Posted on 10 March 2009
The Undiscovered Jew recommend to me that I should look up some data on gender and racial differences in LSAT scores. I did so happen to find some data—a real gold-mine, in fact—on these group differences. I’ll let the charts speak for themselves. You can find the report from which the data comes here.
[...] Race Realism, University by Lover of Wisdom I showed the racial breakdown of LSAT takers in my previous post. Now let’s look at their group IQ’s according to my chart: African-Americans, [...]
[...] shows that East Asian IQ variance is virtually the same as the Caucasian IQ variance. Also, I noticed that Asians exhibit a slightly greater variance than Caucasians for the [...]
[...] Breakdown of sex and racial group differences in LSAT scores March 2009 18 comments Posted in: Uncategorized ← The Case Against Girls Modeling after Rebecca St. James LikeBe the first to like this post. Be the first to start a conversation [...]
 | nuality on Asian accomplishment (or lack… |
 | Davey G on Asian accomplishment (or lack… |
 | An East Asian on Asian accomplishment (or lack… |
| An East Asian on Asian accomplishment (or lack… |
| nuality on Asian accomplishment (or lack… |
Lover of Wisdom
10 March 2009
Damn, the charts didn’t come out right. I’ll fix that.
Lover of Wisdom
10 March 2009
I fixed it, but I apologize for the small size.
Audacious Epigone
26 March 2009
The black average is more than a full SD below the white average. That’s consistent with the history of psychometrics in the US for the last century. The black-white gap in the US really does seem to be a law.
Any speculation as to why those who did not respond to gender/racial self-identification questions are a cut above the rest?
Lover of Wisdom
26 March 2009
Hi AE:
We would have to do a bit of decision-theory. I suspect that any potential under-represented minority student applying to law school, who knows that being an under-represented minority helps towards being admitted, will signal that one is said student. But being Asian won’t help towards being admitted—Asians are already over-represented, and that sometimes counts against them—so I suspect some Asians will not signal being Asian, perhaps in the hope that the lack of racial information, but strong record, will help towards being admitted. I believe similarly so for Whites.
I’m not surprised by the Black-White gap, but I am surprised by the Asian-White gap—that there isn’t a gap. We would typically see in fluid g tests the one-third SD gap between Whites and Asians, but we don’t see that here. Perhaps, the reason is that the LSAT tests crystalized g.
Audacious Epigone
26 March 2009
The nonexistent Asian-white gap on the LSAT has me stumped as well.
Erik
26 March 2009
Well, guys, perhaps some Jews are deeming Caucasian to be the most appropriate choice, hmm? That would certainly be skewing the white score upwards, don’t you reckon?
Lover of Wisdom
26 March 2009
Erik:
That might be the case. It could also be that Jews are the ones that don’t respond to the racial self-identification questions because they see themselves as “none of the above.”
israeliteknight
14 October 2009
So this means that a Hispanic like Alberto Gonzo Gonzales who had utterly no comprehension of the US Constitution after getting a law DEGREE from Harvard, has less of a chance of understanding it than an Asian like Rain, but a MUCH better chance of understanding it than a Black like Obama?
I would love to see Obama respond to a congressional hearing without a teleprompter the way Gonzales did (or didn’t).
Anonymous
15 October 2009
So according to LSAT scores, Hispanics like Alberto who doesn’t understand the US Constitution after getting a law DEGREE from Harvard have a much better understanding of the US Constitution than Blacks like Obama who ALSO got a law DEGREE from Harvard?
LSAT SCORES:
Whites = 153
Asians = 152
Mexicans = 148
Hispanics =146
Blacks = 142
If you count Gonzo as a Mexican, then he’s only 5 points lower than Whites like Bush but 6 points HIGHER than Blacks like Obama?
