Social SAT To add ‘Adversity Score’ to Capture Social and Economic Background

Headkicktoleg

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This is crazy. What ever happened to getting in on your own merits. I guarantee the colleges are gonna say we at least this many kids with X "adversity" score.


https://www.wsj.com/articles/sat-to...re-social-and-economic-background-11557999000

The College Board plans to assign an adversity score to every student who takes the SAT to try to capture their social and economic background, jumping into the debate raging over race and class in college admissions.

This new number, called an adversity score by college admissions officers, is calculated using 15 factors including the crime rate and poverty levels from the student’s high school and neighborhood. Students won’t be told the scores, but colleges will see the numbers when reviewing their applications.

Fifty colleges used the score last year as part of a beta test. The College Board plans to expand it to 150 institutions this fall, and then use it broadly the following year.

How colleges consider a student’s race and class in making admissions decisions is hotly contested. Many colleges, including Harvard University, say a diverse student body is part of the educational mission of a school. A lawsuit accusing Harvard of discriminating against Asian-American applicants by holding them to a higher standard is awaiting a judge’s ruling. Lawsuits charging unfair admission practices have also been filed against the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of California

The College Board, the New York based nonprofit that oversees the SAT, said it has worried about income inequality influencing test results for years. White students scored an average of 177 points higher than black students and 133 points higher than Hispanic students in 2018 results. Asian students scored 100 points higher than white students. The children of wealthy and college-educated parents outperformed their classmates.

“There are a number of amazing students who may have scored less [on the SAT] but have accomplished more,” said David Coleman, chief executive of the College Board. “We can’t sit on our hands and ignore the disparities of wealth reflected in the SAT.”

The SAT, which includes math and verbal sections and is still taken with No. 2 pencils, is facing challenges. Federal prosecutors revealed this spring that students cheated on both the SAT and ACT for years as part of a far-reaching college admissions cheating scheme. In Asia and the Middle East, both the ACTand SAT exams have experienced security breaches.

Yale University is one of the schools that has tried using applicants’ adversity scores. Yale has pushed to increase socioeconomic diversity and, over several years, has nearly doubled the number of low-income and first-generation-to-attend-college students to about 20% of newly admitted students, said Jeremiah Quinlan, the dean of undergraduate admissions at Yale.

“This [adversity score] is literally affecting every application we look at,” he said. “It has been a part of the success story to help diversify our freshman class"
 
Who needs hard work anymore just tick the right victim boxes and you can be a brain surgeon or attorney general.
 
"Those tests are culturally biased. the only part that is universal is the math." ~ Furious Styles
 
Wait, isn't this exactly what conservatives were lobbying before instead of affirmative action: a vetting system that takes into consideration metrics that are more accurate, particularized, and neutral than race?

Yes, if you score a 1400 after being born into abject poverty and having to walk to and from school and baby sit your younger siblings every night, that is much more impressive than if you attained a 1400 after being born into wealth and having private tutors and endless time and assistance with your studies.
 
I think it's a relevant detail.

Everyone who pays attention to these things knows that there are environmental factors that have effects on the scores. We all discuss it "Joe did XXXX on the SAT/PSAT/ACT but he's been taking prep classes since last year." "Wow, Lucy did XXXX on the SAT/PSAT/ACT and her family has been struggling to afford food on a regular basis."

If everyone is already discussing it casually there's no point pretending that it's not relevant.
 
I think it's a relevant detail.

Everyone who pays attention to these things knows that there are environmental factors that have effects on the scores. We all discuss it "Joe did XXXX on the SAT/PSAT/ACT but he's been taking prep classes since last year." "Wow, Lucy did XXXX on the SAT/PSAT/ACT and her family has been struggling to afford food on a regular basis."

If everyone is already discussing it casually there's no point pretending that it's not relevant.
Isn't that what the entrance essay is for?
 
Meh, schools pretty much already do this. I have a few friends that teach at a technical school and they tell me giving their students failing grades is "strongly discouraged".
There's tons of kids going out into tech fields with participation certificates right now.
 
I'm picking the guy who overcame the most and learned on his own over the assembly line book nerd every day. Taking an SAT test is an automatic strike against you.
 
I wouldn’t want a diverse surgeon. No f’ing way

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I wouldn’t want a diverse surgeon. No f’ing way
We already have them out there. There should be no affirmative action of diversity hires. I don’t care what color or country they are from, it should only be the best person for the job.
 
