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| Format: | Preprint |
| Published: |
2026
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| Online Access: | https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.18484 |
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| _version_ | 1866908845851279360 |
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| author | Puelz, David |
| author_facet | Puelz, David |
| contents | Whether and how race is used in selective admissions remains a central question in higher education and civil rights law. In Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (2023), the Supreme Court held that race-based affirmative action in college admissions violates the Equal Protection Clause, purportedly ending the practice. This report examines admissions at a public medical school in the pre-SFFA period. Using applicant-level data on over 11,000 applications to Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center Medical School for the 2021 and 2022 cycles, I relate admission decisions to academic merit (MCAT, GPA, science GPA), race, gender, and situational judgment (Casper) scores. Summary statistics, academic-index decompositions, and logistic regression models provide strong evidence of racial preferences: African American and Hispanic applicants are preferred relative to academically similar White and Asian applicants. Counterfactual and preference-removal analyses quantify the magnitude of these disparities. The findings document the kind of race-based preferences that SFFA was meant to address and establish a baseline for assessing whether admissions practice changed after the decision. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2602_18484 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2026 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Racial Preferences at a Texas Medical School Puelz, David General Economics Economics Whether and how race is used in selective admissions remains a central question in higher education and civil rights law. In Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (2023), the Supreme Court held that race-based affirmative action in college admissions violates the Equal Protection Clause, purportedly ending the practice. This report examines admissions at a public medical school in the pre-SFFA period. Using applicant-level data on over 11,000 applications to Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center Medical School for the 2021 and 2022 cycles, I relate admission decisions to academic merit (MCAT, GPA, science GPA), race, gender, and situational judgment (Casper) scores. Summary statistics, academic-index decompositions, and logistic regression models provide strong evidence of racial preferences: African American and Hispanic applicants are preferred relative to academically similar White and Asian applicants. Counterfactual and preference-removal analyses quantify the magnitude of these disparities. The findings document the kind of race-based preferences that SFFA was meant to address and establish a baseline for assessing whether admissions practice changed after the decision. |
| title | Racial Preferences at a Texas Medical School |
| topic | General Economics Economics |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.18484 |