Interesting article in The Atlantic on the new SAT Adversity scoring. It appears it is based on socio-economic adversity more than race or ethnicity.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/05/college-board-sat-adversity-score/589681/
@itcannotbetrue Not sure the data they are crunching will get them the answers they seek. San Francisco’s Mission neighborhood, for example, has a relatively high crime rate and is home to both Silicon Valley millionaires, who own million dollar homes and flats, and low-income immigrants in rental apartments. How will their algorithm know the difference based on the address? The entire city is like this. Low-to-moderate income renters or people living in inherited properties… living next door to millionaires in homes worth several millions. A street address reveals too little.
Agreed, @CaliMex . While SF is a perhaps the best example of this kind of schizophrenic “Social Adversity,” the same could apply to many cities. New York (Manhattan, Brooklyn) also comes to mind.
I confess I really don’t understand the value of the adversity scoring especially as it applies to boarding school kids. Is my child’s adversity score still based on where she lives?
Why is the adversity score even needed given those who would score highest are probably applying for financial aid, too, and that will give colleges an even more accurate picture?
I read an article in which Pomona’s director of admissions was reported to have stated that he thought the score was generally helpful for public schools but less helpful in some other situations, e.g., “a low-income student on scholarship at a New England boarding school, or for international students.” Regarding public schools, CaliMex’s point about schools in SF makes a lot of sense to me.
Does the adversity index reporting go into effect immediately?
And, from an article in the Washington Post, “Colleges that use it will see the number on a template called an “environmental context dashboard,” which also includes data on Advanced Placement participation and SAT scores at the applicant’s high school.”
Aren’t the AP participation rate and SAT score averages of the high school already reported to colleges on the high school’s school profile reports that they send to colleges?
@carpoolingma --last fall, 50 schools beta-tested it. Not sure which schools (except Yale). If my memory serves me correctly, the article reported this Fall, 2019 150 schools will adopt it.
As for the AP participation rate and SAT score averages already being reported on the high school’s profile, maybe some schools do a better job at this than others?
^^ From a NYT article: “A trial version of the tool has already been field-tested by 50 colleges. The plan to roll it out officially, to 150 schools this year and more widely in 2020.”
Notably, according to an Inside Higher Ed article, the CEO of the ACT has come out against the adversity index, saying that he respects the intent behind the College Board’s move, but he disagrees with it.
Time to switch to the ACT.
While I think time will tell whether this is actually useful, it sounds like a number of colleges are looking for a better way to contextualize scores from applicants or they wouldn’t have opted in.
This is simply a piece of data that supplements others on the application which schools have, at some level, been guessing at/trying to create on their own. It doesn’t change the score, and it’s based on a bigger data set than the school itself might have.
If kids were being admitted on the basis of a single score and this was determining it, I could understand the outrage, but honestly, I don’t get it. The CB has tons of data that it can slice and dice to help put a high school and its students in context. When they see that our kids (here on the BS forum) are coming from xyz BS, they immediately know that they have had an excellent rigorous education as and will be well prepared for college. There are districts that rarely send kids out of state, where few kids go to college, etc. How does an AO even know where to start with those?
I may be too trusting, but I suspect AOs will be savvy in how they use this. Hopefully it will determine which applications deserve a second read, which kids might not have ECs, etc. At the end of the day, no school wants to admit a kid who can’t do the work, but if this helps identify kids who can but may have had less than great prep and gets their app reviewed in that context, it’s served its purpose.
Why do schools need the adversity index given that low-income students are turning in detailed information about their finances in their FA applications?
Why guess at a family’s income based on an address WHEN YOU ACTUALLY HAVE THEIR TAX RETURNS?
^^ colleges separate FA from admissions. The admissions staff do not see financial data. In fact, most applications in total, including essays, get something like 10 minutes (per a friend who was the AD at one of the super selective LACs). Trust me, nobody is going through your tax returns when they are doing their first round of selections and cuts.
I think that with the time constraints, this data can help.
I can’t imagine the score being remotely accurate.
In most fields, people use these kinds of measures because they can’t access more accurate data. That’s true of the College Board but not if it’s customers. In this case, the customer has access but is too busy to review the actual data and will end up misled by scores, assuming low income SF and NY kids live in million dollar homes!
^ But it can signal the need to dig deeper on the app. Many colleges try to figure this out from the app anyway from the data such as whether a kid is first gen, the school (if the regional rep knows it), etc.
The GC rec gives the GC a chance to talk about personal hardship (prolonged illness sophomore year, loss of a parent), but not all school profiles provide information that place that school amongst its peers. BS profiles explain the rigor of the curriculum in a way that makes colleges understand that the middle of the pack kid at most BS will be a great student (and that plays out in acceptances). A poor public may have trouble convincing a college that a top performing kid there will be a good bet (if they even try) and that the ho-hum score is perhaps exceptional in the context of the school. (As a quick aside, I am floored by schools that offer AP classes and that most kids get scores of 1-3 on the exams. What is that saying about the teaching and how does a kid
there beat that system?)
Unlike applying to BS, nobody is getting to know your kid or your family. Interviews are often non-evaluative and a way to show interest. And unaffordable for the kids we are talking about here.
The college process, as you’ll find, has changed so much from when we did it, and the art of making the most of the real estate offered by the common app is one your CC will have perfected. For a kid without this guidance and without amazing scores, their app could be dismissed in less that a few minutes. If this helps rescue it for additional review, great. (Stanford guarantees legacies that their app will get read by 2 readers as its “legacy advantage.” U Chicago makes a big point of telling applicants that they will read every essay, regardless of grades and scores. What does this tell you about the reading process?)
There is a possibility that colleges try to use this and it doesn’t help and it can’t be refined to make it more useful. (This happened with the writing section on the SAT.) But clearly at some level, the colleges feel they need additional help in flagging applicants who have an environmental reason for not having presented themselves in a way that is consistent with their potential.
As for kids who live in million dollar homes in a rough neighborhood, their high school will be readily apparent to the adcom. The kid from Harlem applyinging from Dalton is in the Dalton pile. If parents want to give their kids the “advantage” of the LPS for one supplementary number that some colleges are test-driving, wow.
In SF, families move to low-income neighborhoods to give their kids’ preference in our (so called) higher performing schools. (Kids from low-income census tracks get preference in the city-wide lottery that assigns schools).
I know the Ivies are actively looking for first gen, low-income kids. I’d rather they ask outright than base their impression on an inaccurate score based on indirect data.
@CaliMex --this happens in Long Beach and LA, too. . . families from the higher-end areas of the city test their kids into magnet programs (inclusion-almost no contact with the general population at the school) at high schools in poor areas. In Long Beach, it is a huge practice–and all of those kids pretty much get into the college of their choice.
Which is interesting in that at some point, if the family is completing the FAFSA, colleges will see that even though they are coming from an inner-city school, they have an upper-middle class or higher income. Perhaps the colleges are gaming the system for their numbers on “Inner City” PS admits as well. If you think about it, it’s also a win-win for the college–a well-prepared kids from a gifted/talented magnet program that, on paper is an inner-city school.
Forgot to mention that in these cases, the families don’t even need to leave their waterfront homes!
Adversity is not just economic or easily defined by statistics. How are they going to calculate the tragedies that so many students have endured or witnessed? We are blessed to have our children alive and safe away at school - when so many parents are mourning the loss of their children to school violence.
There are kids managing adversity in tony neighborhoods and schools, too: Illness, addiction, death, and divorce do not discriminate based on income.