Wand: Discrimination by design? Race-based admissions in Canadian medical and law schools

While I largely disagree with the recommendations, good to have this data analysis on the impact of these preferences:

…Key findings include:

• In nine of 14 schools, the non-racial-minority, or non-Black, non-Indigenous applicant group had the lowest acceptance rates. Even among the five remaining schools where the “Discretionary” and “Black” applicant racial groups had the lowest acceptance rates, those rates were much higher than if the applicants from these two groups had been required to compete against all applicants, regardless of race.

• Thirteen schools (with two exceptions for LSAT-specific analysis) admitted fewer non-racial-minority or non-Black, non-Indigenous applicants than would have been the case had they selected applicants according to their top-ranked academic performance.

• Further analysis showed that 216 applicants or 10 per cent were admitted with lower grades out of 2,150 medical and law school first-year students who were all from designated racial minority applicant groups. A similar admission pattern was also observed for LSAT/MCAT scores, with 132 racial minority applicants admitted with lower scores, or 6.1 per cent of the total number of admitted students. This analysis indicates that race-based admission policies result in the admission of academically weaker students.

• In every school that provided admissions data, the non-racial-minority or non[1]Black, non-Indigenous applicant groups experienced the highest number of rejections despite higher academic scores than the admitted applicant from other racial groups with the lowest academic score from their group.

• Most medical schools and many law schools refused to release their race-based application and admission data at all. This lack of transparency raises serious concerns about accountability in publicly funded institutions.

The implications are troubling. Institutional racism potentially erodes fairness and undermines public confidence in our standards for medical and legal education. Such racism is also remarkably resistant to scrutiny – operating behind policies that limit access to basic admissions data.

These findings give some specificity to broader concerns about DEI in Canadian universities and colleges, where critics have raised alarms about the growth of DEI bureaucracies, opaque hiring policies, and admission practices that prioritize group identity over merit.

Canada also stands out internationally. University officials in Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, and the Netherlands reported that race is not considered in admissions decisions for medical or law schools.

Policy recommendations to address the racial segregation and discrimination identified in this report include:

• Provincial governments should prohibit the use of race as an admissions criterion in medical and law schools.

• To restore academic rigour, these schools should rely exclusively on objective measures such as the MCAT, LSAT, and required prerequisite coursework. Provinces should consider suspending funding to medical and law schools that continue to factor race into admissions decisions.

• In addition, provinces that continue to consider race in medical and law school admissions should be required to publicly release race-based application and admission data using consistent, transparent measures of discrimination, preferably measures similar to the measures used in this study. Without this disclosure, governments cannot effectively oversee or correct the disturbing trend of racial discrimination that threatens the overall academic strength of our medical and law students.

Recent public debates in Canada, including high-profile campus protests, faculty resignations over DEI mandates, and legislative scrutiny of “equity hires,” reflect growing concern that universities are straying from their core missions under the banner of DEI. Rather than sorting applicants by racial category, universities should focus on ensuring that all prospective students, regardless of race, have the academic preparation needed to compete fairly. This includes access to tutoring, frequent testing, and meaningful academic feedback well before the application stage….

Source: Discrimination by design? Race-based admissions in Canadian medical and law schools