
SAT to Add ‘Adversity Score’ That Rates Students’ Hardships - ckinnan
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/16/us/sat-adversity-score.html
======
GhostVII
I think instead of trying to lower the bar for low income students, we should
work on solving the actual problems causing them to perform more poorly on the
SAT (or adjust the SAT so it is more representative of their actual skills).
If students are accepted with a lower SAT score because of their background,
they are likely going to struggle in University, since they have lower scores
than the rest of their class, seems like this would be just pushing the
problem further down the road, rather than actually addressing it. From what I
have seen, the problems for low income students start in grade school, if you
are behind academically before you even enter high school, it's going to be
hard to catch up.

On the other hand though it might be essentially impossible to close the gap
between low income and high income students. Your parents have a huge impact
on your learning, and if your parents are poor and have to work all of the
time, they aren't going to be as available to help you learn.

Regardless, I think it is pretty impossible to calculate an adversity score
that is actually accurate (how do you compare the challenges faced by a child
in a single parent family with one who grew up in a poor neighbourhood?), and
it seems pretty wrong to me to have a hidden score based on things you likely
can't control influece admissions, but it would lead to some interesting
research if it was actually used.

~~~
lenkite
I believe all the problems you have mentioned can be easily solved. Permit
adversity scores to weigh in favour of course grades and graduate honors.
Legislation can be passed to ensure adversity scores count towards corporate
and government employment to prevent any bumps further down the road.

Furthermore, adversity scores should also be counted towards recruitment in
elite military units, selection for senior military leadership and all
significant promotions. The adversity you faced in childhood should give one
_guaranteed_ opportunity throughout life. This progressive path ensures
harmonious diversity and a perfect union of our states. Adversity is
_Excellence_! Merit is _Privilege_!

~~~
Papirola
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron)

------
Glyptodon
This seems likely to end up being ugly. For example wealthy people could buy
or rent addresses in "adverse" neighborhoods, or charter schools might locate
offices there, in order to attempt to improve scores on this metric. At the
same time this won't be able to identify many adverse life circumstances like
abusive parents, cancer, etc.

What it does do is outsource components of admissions decisions the colleges
may want to distance themselves from and wrap it up in an opaque package so
that they're not actually considering anything legally risky in their
admissions decisions. This is potentially valuable to institutions that want
to have affirmative action style admissions without risking the ire of state
legislators.

~~~
remote_phone
I already talked to my wife about this. I would retire, we would divorce, and
I would rent a shitty apartment in East Palo Alto all the while living in our
house.

If they think they can boil my kids into a single number without bothering to
find the context of who my kids are then I will game it to as much as
possible.

I don’t know why my family should be punished because my wife and I worked our
asses off to get ahead. It’s an insult to hard working people across the
spectrum.

~~~
robotresearcher
I understand the feeling, but how about if we rephrase it from another
viewpoint:

I don’t know why I should be punished because my parents didn’t succeed
financially. I work hard in highschool but don’t have extra private tutoring
or parents who can help me with calculus homework. I’m hard working and bright
but how can I compete with kids from Saratoga High School where everyone’s
parents went to MIT/Penn and work at Apple/Google[1]? I read library books and
watch Khan Academy, but no one in my family ever went to college. Why does my
parents’ achievement have a fundamental impact on my opportunities?

Somehow we have to aim for equality of opportunity. It’s difficult to achieve
but can’t we agree on this as a goal? Opportunity should not be inherited. My
kids are as good as yours, as the next person’s, independent of how hard we
worked.

[1] hyperbole. Saratoga parents from UCLA/CMU who work at Netflix/NVIDIA I’m
talking about you too.

~~~
qazpot
> Why does my parents’ achievement have a fundamental impact on my
> opportunities?

Because they are your parents and they will have an impact on your life
whether you like it or not, right down from the genes you inherit to the kind
of people you hang out with. So yes there achievement will have an impact on
your opportunities.

What you want can only happen when parents are no longer associated with their
children in any way and all children are raised by the State so that everyone
can be provided "equal opportunities" and even then the type of genes you
inherit will impact your opportunities because although social inequality has
been removed, biological inequalities can never be removed.

So no your children or not equal to anybody else's children and yes what you
do in life will have an impact on your children's life that's how life works.

