Taking A Deep Dive Into the College Board’s New Adversity Score

HarryPeterson
Mon, 10 Jun 2019 14:35:50 +0000

This whole thing is flawed.
It is like cutting taller trees down rather than nurturing and caring for shorter trees so that they grow taller.

Consider the following:

This is like asking a football or NBA team to pick candidates based on adversity rather than the ones who are going to provide opportunity for the team to succeed. USA is the team and the quality of our professionals will determine the success / failure of the country.

When your child is ill, Would you go to the doctor who will offer the best treatment, or go to one who is one who has a nicer office ? Success in education and adversity are not related. I do believe in helping people, but not by lowering the bar of success for them compared to others. Help people who have financial difficulty with financial aid and do that from the earliest days of a child's life so that they develop better habits and ambitions to succeed rather than giving them a free pass to go to universities. Education is about level of thinking and this is a trait developed from early days in life through discipline. Don't penalize people who have put in the effort and don't insult their effort by stating they did not face enough adversity - adversity comes in many forms.

The real issue is getting the child to higher level of academic attainment - this issue should not be mixed with "adversity". In this, the rich will go to private schools as they can afford, the poor will get financial aid and preferred admission, while the middle class family that puts effort and strives to ensure their kids work hard and put in the effort to achieve higher grades will still be the ones who will be penalized.

Parents move where there is work. It is not appropriate to penalize the children's future based on parents situation.

If parents are educated, that doesn't mean the child is automatically going to be smart. Education is all still attained by putting in the concerted effort to learn.

When kids are in a very competitive area, they put in a lot of effort and get good grades, despite the competition. So these kids will now have their chances lowered for entering a public university compared to others who just passed, but lived in a different zip code.

Will there be a penalty for a seat wasted when kids drop out of school since they can't cope ? This is going to be a persistent problem.

A child has no say in where they stay - the parents make that choice. Child's future should not be determined by where they live, but what they achieve.

Grades are relative too - even in one school, different teachers would give different grades if asked to grade the same test. Grades are not fully objective. Schools in the areas with "high adversity"

When the process / scores are hidden - there is no transparency. It is the easy way being taken to not have to justify any action.

Are the universities going to take extra students or simply replace some with others who have higher adversity score ?

As for increasing diversity in universities, there are lawsuits already in progress against some Ivy League schools since they have quotas (which mainly negatively affected Asians). Look at the individual in terms of what their chances are for success and improving the universities position rather than adding one more score

The real issue is if more universities are needed, then that is where the effort by the government should go rather than decreasing opportunities for people who are committed and have put in the effort.

College board is a corporation - why should it be relied on for computing the scores ? Who is going to police them ? They can fix scores - and the may just be the next scandal. (like kids buying spots for their kids).