UF and SAT "adversity score"

BunnyBlue
Fri, 24 May 2019 21:15:43 +0000

Those of us who have been fortunate enough to live in better neighborhoods so that our kids could go to “the good schools” all want our children to have the best chance possible at college acceptance based solely on their hard work and achievements. But we have to see this from the perspective of kids who are not so lucky. There is such a wide variation in the quality of education in our public schools, and this problem isn’t going away. It only makes sense that colleges want to help make life more fair for kids in poor neighborhoods.They have been doing this already by considering the quality of applicants’ high schools and asking students to describe in their essays what adversities they have dealt with. The new score seems to be an attempt to make this judgement of adversity easier and more uniform. Whether or not it will achieve that goal is another question, but the motivation is a good one.

Yes, this means that some kids who would previously have been admitted based on their grades, test scores, and ECs will be displaced by some kids who would not have been admitted previously. But how else can you make up for the unfairness of life for kids who are attending schools you wouldn’t dream of sending your kids to?