~~~
robotresearcher
We decide how life works, between us. You want the kids of rich people to win
the next generation unquestioned? I think we can do better.

~~~
maceurt
> You want the kids of rich people to win the next generation unquestioned?

I am not the person you were replying to, but no. However, the person who wins
should be the more qualified person based on merit not based on some standard
of suffering. Just because you had a harder environment does not mean you are
more qualified than someone with an easier environment.

~~~
okaram
What do you mean by merit? Ability? Capacity? Effort? Worthiness? Ability at
what? Are the SATs a good measure of that?

~~~
maceurt
Probably the best/ most ubiquitous method we have right now.

It would be trivial to improve our tests of merit compared to the almost
impossible task of testing how well a student would do free from environmental
factors.

------
graeme
I work in LSAT prep, and have taught the SAT as well. Whether this makes a
different will depend on whether it's added as a ranking factor for schools.

If it's just a thing schools can see, that adds to their additional soft tools
they can use to evaluate an application, then it probably won't do much. If it
actually becomes something that determines rankings, it will have a big
impact. The latter seems unlikely, as schools would have to publicly report
the score to US News and World report for it to affect rankings. But the score
is private.

A few key points:

* First, this isn't the cheating scandal. If the rich parents could have gotten their kids good SAT scores, they wouldn't have needed to cheat and bribe. The SAT was keeping the wealthy people _out_ in those case, not letting them in

* Test prep helps. But it's not a magic wand. The only real solution to getting better at the SAT is....having grown up reading and being good at arithmetic and algebra. Failing that, you can spend 12-16 months memorizing thousands of vocabulary words, reading novels, and memorizing every math concept tested, using Khan Academy. But....at a certain point that actually approximates being good at the material.

* What's the advantage of being better off? It's that your kids generally spend a lifetime more likely to read, have good teachers, have leisure time, parental involvement, parents that are married, good nutrition.

* But if a wealthy kid has made it to 12th grade and isn't that bright, wealth is no magic bullet. Like I said, the only way to do it is to take 16+ months to cram foundations into you. And the vast majority of parents lack such foresight.

* Actually, there is one magic bullet: it's making sure your kid has some kind of easily diagnosable mental health condition that gives them extra time. By "easily diagnosable", I mean in the sense that there's no real way to exclude it and you can find a doctor to say "oh sure, this kid seems to have ADHD". Extra time is a massive leg up. This rule came about due to Justice Department rules about not discriminating against those with disabilities. It _did_ help the disabled, but it also gave the wealthy a loophole big enough to drive a truck through

* Will this be a similar loophole? Maybe. I am sure parents will try to exploit it. But....it's a rule actually made by the testing company, and not one imposed by the government. So, they have more control to avoid having it exploited. Also, some of the factors are more difficult to exploit. For example "kid with single parents". I mean, maybe the parents could temporarily divorce, though it's not clear if that counts. If it actually requires one parent to truly be out of the kid's life (or dead)....well, there's no easy way to fake that

* These are just temporary hardships due to upbringing, and they'll go away in the health college environment, right? Nope. You see the exact same gaps in higher level standardized tests. And in later measures such as bar passage rate. Whatever causes the issue, causes it the whole way through.

* Will this solve inequality? Maybe, maybe not. Too soon to tell. One underappreciated risk to programs like affirmative action is that they don't actually help those they're aimed at. Here's an article citing Henry Louis Gates Jr. showing that Ivy League schools generally don't accept the sons and daughters of slaves. Instead, they accept foreign black students: [https://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/24/us/top-colleges-take-more...](https://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/24/us/top-colleges-take-more-blacks-but-which-ones.html)

This list seems aimed at addressing the last issue. Maybe not so much a
ranking factor, but instead aimed at letting admissions officers see who,
within a subgroup, _actually_ had a disadvantaged upbringing, vs. having a
more narrow checkbox applied.

This might be good, this might be bad, it's really too soon to tell and
depends entirely on the implementation and how it's used. But the issue of
over restrictive categories could certainly use fixing.

------
logicx24
This, like every other similar attempt made to "equalize" the SAT, is
misguided and will accomplish little.

If the SAT correlates too strongly with wealth, then Collegeboard should make
a better test. Make one that changes significantly every year so direct test-
prep is hard. Choose different types of critical reading passages and
questions each year, vary the style of the math questions - make the test
different enough each time so studying past tests isn't valuable. Then, if you
eliminate the advantage direct prep gives, the correlation to wealth should
weaken, and the test should get closer to measuring aptitude.

But instead, Collegeboard continues to shoehorn political objectives into an
already broken exam. This is a mistake.

