000 are white and asian 1000 are black and 1000 are hispanics.

If there is a cut off of 498 MCAT and 3.5 GPA how is possible that some minorities get accepted with lower then the cut offs. Do they have a separate process for hispanics and blacks?

Is this a automated process. Does a computer sort that?

If anyone has any insight to cure my curiosity please let me know.

 

[mdphdNYC]

The actual cutoff may be lower than you expect. I have heard of schools auto-screening at 490 or even lower. It is just that the applicant pool is large enough and students are competitive enough that the "effective" cutoff after applications reach the admissions committee becomes much higher than the hard cutoff (which most schools don't disclose) - hence why even scores like 505, despite being better than 70% of test-takers, can be considered low-borderline at most schools. However for applicants judged to be unusual this may be relaxed.