Originally posted by ManchotPi
When I interviewed there however, my interview group had a larger percentage of URMs than I've run into elsewhere (of course one day is not a great sample size). Do you think these people are not being accepted due to low numbers? Or do you think that generally URMs get in and choose to go elsewhere (based on some perception that St. Louis is not a diverse city or something like that)?
Hmmm... you bring up some interesting points....
Well, I took a look at some of the URM data from the 2004 US News and World Report -
Percentage of students who are URM at Top 10 schools (for fall 2002) -
Harvard - 22%
Stanford - 21%
Duke - 19%
UMich - 15%
Yale - 15%
UCSF - 15%
Hopkins - 14%
Penn - 12%
Columbia - 11%
WashU - 8%
Average - 15.2%
Well, it appears as though WashU has a lower percentage of URMs than any other med school.
But even if WashU enrolled the average percentage of URMs at top med schools, would this have any substantial effect on their average MCAT score?
Let's take a somewhat extreme exaggeration and see what happens. To get to the average percentage of URMs at top schools, WashU would have to increase its percentage of URMs from 8% to 15.2%. Say the average accepted URM has an average MCAT score of 31 whereas the average accepted non-URM has an average MCAT score of 38 (remember this is an extreme exaggeration). To maintain an enrollment of ~120 students/year, this would mean that WashU would have to enroll an additional 9 URM students and reject 9 non-URMs.
What does this do to WashU's average MCAT score of 36.6?
WashU's average MCAT score would decrease to
36.075, a decrease of approximately half a point.
After this, lets see what happens when we subtract a few MSTPers. Say WashU decides then to reduce its number of MSTPers to the average of 10%.
Let's say that WashU MSTPers have an average MCAT score of 38 whereas WashU MD students have an average MCAT score of 34. To reduce WashU's percentage of MSTPers to 10%, WashU would have to enroll an additional 12 MD students and reject 12 MSTPers.
Now what does this do to the average MCAT score at WashU?
This reduces WashU's average MCAT score to
35.675 - which happens to be less than Columbia's average MCAT score!
I haven't taken account scholarships into any of these calculations - it is possible that scholarship students have much higher stats than other students. This doesn't seem to have too much of an effect on the average MCAT scores of other schools that offer scholarships (Penn comes to mind). However, if you took away the 10% of the WashU student body that received scholarships b/c of superstar credentials (great stats, ecs), then WashU's average MCAT score would drop an additional .4 points to approximately
35.275.
To put it another way, WashU's average MCAT score would be on par w/ other top med schools if it didn't offer scholarships, accepted the average number of URMs, and had an average sized MSTP program. About 1.3 points of WashU's high average MCAT score can be attributed to these 3 factors.
Of all of these factors, I think WashU can only criticized for its relatively low proportion of URMs.
However as you point out, the reason for this is unclear... Is WashU rejecting URM applicants or are URMs rejecting WashU? How many URMs reject WashU b/c of its low percentage of URMs or b/c of St. Louis? How many of WashU's scholarships go towards attracting URMs who would otherwise attend HMS, Hopkins, etc... Does WashU send out recruitment letters to URMs as they send out letters to ppl who get high MCAT scores? It's difficult to say w/ out knowing much about WashU's diversity initiatives. Maybe the diverse group of students you saw on your interview day was indicative of an increased effort to improve WashU's diversity.
In any case, it seems to me that most of the criticism leveled at WashU is unfair. I have to admit that I was guilty of this earlier, but as I did these calculations, it became clear to me that my earlier criticisms were misguided. I know that these calculations are only rough approximations but in doing them, it seems to me that WashU's high average MCAT score can be quantitatively accounted for without too much difficulty.