~~~
pjscott
Imagine a perfect SAT that preparation can't affect; for the purposes of the
hypothetical, the test just stares into your soul and measures pure scholastic
aptitude.

If (a) scholastic aptitude has a significant effect on your lifetime income,
(b) people tend to marry people of similar social and economic class, and (c)
scholastic aptitude is fairly heritable (through genes, environment,
whatever)...

... then you would expect the Perfect SAT scores to correlate pretty
noticeably with family wealth. This wouldn't be a sign that anybody is doing
anything wrong; it's just as natural as water flowing downhill. And these are
reasonable premises, with strong empirical evidence for each of them.

So, question: just by looking at the correlation of SAT scores with family
wealth, _how can we possibly tell how broken the test is?_ How can we know how
far the real SAT is from the absolutely un-gameable Perfect SAT?

~~~
starpilot
Because we've done studies to address exactly that question. What we've found:
The least-gifted children of high-income parents graduate from college at
higher rates than the most-gifted children of low-income parents, hence the
adversity score to rectify the inequity in life circumstances.

[https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/money-academic-
su...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/money-academic-success-us-
college-intelligence-born-rich-genomics-new-york-university-a8585821.html)

~~~
ghufran_syed
This study has nothing to do with the SAT. Clearly, money is required in order
to study full-time in the US, both for tuition and living expenses, so people
with more money graduate more often because it's easier to not work during
school, and to pay for tuition. But none of that is relevant to the point you
replied to, which was that even a _perfect_ test would have results that
correlate with wealth

------
_Nat_
> The score would not be reported to the student, only to college officials.

This seems really sketchy.

I mean, I can completely understand why the College Board would want to avoid
blowback from students knowing their scores, but their convenience seems like
insufficient cause to deny students access to their own information.

~~~
BonesJustice
Might have to do with wanting to avoid people trying to game the system?

Not that I expect the shroud of secrecy to _actually_ mitigate that problem.

~~~
droithomme
The purpose of this sort of secrecy is to avoid people seeing how the system
is gamed against them.

~~~
xhkkffbf
You seem to think that the system will be used to boost kids with high
adversity scores. Many colleges desperately want kids who will pay full
tuition. But they also want to claim they're "need blind." Voila. The
"adversity" score tells them whether the kids came from a rich neighborhood.

~~~
BonesJustice
Actually, there was an interesting link posted here a while back[1] that
explored how non-profit colleges have a vested interest in making sure at
least half of their students _cannot_ afford full tuition.

To keep their tax exempt status, they must act as a “charity” by extending
financial aid to at least half of their students.

The tax-exempt status enables them to invest their endowment without paying
taxes on the gains.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18792515](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18792515)

------
shriphani
How are they going to boil all this down to a single number? So ridiculous.

All these pseudoscientific people have taken the comfy position of
unaccountable gatekeepers. Society's true vultures.

~~~
dangerbird2
I mean, the reason of the SAT's existence is the convenience of boiling down
one's entire academic experience into one number. Perhaps the real problem is
that university admissions allow the dualopoly of College Board and ACT
control the academic fates of the nation's students with no public
accountability.

