Originally posted by drdrtoledo:
•By asking one to explain their disadvantages in order to "hav[e] a policy where you look at each individual and see where s/he is from and has overcome" you are once again trying to place a value on something that is nearly impossible to quantify. I think it is still a little too soon to consider racism abolished in this country. Trust me, it's there. Racial unity has functioned well in the urban environments but it still has not been widely accepted. While some things point to AA having run it's course, I feel there is evidence showing otherwise.
For every upper middle class minority you know... how many wealthy non-minorites do you know. Is it 1:10, 1:20, 1:50? Whatever it is, you know it isn't even.
I ask this: If AA is just an excuse for poor perfromance, why don't er object when people address their inadequacies in their med school essay. "I didn't speak english yet, There was a death in my family, I had a car accident, I had to work full time, etc." Excuses are excuses aren't they? Doesn't everyone try to justify their performance somehow? Couldn't you have done better hadn't X,Y, & Z happened?
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You are absolutely right and I agree that we really shouldn't make excuses at all. That being said, I do not really think looking at an applicant's lifetime of work (or lack thereof) would be making excuses, but would actually be a better judge of his/her success potential in med school than any blanket policy ever could. If you had candidate A and B with identical scores, but candidate A also worked 40 hours/week while candidate B did not, one could conclude that candidate A may be better adjusted to succeed in med school, regardless of race. Granted, this is not 100% accurate either, but at least it places the emphasis on the individual applicant and the things s/he can control rather than on things out of his/her control (such as race, parent's socioeconomic status, etc...). Afterall, it is the individual applicant that will be taking the exams, not the race or tax bracket.