The College Board plans to assign an adversity score to every student who takes the SAT to try to capture their social and economic background, reports The Wall Street Journal.
This new number, called an adversity score by college admissions officers, is calculated using 15 factors including the crime rate and poverty levels from the student’s high school and neighborhood. Students won’t be told the scores, but colleges will see the numbers when reviewing their applications.
Fifty colleges used the score last year as part of a beta test. The College Board plans to expand it to 150 institutions this fall, and then use it broadly the following year.
So if you are Asian or white, you better be doing a lot of extracurricular activity to get into a top school but if you are Hispanic or black, hope your neighborhood friends and schoolmates are thugs. In fact, it makes sense for you to encourage urban primitive activity on their part.
-RW
Just identify as black.
ReplyDeleteThe WSJ article concludes: "An adversity score of 50 is average. Anything above it designates hardship, below it privilege." So being raised in a successful household is not just one's good luck, it's done at the expense of others.
ReplyDeleteIf SAT scores are predictive of success in college what good will it do to adjust the scores? All that would mean is that those who benefit from the adjustments will end up in college degree programs they are not well prepared for. And that's the best case, assuming they are correct that the causes of the disparities are environmental and economic.
ReplyDeleteNow if adjusting the scores isn't setting people up for failure then that means the SAT is nothing more than an artificial filtering system to keep the riff raff out of college. Also that the ranking of schools has no academic merit but is rather a social sorting system.
Hey, Jimmy,
DeleteI think it wouldn't matter what system colleges rely on to filter candidates because of the underlying belief that college education is a right (rather than a service provided by someone). Whereas overreliance on SAT scores is the problem or not, the point is that any system colleges use to grade candidates will always be seen as suspect by identity peddlers either on the left or on the right(*)
(*) When I talk about left or right, I place the two at the extremes of the Authoritarian line. Libertarianism, the political philosophy that places personal liberty as the only worthwhile political goal, is outside of this line which is why I argue that Trump-supporting 'lie-bertarians' were never libertarian to begin with.
My point is that the college board shot itself in the foot here. There's no good way for them to have this adjustment.
DeleteAny system will be seen as suspect because it will be suspect. The ruling class in the USA is a club and that club goes to the right schools. These schools are also a way infusing 'new blood' into the ruling class, at least in its lower ranks. Obama and Clinton for instance.
People need to have the appearance that acceptance to these schools is based on merit rather than social class otherwise they get may become agitated.
A college education became a 'right' because it became a metric for future life success rather than an achievement.
Hello, Jimmy,
DeleteI don't disagree with you. You seem to make the point that colleges are trapped in a quandary of their own making and I agree with that. I'm simply making the same point from a different direction which is: regardless of the process they follow moving forward and despite the good intentions behind the adjustment, politics will be in play no matter what because it is already too late to show good-faith atonement, as identity-peddlers already had a taste of human flesh and are coming for more.
So now that paying Rick Singer is off the table, the new strategy will be to move to (or at least buy property in) high-crime areas to increase your kid's chance of getting into a good college. Creates a great incentive for accelerated gentrification. Which folks will then complain about next.
ReplyDeleteMy new business:
ReplyDeleteMailing address in the GET-TOW for rent to Beckies from Bryn Mawr.
I'll invest in that with you. We can also start a sexual agreement notary service that attends college parties and notarizes sexual consent forms, then stands by and watches to make sure consent is not rescinded. U in?
DeleteSounds like a winner!!
DeleteYou do realize that the SAT score statistic shown in the graphic is pretty unscientific, don't you?
ReplyDeleteIt's simple: how are those groups defined? What's a "Hispanic"? Anyone whose first language is Castilian is a Hispanic, including Argentinians, Bolivians and Mexicans, yet these populations are so diverse that the term becomes meaningless, scientifically, to define a group. What's a "Black"? Are we taljing about someone from Africa? Africans are the most genetically-diverse population in the world compared to other populations, according to geneticists and DNA evidence, which means that grouping them all under a single definition is misleading and, frankly, racist. What's an Asian? Is it anyone who looks like Marie Kondo, or like Gandhi? The groupings are arbitrary and ill-defined. Ergo, the statistic is unscientific. It's an interesting statistical curiosity, nothing more, but just like looking at a gun death statistic for the purpose of policy provides a very distorted picture of reality about the use of guns and gun ownership, so too these test scores grouped by completely arbitrary considerations based entirely on, at best, self-identififation by students based on a narrow set of boxes to check, give a distorted view of people's abilities if you base your conclusions on those parameters alone, not to mention that they provide pabulum for racists and white supremacists to dehumanize others who don't look like them.
Oh, by the way: There are plenty of white Hispanics, but you wouldn't know this from the list of choices in most surveys and lists that give you to choose either "Non-White Hispanic" or "White", as if Hispanic people were from planet Neptune or something. As well, when talking about melanin-challenged people versus melanin-filled people, where would one fit Meghan Markel, Duchess of Sussex, without sounding stupid, i.e. like Richard Spencer?
DeleteTorres, when are you moving to an African country? These graphs prove my point that race, IQ, and culture matter despite the virtue posturing by the libertardians. But hey, let's import more low IQ turd worlders; that can't possibly go wrong.
DeleteHello, Lab Manager,
DeleteWhy would it be contingent upon me to move to Africa to prove a point to a white racist piece of crap like you? What's in it for me? You go to hell.
I am not a racist but racially aware. You might want to follow up on the difference.
Deleteand what about people who are half or multiple races? LOL.
ReplyDeleteThey become oddities, forever known as "mongrels" in the eyes of tiki torch-carrying "fine people".
DeleteOne more reason to steer my kids away from college (where only the worst get to the top) and into the trades...
ReplyDelete