I said this in another thread for BS/MD applicants.
How often we heard that 4.0/36 student didn’t make a cut, but a 3.6/33 student did. And then we hear holistic review process for college admission. What is exactly holistic? Essays are one placeholder where students used to describe those adverse circumstances. However those are not quantifiable and a student who didn’t elaborate that would never be known to colleges. Adversity Factor is quantifying it and is an attempt to help out any student in adverse conditions, not tied to a specific race. As America is getting more diverse, won’t be surprise that if While Asians, Brown Asians (traditional), Black Asians, Hispanic Asians norms used at time of grandchildren college admission.
Add to above, based on discussion and potential pitfalls, it is obvious that Adversity Factor process is far from maturity and most likely won’t produce results as expected immediately, rather atleast 4-5 years from full roll out (~2025). My take on some of adversity factors not being accounted for, when those become mass issue, than we have a serious problem as society, let alone education.
@milgymfam Cedric got into Brown through consideration of context. Most people here cannot imagine an environment so grim. A Hope in the Unseen is worth reading.
The middle class once again get screwed. Average is just that, average. If I had kids still applying to school I would tell them to save their stress for later in life and just go wherever you get the merit money. It is all nuts.
Don’t forget that CB’s board of directors is comprised of the college’s themselves. If the colleges did not like what CB was doing, they’d direct CB to change it. Therefore, they must have already approved of the new diversity score.
Some of this is plain bizarre. Whether your parents rent your home or have a mortgage(rent capital from the bank), doesn’t make you either more or less disadvantaged for college admissions. And whether your neighbors own their homes or rent has even less to do with your adversity. If you want colleges to see the adversity levels of students, the simplest route is to let adcoms see the CSS profile.
Update: we shouldn’t worry! The CEO of College Board is sending out corrections via twitter, and there is no adversity score, just an “Environmental Context Dashboard” and an “Overall Disadvantage Level!” And as we all know, changing the name makes it a completely different concept…eyeroll. (He’s so indignant about it too, as if he didn’t know it’d cause a stir. Lol.)
agreatstory: “@milgymfam Cedric got into Brown through consideration of context. Most people here cannot imagine an environment so grim. A Hope in the Unseen is worth reading.” I have sympathy for “Cedrics” but I wish more had sympathy for “Hanks.” Hank should not be penalized for living in a poor community with a lower crime rate.
Seems more relevant than ever.
This video might help explain why a student’s background is worthy of consideration in college admissions:
Adversity score is a score, on a 100-point scale.
“^^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.”
@vpa2019 It strikes me that this is already the case to some extent. For instance: I live in the Chicago area, where there are some very large, very “prestigious” high schools (like New Trier in the northern suburbs, and Hinsdale Central to the west). In a very real way, seniors at these high schools have a tough road because they are competing against each other – certain colleges and universities may receive 200-300 applications each year from students at these schools, and a lot of those applications come from people with very competitive stats and ECs. But a school like, say, University of Michigan can’t or won’t take 100 students from New Trier – maybe it will take 10 or 20?
Well then, THAT fixes everything. [insert sarcasm]
Adding to @JoelShoe’s points. It seems that underprivileged/URM/undocumented students attending these affluent schools will have adversity scores that do not fully reflect their adversity/true circumstances.
I am still working on understanding the factors that CollegeBoard is using to calculate the adversity score, but it doesn’t seem that there is any individual level detail in that score which would not already be in one’s application. CollegeBoard’s added factors seem to be at the school and census tract data levels, so not individualized—meaning the students that attend these types of schools and have highly adverse circumstances, are not going to have adversity scores that fully reflect the reality of their situations—because their census tract is much more affluent than the student’s true circumstance.
BTW 26 New Trier students from class of 2018 attended Michigan. 90 to UIUC, 45 to IU, 35 to Wisc Madison, 23 to NU. Big10 country!!
@Mwfan1921 It’s also made up from the environment they live in so their Adversity Score will not be as high because they attend a school in a less adverse area but it should still reflect the environment where they live.
On the other hand, it’s a strange coincidence that the example they show in the one pdf is Central High School in Philadelphia. This HS would give the opposite effect as it’s a Special Admission HS with high achievers from throughout the city but it’s located in a very adverse part of the city. So the students get the advantage of going to the equivalent of Conestoga, Lower Merion, Radnor, etc but it’s located in the hood.
I guess graduates of Andover/Exeter would get an adversity score of 0!
@Dolemite said
But that environment (neighborhood) is based on what Census Tract one’s address is in… point being all Census Tracts are relatively affluent in the types of suburban public high schools the post cited (New Trier, Hinsdale Central). So in those areas, low income families’ (and their are some) adversity scores won’t actually reflect their reality.
One issue that none of the articles are touching on is that the College Board cannot keep this “adversity score” secret from consumers, which they seem to be trying to do.
Under the Fair Credit Report Act, consumers have the right to see such information and scores about themselves. It is not just limited to credit reports. Many other databases that track and score consumers have been ruled by the courts that they have to provide this information to consumers upon request.
Such things as your insurance report (CLUE), your ChexSystems files (bank overdraft history), LexisNexis (multiple database products), etc. All of these companies have to provide copies to consumers about what they track and sell to 3rd parties. They also need to provide a dispute process to challenge and delete information disputed by the consumer.
I have no doubt at all that the College Board will likely be sued by someone for violating the Fair Credit Reporting Act. The College Board will be ordered by a Federal Court to provide a full report to a student about what they have on that student and provide a process to dispute and change that data if the student believes it is inaccurate.
Once the College Board realizes this, they will likely kill the idea unless they are prepared to start an entire customer service division and 1-800 number and call center to handle all of the requests.
the SAT CEO stated in an interview that they are providing this information free of charge to all schools in the program whether the student takes the SAT or ACT… so don’t think it will matter much if you take the ACT
Everyone should take ACT; problem solved. It’s like a computer programmer trying to work as a priest. Unless you sit down with a kid and talk to the kid for 10 hours and ask him/her all kinds of questions, you really are not going to know the level of adversities faced by applicants.
I can give all kinds of examples but I won’t. I am so glad my kid is done with college admissions. lol
Without more information I could see the CB arguing that the adversity score is not personal data. As I mentioned before it would seem that there could be hundreds of kids with the same score if they live in the same census tract and attend the same high school. A very likely scenario throughout the country.