Here is the Wall Street Journal link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/sat-to-give-students-adversity-score-to-capture-social-and-economic-background-11557999000
Hoo-boy, this should get interesting
It’s very interesting because it would apply to disadvantaged kids of all races znd locations, including rural kids.
Somewhere this came up in a thread last year…assuming it is this environmental context report that CollegeBoard has already made available to admissions departments https://professionals.collegeboard.org/environmental-context-dashboard
Yale was one of the schools in the pilot program https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2018/09/21/new-college-board-tool-helps-admissions-officers/
I would be interested in hearing from AOs if this data really adds anything, as they already know an applicant’s zip code (I know the collegeboard report gets more granular than zip) and high school. Zip code and high school probably adequately explain environmental context for a majority of applicants.
This is still not going to fix the problem. I work as a test prep tutor in a generally well-off zip code, but even so, I definitely have plenty of families who do not have the economic advantages of some of their neighbors. Some parents absolutely struggle to pay for test prep, and would pay for more if they could afford it. The difference is that my less well-off parents understand that test prep can be an investment that might save them thousands down the road. The really wealthy families I work with are not too concerned about that. They are mostly just interested in getting their kid in.
Does anyone know how to access their Adversity Score?
Another paragraph from the article:
Several college admissions officers said they worry the Supreme Court may disallow race-based affirmative action. If that happens, the value of the tool would rise, they said. “The purpose is to get to race without using race,” said Anthony Carnevale, director of Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce. Mr. Carnevale formerly worked for the College Board and oversaw the Strivers program.
What a terribly unwise quote to offer. I guess he’ll be deposed when the litigation starts…
@Ralph8221
No, only the schools get it. See the link in reply #3. In fact, CB may be giving schools student info from their own site:
Btw, the WSJ article is firewalled, sorry about. The OP quotes were pieced together by repeatedly Googling quotes from the “snippets” until no more new text came up.
??? This is so ridiculous. Can’t imagine this process will be fraught with error and bad assumptions. ?
Is this the first time an applicant will have a number attached to their application that they can never see? LOR’s can ultimately be seen, but it seems problematic for someone to be judged by such an arbitrarily-assigned number that an applicant can never see or contest.
Beside the HS and zip code,the individual students’ answer wrt First gen, free lunch… Could be cross referenced easily and could go much further than just zip code.
Is there the list of 15 factors??
@squ1rrel yes they are laid out in the article but the main 3 are: neighborhood environment, family environment, high school environment with 4 subsets within each.
The article groups it as follows:
Neighborhood environment: Crime rate, poverty rate, housing values, vacancy rate
Family environment: Median income, single parent, education level, ESL
High school environment: Undermatching, curriculum rigor, free lunch rate, AP opportunity
(And yes that’s only 12 not 15 separate factors).
They also include class size.
Here are more details on the factors and methodology
https://secure-media.collegeboard.org/digitalServices/pdf/professionals/data-driven-models-to-understand-environmental-context.pdf
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/csafiles2017/2018+Items/Next+Gen+Admissions.pdf
Honestly, why bother with SAT and ACT. The fact that kids are permitted to prep for it disqualifies the tests as objective assessments. They are simply a huge money making venture.
This is a desperate attempt by CB to remain relevant. I think the future is, and should be, test optional.
We live in a rural area with huge economic disparities, lots of rich retirees and then the working families that serve them. We have ultra high real estate prices because of all the rich retirees, making home ownership out of reach for many middle class and nearly all low income. Our high school is pretty close to 50/50 Anglo/LatinX. I’d be curious to see what our score is since there are so many divergent factors at play.
Did anyone else see how the article ended? The kids that will suffer will be the white privileged kids on the bubble. “Suffer” ? I do wonder if it might bring up the reputation of some of the second and third tier schools and in the end benefit everyone?
Schools can be test optional, yet still use this score to increase their racial diversity. Also, at many TO schools, most applicants still report at least one standardized test score.
If schools get results like FSU, quoted in the article as using they used this data to go from 37% to 42% non-white students in this year’s frosh class, this report will be very useful to many schools.
What’s to keep a kid from checking off that they receive free school lunch, are low income, have a single parent? Honestly, in my day, had I known that was how I was going to be assessed for college admission, I would have done that to game the system.
Which colleges are in the 150 and which exam does it start with?