US Universities Should be Required to Give Preference to Applicants of Underrepresented Minorities

Your first argument is correct, but not particularly relevant. Medical school admissions committees give special consideration to the socio-economically disadvantaged. There is a part of the application dedicated to that part of your history. Additionally, socio-economically disadvantaged prospective medical students are eligible for assistance programs in preparation for the MCAT and receive discounts on their examination fees. The point of racial preference is not to provide a benefit to URM students, it is for the benefit of the patients. The benefit is multi-fold. 1) It ensures that doctors in training are not insulated in an environment of only white and ORM(over-represented minority) students. This leads to physicians with less likelihood of racial bias. This is currently a problem that we are working on. Part of the education at my medical school centers around ensuring that we treat all patients equally, but unconscious biases tend to color the decisions made by physicians. For example, an average physician is more likely to prescribe appropriate doses of pain medication to a white patient than to a black patient, and we think this is due to racial bias. It may be the case that many physicians subconsciously think of black people as drug abusers, so having a diverse environment, even if it is only superficially diverse, in the medical school may help prevent this problem from persevering. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov... 2) Many minority patients feel more comfortable with a doctor that represents their particular minority. Black patients are often more comfortable with black physicians and Hispanic patients are often more comfortable with Hispanic physicians, especially if the physician speaks Spanish. Some patients will even refuse care based on the race of the providers, so having physicians of all races in a hospital saves lives. http://www.uclalawreview.org... 3) URM physicians are far more likely to work in underserved areas than are white or ORM physicians. https://www.aamc.org... 4) Having representation from all ethnicities in this profession provides role models for minority youths. (I have no source for this, but it seems prima facie true.) Another problem with this argument is it seems like you think that having certain scores means that medical schools owe you admission. This is not the case. Medical schools admit the people who they think will provide the most benefit to their future patients. A GPA and MCAT score tell them about your odds of surviving medical school, but they do not tell the admissions committees about your odds of being the best care provider. Your second argument is patently false when talking about medical schools.. You say that they usually cannot live up to the advantage they were given, but you fail to cite any data regarding medical school dropout rates. Here is the relevant data: Rate of attrition by race: Native American: 4.3% Asian: .9% Black: 6.7% Hispanic: 3.4% White: .7% https://www.aamc.org... You can manipulate this data to say things like "black students are almost 10 times as likely as white students to drop out of medical school", but when we are talking about such a small dropout rate, relative rates are not relevant or helpful to demonstrating the reality of the situation. The reality is that 93.3% of the people in a group you asserted are usually unable to live up to the advantage given to them do in fact live up to it. Your third argument is just more of your first argument and already rebutted. Your fourth argument is just more of your first argument and already rebutted. In conclusion, racial discrimination in admission to medical school is actually a good thing. It improves medical care for the patients and does not have any significant effect on the rate of attrition by students.