I doubt this score is going to change much for admissions at smaller colleges and universities that spend more time per applicant reading the full application. I also doubt it will change much about in-state admissions at the state universities, who already have a good idea about what their state high schools look like. I guess where it could have the biggest effect would be for an admissions department of a larger school that gets a lot of applications from across the country and could use a tool for a first pass at some sort of diversity cut.
(There’s so much to argue with in a single number, isn’t there. I’m thinking of our own high school that probably would look above average if you smoothed everything out, but really is a two-humped distribution with one group of very high income kids with mostly high test scores taking a lot of AP classes who are mostly white and Asian, and another group of fairly low income English language learner kids, mostly from Mexico and Guatemala. So do you look at that number for our school… I don’t know, maybe it’s 75… and look at a kid who moved to the US when he was 11 and is doing really well in all of his classes but say, ‘well, he didn’t take any APs even though he goes to this school that has a lot of kids who do’ . Anyway… a hundred ways we can slice this argument, I’m sure…).
@socaldad2002 Speaking only for myself, it is a concern when diversity is a priority simply to make things equal. If diversity improves the outcome (i.e. - the best qualified people possible entering their field of employment) then I’m all for it.
I don’t think this Adversity Score is based on HS and geographic data only. If it were, there wouldn’t be anything the colleges don’t already know, and College Board wouldn’t need to keep the scores from the applicants. So some personal data must be used in calculating that score, whether or not College Board explicitly acknowledges it.
I think the main problem with this new thing is that it is withheld from the student. Why the secrecy?
For one thing, keeping your assigned number secret prevents you from knowing about and thus correcting any errors. Have you ever known any scoring system devised by humans that never had any error?
I’m guessing the secrecy for now is that they don’t want to deal with putting the staffing in to handle the shear number of complaints about it while they are still rolling it out. Maybe after it’s been live for a while and they can see where the real issues are they’ll start making the data more public.
Since whether one goes to college and what college one attends depends mostly on parental money (with student credentials taking effect only within parental money limitations), that suggests that there are many academically-marginal scions of wealth filling seats in classrooms that could not be filled by academically stronger students whose parents could not afford to send them to college.
@BivalentChomps “Speaking only for myself, it is a concern when diversity is a priority simply to make things equal. If diversity improves the outcome (i.e. - the best qualified people possible entering their field of employment) then I’m all for it.”
Who are the “best qualified people”? Can someone with a lowish SAT score be excellent in other areas? Isn’t that what holistic admissions is all about. The “best qualified” could produce a very unbalanced class (my e.g. MIT with 95% male freshman class, with half of them coming from international students for example). Is that the optimum freshman class a university wants? How many jobs are given to people who are connected (i.e. know someone at the company who are not necessarily the “best qualified”).
My point is that no admissions criteria is 100% objective. Arguably the SAT is a biased test, and if we can at least acknowledge that the playing field is not equal we can make “some” adjustments to get a more and fairer balanced class that is beneficial to all.
More social engineering that will have unintended consequences. I wonder if it will actually make it out of the gate for official use given all the backlash. And there’s always the possibility of a lawsuit. Might be time to get the popcorn ready
This is a move in the right direction, however if you don’t think that top schools don’t already do this then your simply wrong, I imagine this tool might be used more widely by public flagships that don’t have the resources that the elite schools do (elite private schools have profiles on every high school already albeit I imagine that state flagships have a pretty good idea of the high schools within the state). Flagship universities and state schools could apply an adversity score to an application making it easier on a understaffed admissions office to find a more diverse class.
Why wouldn’t they? It’s another number they can use to differentiate between similar applicants even if they don’t know how the number is calculated AND it’s good PR since they can say they’re increasing diversity by using it.
Post #111 claims “elite private schools” such as Yale already has these data on high schools and geography and use them in admission (which is true). So the fact that Yale wants to use this new score means that the score contains something the admission office doesn’t have (e.g. some more personal financial data).
@1NJParent I imagine Yale is participating in the beta testing to see how well it compares to the data they already have. The College Board is using Yale as a control for this testing phase, I doubt the College board has anything near the data that Yale has on high schools.
ucbalumnus: "‘Atlanta68 wrote:
Most current college students do not belong in college.’
Since whether one goes to college and what college one attends depends mostly on parental money (with student credentials taking effect only within parental money limitations), that suggests that there are many academically-marginal scions of wealth filling seats in classrooms that could not be filled by academically stronger students whose parents could not afford to send them to college."
Depends mostly on parental money? Not with federal student loans and Pell Grants and scholarships available to good students, even those who grow up in tough areas. The Bell Curve is real. We should have educational policies that reflect that reality and help maximize everyone’s potential. Sending a kid to college who does not belong in college shafts that kid the most.
Interesting recent article from Georgetown’s Education research institute: https://cew.georgetown.edu/cew-reports/schooled2lose/. Looks like the strongest indicator of academic success continues to be SES (money).
Federal student loans and Pell grants are small compared to the cost of college beyond the local community college. Merit scholarships and need-based financial aid grants are not universally sufficient for students with little parental money to afford college; even many states’ public universities are unaffordable even with financial aid for students from low income families (e.g. a student from a low income family in rural Pennsylvania may have great difficulty finding an affordable in-state public university).
The forum bubble of high income parents seems to believe (and resent) that kids’ college is a lot more affordable than it actually is for low income parents. But that does not change the fact that probably around 95% of potential college students need to consider financial aid and scholarships at private universities, and probably around 80% of potential college students need to consider financial aid and scholarships at their in-state public universities – and many of these private and public universities do not offer good financial aid and scholarships.
Interesting - I was completely against this adversity score when I first heard about it, but then reading these comments has made me less certain. There seems to be a real misunderstanding of the insurmountable cost of college for many. Also a complete lack of awareness of the advantages that come with being fortunate enough to be in a good school district. And using the word “■■■■■■■■” in a forum in 2019? Yikes.
Obviously, some here have great reasons for being against this, but others are just revealing their biases and a selfishness.