Wait, isn't this exactly what conservatives were lobbying before instead of affirmative action: a vetting system that takes into consideration metrics that are more accurate, particularized, and neutral than race?

Yes, if you score a 1400 after being born into abject poverty and having to walk to and from school and baby sit your younger siblings every night, that is much more impressive than if you attained a 1400 after being born into wealth and having private tutors and endless time and assistance with your studies.

So then just take the parents income into account

Why are there 14 more arbitrary things to consider?
 
Isn't that what the entrance essay is for?
Sure...so what's the problem?

An adversity score assigned by the College Board is a better measure of that than relying on the ability of some kid to articulate the specific issues that are relevant. Maybe the kid wants to write about something other than their personal adversity.

These days, I find myself in a world where parents are spending hundreds of dollars a month on academic prep work for 6 year olds. :eek: Juxtaposed with a world where working mothers are struggling to pay the rent. The 6 year olds with prep work had damn well better outperform the kids who parents can't afford that stuff when both sets of kids turn 16

But the thing is that the kids with the prep work, they're not writing essays about how they've been in Kumon for a decade and have a private math tutor and a college consultant. They're writing about other stuff. And the kids who don't have that stuff probably don't even know that their competitors did. It has to be put in context.

We can't scream "educational meritocracy" while ignoring the economic equivalent of educational steroids.
 
Meh, it's already unofficial policy at my (Canadian) university - at least in our department. They're quite open about it. Before coming here I went in and asked them, as I'm registered as a very severe dyslexic, if that was something I should put in my application and the graduate advisor had quite the speech about how they of course recognized what people had overcome to get to where they are, and they took that into consideration for admittance.

Honestly, I don't even entirely disagree with them doing it that way. Some people are going to get unjustly ground up and spat out by a system that does this though. Some people might get some corrective justice that they didn't have coming up. There are negatives and positives, but I'd like to think getting different people in is a positive.

Edit: Article on a somewhat more concerted effort to deal with this in Canada.

"Rick Hansen, a former paralympian whose foundation is devoted to making the world a more accessible place, spoke to the presidents in Ottawa on Wednesday, just before they voted to make a public commitment to seven principles of diversity.

Presidents of about 60 schools that are members of Universities Canada voted to adopt the principles which include a commitment to identify and remove barriers for women, visible minorities, Indigenous peoples and people with disabilities when it comes to university hiring practices, leadership roles and the student body.
"

https://globalnews.ca/news/3826078/canadian-universities-diversity-accessibility/

From 2017
 
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So then just take the parents income into account

Why are there 14 more arbitrary things to consider?

That's the problem, your parent's income is taken into account. Colleges love accepting rich kids, because the donations are much more substantial.

True story. I have a friend from New York who has a wealthy architect father and had Chuck Schumer write her college recommendation letter. Based on those two factors and her decent but not extravagant academics, she really could have went anywhere in the country.

The idea that our current system is only based on the merit of the student is naive. The idea that providing less fortunate kids some of the advantages that fortunate kids currently enjoy is actually a bad thing is preposterous.
 
So then just take the parents income into account

Why are there 14 more arbitrary things to consider?

...because those 14 things aren't arbitrary.

Person A, a single parent making $25k a year in a place where average 1-br rent is $500 and there are good schools, complimentary prep courses, and ample transportation access is different than

Person B, a parent of 5 making $25k a year in a place where average 1-br rent is $750 and there aren't good schools, buses, or accommodations.

Who needs hard work anymore just tick the right victim boxes and you can be a brain surgeon or attorney general.

You really couldn't concoct a more hilariously obtuse comment. The entire purpose of these metrics is to properly evaluate hard work versus preparatory privilege.
 
Well OP, that fictional meritocracy where everyone gets in and gets off on their merits alone is still around...in fiction, where it's always been.

Here in reality, the world has never been that way, and especially with regards to education.
 
I was going to stick around and work hard so my kids have a good life, but I don't want to ruin their chances at getting into a good college, so looks like I'm gonna have to be a deadbeat and start blasting in every chick I find. Those colleges are going to be filled with my half sibling kids and I never have to work again.

<GinJuice>
 
Yes, if you score a 1400 after being born into abject poverty and having to walk to and from school and baby sit your younger siblings every night, that is much more impressive than if you attained a 1400 after being born into wealth and having private tutors and endless time and assistance with your studies.

But if the children of privilege are somehow limited in their ability to gain admittance to the best schools through legacy and private tutoring we will take away the motivation of parents to become super-rich. We shouldn't be punishing success. The effect on the economy will be devastating.
 
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