By Steve Sailer
05/13/2013
Here are a couple of useful tables from my 2009 VDARE article on the results of admissions tests mandated by graduate and professional schools (the Graduate Record Exam, Law School Admission Test, Medical College Admission Test, Graduate Management Admission Test, and Dental Admission Test).
The worthy organizations that administer these tests issue huge reports most years on how applicants have done by race, ethnicity, sex, and so forth. I took the most recent reports available in 2009, covering years from 2005 up to 2008). To make the median scores comprehensible and comparable, they are all displayed as percentiles vs. the white distribution.
| Mean Score as Percentile of White Distribution | ||||||
| Test | Degree | White | Black | Asian | Tot Hisp | Mex-Am |
| GMAT | M.B.A. | 50% | 13% | 55% | 27% | 24% |
| GRE-Verbal | Ph.D./M.A. | 50% | 18% | 47% | 29% | 28% |
| GRE-Quant | Ph.D./M.A. | 50% | 14% | 66% | 29% | 28% |
| LSAT | J.D. | 50% | 12% | 47% | 19% | 29% |
| MCAT-Verbal | M.D. | 50% | 10% | 36% | 19% | 21% |
| MCAT-Phys Sci | M.D. | 50% | 14% | 61% | 24% | 25% |
| MCAT-Biol Sci | M.D. | 50% | 10% | 54% | 24% | 25% |
| DAT | D.D.S. | 50% | 16% | 60% | 27% | NA |
For example, on the GMAT, the median white applicant scores, by definition, at the 50th percentile of the white distribution, while the median black applicant scores at the 13th percentile, Asians at the 55th percentile, all Hispanics at the 27th percentile, and (within Total Hispanics, Mexican Americans at the 24th percentile.
As you'll notice, blacks and Hispanics don’t do all that well on these tests, which is why they get affirmative action.
As I wrote in 2009:
Note that language is a surprisingly small problem for Hispanics — they score no worse on the GRE Verbal subtest than on the GRE Quantitative, and only moderately worse on Verbal portion of the MCAT. Why? Because Hispanics who have problems with English generally don’t finish college, or even high school.
Here’s a second table showing what percentage of each ethnic group, relative to whites, take each test:
| White | Black | Asian | Tot Hisp | Mexican | ||
| % of 20-24 ages | 61.5% | 15.5% | 4.9% | 17.5% | 10.2% | |
| White Shr | Share of Test-Takers v. White Share | |||||
| GMAT | 68.7% | 100 | 49 | 205 | 29 | 18 |
| GRE | 74.0% | 100 | 47 | 93 | 29 | 21 |
| LSAT | 66.1% | 100 | 62 | 154 | 47 | 15 |
| MCAT | 57.0% | 100 | 51 | 434 | 44 | 26 |
| DAT | 62.0% | 100 | 44 | 489 | 36 | NA |
This table helps you evaluate the first table because it shows how hard the bottom of the barrel is being scraped for each group for each test. What percentage of each cohort of 20-24 year olds takes each test? Whites are set, by definition, at 100. For example, blacks are 49 percent as likely to take the GMAT as whites, Asians 205%, Total Hispanics 29%, and Mexican-Americans only 18%.
Mexican-Americans are no more than half as likely as blacks to take one of these tests. As I wrote in 2009:
If you are wondering why America’s white elites aren’t more worried about their kids facing competition from the huge number of Mexican immigrants they've let in, this educational indolence is one answer — at the highest levels of American society, Mexican-Americans just aren’t much competition.
You can read the whole article here.
This is a content archive of VDARE.com, which Letitia James forced off of the Internet using lawfare.