by Aaron Sibarium
Long considered one of the best medical schools in the world, the University of California, Los Angeles’s David Geffen School of Medicine receives as many as 14,000 applications a year. Of those, it accepted just 173 students in the 2023 admissions cycle, a record-low acceptance rate of 1.3 percent. The median matriculant took difficult science courses in college, earned a 3.8 GPA, and scored in the 88th percentile on the Medical College Admissions Test (MCAT).
Without those stellar stats, some doctors at the school say, students can struggle to keep pace with the demanding curriculum.
So when it came time for the admissions committee to consider one such student in November 2021—a black applicant with grades and test scores far below the UCLA average—some members of the committee felt that this particular candidate, based on the available evidence, was not the best fit for the top-tier medical school, according to two people present for the committee’s meeting.
Their reservations were not well-received.
When an admissions officer voiced concern about the candidate, the two people said, the dean of admissions, Jennifer Lucero, exploded in anger.
“Did you not know African-American women are dying at a higher rate than everybody else?” Lucero asked the admissions officer, these people said. The candidate’s scores shouldn’t matter, she continued, because “we need people like this in the medical school.”
Even before the Supreme Court’s landmark affirmative action ban last year, public schools in California were barred by state law from considering race in admissions. The outburst from Lucero, who discussed race explicitly despite that ban, unsettled some admissions officers, one of whom reached out to other committee members in the wake of the incident. “We are not consistent in the way we apply the metrics to these applicants,” the official wrote in an email obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. “This is troubling.”
“I wondered,” the official added, “if this applicant had been [a] white male, or [an] Asian female for that matter, [whether] we would have had that much discussion.”
Since Lucero took over medical school admissions in June 2020, several of her colleagues have asked the same question. In interviews with the Free Beacon and complaints to UCLA officials, including investigators in the university’s Discrimination Prevention Office, faculty members with firsthand knowledge of the admissions process say it has prioritized diversity over merit, resulting in progressively less qualified classes that are now struggling to succeed.
Race-based admissions have turned UCLA into a “failed medical school,” said one former member of the admissions staff. “We want racial diversity so badly, we’re willing to cut corners to get it.”
Diversity is great, but it still has to based on merit. I’ve seen a NYT story about a black girl who, at 19, has graduated college with a masters degree. Started college at 9. Now, my guess is she doesn’t come from a single-parent family surrounded by those who preach that work ethic, personal discipline and studying are “white” and should be shunned by blacks. We can have diversity AND merit once the left stops making excuses (like that supreme moron, Robin Ware/Robert L. Peters/JRB Ware/Pedo Peter/idiot Biden did at Morehouse) for failure. Blacks, as well as Hispanics, Asians and everyone else, have every opportunity to excel, as long as the left doesn’t hold them back with preventing school choice and mandating failed schools that push indoctrination.
What other dark little Secrets are they hiding from us
This anti-white head of admissions has allowed classes on,”Cleanness is over-rated,” and “fatness demonization.”
When a grad of her med school was asked by a doctor to find a major “artery in the patient’s chest,” the student railed at the doctor and left the operating room.
Yeah, that’ll work in the student’s practice after finishing his internship.
Not.
How does this help black patients get better survival rates?
Or, is it to kill more of them?