~~~
colechristensen
A university has to reduce a person down to a binary decision to admit or not,
not much of a way around that.

~~~
shriphani
It is different when college board does it.

When a university makes that decision, that is the student pool they are going
to bring in and they take the risk with their graduation stats, employment
stats and failure rates.

When college board does it, they have literally zero skin in the game. They
bill both the prospective student and the institution, produce this arbitrary
number and there is no penalty for getting it wrong since they can just move
the goalposts and declare success.

------
summm
How about having lots of decent, desirable universities instead of a few elite
ones and many weak ones? Furthermore, one could abolish tuition and provide
students with living expenses, either all or those who need them. Furthermore,
reverse grade inflation in school such that the final grade is a better
predictor for learning aptitude. That would solve the stupid admissions
problem once and for all. Btw we had all that here in Germany, but since about
20 years they are trying to shift finances to artificially create few "elite"
unis and lots of crap unis in order to emulate the American system.

~~~
intenex
As someone who went to Harvard, I'm pretty sure there _are_ a lot of extremely
decent universities that all basically provide the same quality of
instruction. People just get unreasonably hung up over the 'best' schools, but
there are easily at least like 100+, if not several hundred, that provide
easily roughly the same educational experience as far as I'm aware.

The peer group may definitely dramatically different from what I can tell, but
if you're a serious student and there for the learning above all, very
straightforward to get into a school that will teach you just about anything
you could learn at Harvard or any other Ivy League or similarly 'elite'
school.

~~~
JamesAdir
+1. A new member in our team has PHD from a top university and an MBA from
Columbia business school.I don't how he got there but it was definitely not
for the intelligence or smartness. First time I've understood that CBS
graduates can be with zero knowledge or smartness.

~~~
hyperbovine
MBA has zero to do with “smartness” as you probably conceive of it. Look at
the GMAT if you don’t believe me.

------
wtdata
In part this initiative rewards bad parenting and lack of responsibility for
raising your kids.

If you made imense effort to provide the best education possible to your
child, to put him in a good school (even if that meant depriving yourself from
a better material life and having 2 jobs), if you kept a non perfect marriage
because that would be better for your child, if you only had one kid because
you couldn't afford to provide a good education for more than one, what this
law is telling you is: bad luck, you shouldn't have done it because now, we
are going to adjust his score back for it so that none of that matters.

~~~
jm__87
I don't really follow your logic. Bad parents are usually bad parents because
they don't care about parenting or they care about other things far more than
parenting - parenting just isn't their top priority. Their children's success
in life is not top of mind, and some may not care how successful their kids
are unless there is something in it for them. From my own personal experience,
bad parents get annoyed when their kids are successful and they don't benefit
directly in some way i.e. money. Or they are resentful and try to minimize
your successes. Either way, bad parents think more about themselves than their
kids - their kids being successful is not a reward.

If anything, perhaps it punishes good parenting. But I'm not sure it rewards
bad parenting.

------
dsfyu404ed
What does this do that knowing where the student went to school and how much
their parents make (both things that colleges know) doesn't?

It seems like yet another opaque metric to be gamed by the people with the
resources to spend optimizing for those sort of things.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
Yeah. I'm very much in favor of affirmative action and similar measures, but
this really seems like the wrong place for it.

This move feels almost as though it was intended to stir up unnecessary
controversy.

~~~
jedberg
> This move feels almost as though it was intended to stir up unnecessary
> controversy.

I mean probably not, otherwise they would let the students see the scores.

I think it was put there to help the elite colleges defeat the lawsuits
against them by being able to say, "see, we used an objective measure of
hardship from a third party!".

------
lukejduncan
"The score would not be reported to the student, only to college officials."

That's... kinda scary.

~~~
elliekelly
Zero chance this non-disclosure policy lasts. Remember how much pressure Uber
got to allow riders to see their rating? And that "score" has just about zero
impact on anyone's life/future/potential scholarship opportunities.