If a law DEGREE from Harvard issued to a Mexican like Gonzalez is the equivalent of a second grade understanding of the US Constitution, then exactly what is the value of a law DEGREE from Harvard issued to a Black like Obama?
jacobisrael
19 October 2009
It’s interesting that our “educators” are sooooo impressed with themselves when they make it appear that the different races are almost “equal”, so let’s unravel it for them. It would appear that the BASE score, or the LOWEST score a warm body can get when it takes the LSAT, signs it’s name, answers all the give-away questions, and GUESSES on the rest of the test, is 140. With that in mind (and this is similar to TIMSS where a base score is actually 425 on some subject), here is an HONEST (or at least MORE honest) comparison of LSAT scores:
LSAT SCORES:
Whites = 13
Asians = 12
Mexicans = 8
Hispanics =6
Blacks = 2
Upon reflection, not even that illustrates the creativity of our “educators” in achieving “racial equality” and “gender equality”, because Black women actually score lower on GRE than if they’d just guessed. So here’s a closer tweak:
LSAT SCORES:
Whites = 11
Asians = 10
Mexicans = 6
Hispanics = 4
Blacks = 0
But if they score LOWER than if they just guessed, then the scores for Blacks really ought to be a negative, tho I’m not sure how to handle it.
Rasta
23 November 2009
I see all of you all are so hung up on race that you fail to see the bigger picture- more specifically the reasons behind these disparities. Did you go to college and pay attention in your history classrooms? Do you read the newspapers, or are you just so filled with prejudice that you turn a blind eye to any possibility that we are all equally capable human beings regardless of what your skin color is?
Xenophon Hendrix
13 January 2010
>I’m not surprised by the Black-White gap, but I am surprised by the Asian-White gap—that there isn’t a gap. We would typically see in fluid g tests the one-third SD gap between Whites and Asians, but we don’t see that here. Perhaps, the reason is that the LSAT tests crystalized g.
IIRC from my reading over the years, the East Asian advantage in measured IQ over whites largely comes from the spacial relations section of broad IQ tests. The LSAT has no spacial relations section.
curious observer
5 February 2010
Genetically speaking, a population is a group of inter-breeding organisms of the same species. Why should that group of inter-breeding organisms (in the case of humans) be a race? How do you incorporate assortative mating into this picture? Generally, smart people tend to mate with smart people. This isn’t really planned or anything, it just tends to happen.
The problem with all of this is that, if you assume every race has its own bell curve, then you end up with the conclusion that offspring of every race will regress to their own racial mean. This means that the child of two black parents with IQs of 140 will regress to their racial mean of ~85. But that’s not really fair, because the two black parents in question were probably the offspring of two exceptionally intelligent black people who were probably also the offspring of two exceptionally intelligent black people. My point is: all these intelligent black people form their own population, because intelligent people only tend to breed with other intelligent people.
I can only give a personal example: both my parents were about 2 standard deviations above the mean, but I and my brothers also ended up being 2+ standard deviations from the mean (on official, supervised IQ tests).
This theory also has other implications. Members of the Brahmin castes in India test the highest of any group. They test at IQ ~120. This is much higher than even Ashkenazi Jews test (107-115). They are also, as far as I know, a “group of inter-breeding organisms of the same species,” isolated genetically just as much as Ashkenazi Jews are. If you assume a bell curve distribution with a mean of 120, this means that out of 1000 Brahmin Indians, approximately 25 of them will have IQs greater than 150. But if you naively think that Brahmins are just the smartest of the (asian) Indians, then, given the average IQ of (asian) Indians is at (I forget) 85, chances are there won’t be a single Brahmin in a group of 1000 that has an IQ of greater than 150.
Anyway, all I am saying is that, from an objective point of view, it’s a mistake to group people by race. There are some untested assumptions made there.
Huax
27 June 2010
The reason why “Asians” score so much lower, is because 50% of the “Asian” demographic is Southeast Asian. Southeast Asians, South Asians, and East Asians are all different “races”.
This would be the genetic equivalent to lumping Ethiopians, Mbutu, Algerians, Croats and Irish in the same group. Note that the “Asian” test group has the largest standard deviation (as is the same with the SAT, GRE, PISA and all other tests), further burying the laughable notion that East Asians have a lower IQ standard deviation.
Secondly, these test takers are highly self-selected- for example 20% of SAT takers were “Asian” in 2008 or around then, even though they’re 5% of the population. The least educated whites, blacks, etc simply don’t even bother trying.
Huax
27 June 2010
Clarification, “Asians” were 10% of test takers in 2009, even though they are 4-5% of 17-20 year olds.
The Okie
25 December 2010
I do well on tests, but I admit that these tests only show how good one is at taking these tests. These tests don’t test my definition of intelligence. Hey, I don’t know what IQ score Arnold Schwarzenegger has, but in my book, he is a genius three time over (bodybuilding, building a vast financial empire, building his not-over political career).
The smartest people don’t bother much with these tests. There are more important things in life…