From the article in the Wall Street Journal, “SAT to Give Students 'Adversity Score to Capture Social and Economic Background”
I paid College Board a lot of money to give my kids accurate scores on a ridiculous number of standardized tests and then take weeks to send them to a college electronically for $12 a pop. They don’t do that terribly well considering the price. I wouldn’t have done it if it weren’t the way into the college admissions and merit aid system and a way to get some inexpensive college credit while still in high school.
There’s no way I’d pay them to give my kid a secret test score on factors completely outside my kids’ control and report it to colleges but not the student.
I’m another parent that’s very glad to be done with this.
Absolutely disgusting. Quantifying students’ intelligence through their test scores might be uncomfortable from time to time, but it’s a necessity; quantifying students’ entire lives like this is so cold and slimy. Very Harrison Bergeron-esque in my opinion, and as a previous poster said, what’s next, using the score as a multiplier for students’ real test scores? And if the College Board feels their test is culturally-biased and doesn’t measure students’ true academic potential, why don’t they spend their resources creating a test that is?
Even though low-income students might benefit from this, it’s sickening and, quite frankly, condescending how colleges treat them like a commodity and act like they’re charity cases who can’t get in by themselves. Middle-class students will certainly lose, and although class conflict is clearly a big part of this whole debate, it’s not fair to rich people either…people might like to pretend that rich people don’t or shouldn’t exist, but they do and their children have to go to college somewhere.
I’d love to see a Supreme Court case or a Senate investigation on this, if only for the entertainment value. CC already went nuts over the college cheating scandal.
Side note: Per their website, College Board charges schools $17,750 a year to use their “segment analysis service,” although I can’t tell if it’s what’s being discussed here. However, the ACT could be doing the exact same thing right now and no one would ever know, clearly.
And now let’s simply add gasoline to the imposter syndrome for some truly gifted students of humble means. We can add to the stigma train based on upbringing too. “You only got in because of x”. versus the truly remarkable story of achievement.
So how do you account for the divorced couple that lives many states away. Student rarely sees dad, no one at games, mom juggling jobs and they struggle mightily. But non custodial parent makes a boatload. Css form will show a completely different story than the reality. Maybe they rent a cheap apartment in a great zip code for the schools .
We have economic and adversity leavening measures already through first gen, urm, Questbridge, posse, need blind, meets full need, personal essays and gc recommendations. We need another that isn’t as accurate or can be manipulated through false witness?
David Coleman was interviewed on CNN this morning. Coleman made the comment that the adversity score will be provided to colleges from students who take the SAT or ACT.
^that’s what I was guessing. I haven’t gotten around to reading articles, but I wonder if this is a product whereby the college provides a data file to College Board and then CB returns the numbers. It could be based on Common App data rather than CB registration data.
It is highly likely that colleges asked the college board to do this. College board is charging for this service, and frankly would not bother supplying it unless there was strong evidence of demand for it. Our ire is misplaced at the supplier; we might question why colleges demand this score.
@roycroftmom said
Everything I have seen says that CollegeBoard will provide adversity scores for free to the colleges. This of course may change over time, but offering it for free is part of the current roll-out plans. See here, but it is referenced at many sources.
Edited to add CollegeBoard reference https://professionals.collegeboard.org/environmental-context-dashboard
This seems so intrusive. Not just into the student, but into their families.
I think I’d rather colleges administer their own entrance tests.
this seems like just another new “rule” in the “game” that can be manipulated or misinterpreted.
@agreatstory I looked him up- impressive indeed… but… how in the world did he get into Brown? Serious question. There are plenty of low SES and minority students with high scores to boot. It’s almost hard to believe except it’s real.
I think how he got into Brown was motherly love and going against the norm of his environment which takes great courage and work with adults taking interest in him.
I think great colleges when composing their class need to consider adversity as their are gems and brilliance in all corners. What I disagree with is an adversity score that could not begin to tell these tales.
I just want to know my adversity score. Am I asking too much since this score is used in my college applications?
@milgymfam excellent question…although he did attend almost 25 years ago and he did attend a MIT summer program although they didn’t choose to admit him for undergrad.
I think we should all vote with our wallets. Let’s protest a testing date (ex. The November SAT) by having no one take a test that day. Wouldn’t that be something? The majority of colleges already know a lot of the demographics based on the information and location of the High Schools. This just goes one step further and it is disgusting. Another negative for the Middle Class when it comes to the College Admissions process. One to go this summer and I will never have to deal with this…
just another education business pitch, rather than providing means to achieve it.
“Sharing applicant, admissions, enrollment, and outcomes data for research purposes.”
It looks like the goal is to mine more data that will eventually be sold. Perhaps they will collect enough to data so they can offer scores that more accurately predict outcomes than the current SAT scores do. The data sharing is troublesome…
Does this new score mean an affluent student at an affluent school can no longer get a perfect score? Because the student will be penalized so how does that work?
^^They can get a perfect score but the adversity score will some how make it seem like less of an accomplishment or somehow expected given all their advantages and privileges.
@goodjob No they are not penalized; the adversity score simply is a measure of “adversity” of a student (or so they say). It doesn’t affect your score.