But the numbers seem to tell a different story. The University of California officially considers four groups to be the "underrepresented populations" mentioned above: blacks, Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, and American Indians. Members of those groups have admissions rates far above whites and other minorities at the University of California medical schools. At the Davis campus, for example, researchers Jerry and Ellen Cook found that underrepresented minorities accounted for 10.6 percent of applications but 28.9 percent of acceptances from 1991 to 1993. Asians were 34.7 percent of applicants and 27.4 percent of admittees. Non-Hispanic whites, "others," and "unknowns" were 54.6 percent of applicants and 43.7 percent of those accepted. Underrepresented minorities had an acceptance rate 3.4 times that of Asians and whites. In 1993 at Davis, American Indians had an acceptance rate 11.8 times that of Koreans, and blacks were 13.7 times more likely than Koreans to be accepted.
In an attempt to eliminate differences in background other than race, the Cooks focused on medical school applicants from one undergraduate school, the University of California at San Diego. Between 1987 and 1993, underrepresented minorities made up 13 percent of the UC-San Diego undergraduates who applied to medical school at that campus but 32 percent of those accepted. Moreover, the average OPA and MCAT score of the affirmative action group ranked in the bottom 1 percent of the other UC-San Diego students.
In another study, the Cooks looked at 1993 applicants from the University of California, Irvine, to all UC medical schools. They found that the differences in admission rates and average OPAs and test scores between affirmative action students and non-affirmative action students were about the same as in the UC-San Diego study. But this time the Cooks had access to financial data on the applicants. They found that affirmative action students who were not classified by the schools as economically disadvantaged were admitted at four times the rate of non-affirmative action students who were classified as economically disadvantaged. (UC medical schools no longer publish general breakdowns of admissions by ethnic group, MCAT scores, and GPA, though prospective students can still get estimates of their likelihood of admission by giving officials their ethnicity, scores, and GPA over the phone.)
"The conclusion must be that race is not just one factor considered in UC medical school admissions," said Ellen Cook in her April testimony before the California Assembly's Higher Education Committee. "It is the major factor."
According to information on the 1993 freshman class at UCLA Law School, the average LSAT score for accepted whites, Asians, and "others" was 42.93. The average LSAT for blacks, Latinos, and Native Americans was 36.97. This places the average score for these minorities in the lowest 2 percent of the other students. The law school accepted 38 percent of black, Latino, and Native American applicants with GPAs between 3.60 and 3.79 and LSAT scores below 38. It accepted only 2 percent of Asians, whites, and "others" with comparable GPAs and LSAT scores. "There's no question that the UCLA Law School uses racial preferences in its admissions," says Allan J. Favish, an attorney who has studied the issue.
In the coming weeks and months, government hiring, education, and contracting numbers will be subjected to greater scrutiny than at any time in the past 30 years. When people look at these figures, will they see a system that doesn't do enough to provide equal opportunity for women and minorities, or will they see proof of bias against white men? When all is said and done, the battle will be fought with these numbers, not simply with charges of racism or reverse discrimination.
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