~~~
analog31
Indeed, I doubt such a policy would withstand a FERPA challenge.

~~~
harryh
There are lots of secret scores given by colleges during their admissions
process. I think you're probably wrong here.

~~~
mhuffman
... sure, but not a test you pay for yourself.

------
max76
I think the goal of quantifying the amount of adversity a person experiences
in their life is a fools errand. This is like asking "On a scale of 1-100 how
beautiful is The Mona Lisa." Somethings can only be poorly approximated in
numbers.

Once we have a number it tends to become An Important Thing, regardless of how
much the number reflects reality. It is ironic that SAT is making a new number
that has little reflection of reality to provide more context with their SAT
test scores, which is another number that has only a poor approximate
measurement of reality.

~~~
harryh
Lot's of measures are imperfect.

That doesn't mean they aren't useful.

~~~
max76
What statistics will the Adversity Score be based on? How close to reality are
those numbers? What statistics will colleges create using the Adversity Score?
Those will surely be even further away from reality.

The primary use of a number like Adversity Score is to create a pretty spreed
sheet that generates pretty graphs that look good in board meetings, grant
applications and pamphlets. While the data backing up the graph is impeccable
it also is built on layer after layer of imperfect abstractions until the
graph has very little to do with reality.

~~~
harryh
There are great high schools, decent high schools, mediocre high schools and
bad high schools and we can tell the difference.

There are neighborhoods full of rich people, middle class professionals,
working class people, and slums and we can tell the difference.

I don't know why you think that's so hard. It seems quite easy to me.
Certainly worth trying instead of (as you seem to advocate) just giving up at
the slightest difficulty.

~~~
max76
This isn't a slightly difficult problem, this is a fundamentally impossible
problem. A qualitative thing cannot be quantified.

If we could quantify adversity we could calculate the percentage out of all
human suffering that occurred during the Trail of Tears or determine the
single most resilient living person.

I'm not saying we should consider adversity in college admissions. I'm saying
we shouldn't quantify human emotions and experiences.

------
smilekzs
As a reference: The Chinese equivalent, Gaokao [0], is notorious for its
brutal difficulty, but also widely regarded [citation needed] as a great
equalizer. To that end, high school students spend obscene amount of their
class time doing test prep (yes, in school instead of after). Although YMMV,
and the total score usually spreads out quite nicely without need for curving
(one such attempt was recently made [1]; it didn't turn out well). That is,
despite all the extensive test prep, Gaokao simply refuses to be maxxed out
(effectively, due to human scoring of essays). With all its problems and
totally valid criticism, Gaokao remains (IMHO) the golden standard in equality
of opportunity. Sadly China is moving to "diversify" college admission
recently --- euphemism for bias towards wealthier families.

[0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_National_College_Entrance_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_National_College_Entrance_Examination)

[1]: (Chinese Wikipedia)
[https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018%E5%B9%B411%E6%9C%88%E6%B5...](https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018%E5%B9%B411%E6%9C%88%E6%B5%99%E6%B1%9F%E8%8B%B1%E8%AF%AD%E9%AB%98%E8%80%83%E6%88%90%E7%BB%A9%E5%8A%A0%E6%9D%83%E8%B5%8B%E5%88%86%E4%BA%8B%E4%BB%B6)

~~~
martin__
Actually, the Gaokao does have something that might be similar where ethnic
minorities get extra points:

[https://baijiahao.baidu.com/s?id=1595620876524810727&wfr=spi...](https://baijiahao.baidu.com/s?id=1595620876524810727&wfr=spider&for=pc)

~~~
smilekzs
That, however, does NOT favor the rich, mod cheating/forgery, which
surprisingly does get caught, due to the widespread _expectation_ of the
system to be fair.

And there used to be bonus points for STEM Olympiads, which had totally worked
as intended by providing a sound alternative for the talented / hard-working
specialists who have not so much family backing. There were varying degrees of
cheating (mostly in the form of leaked problem banks), more rampant in some
provinces than others, but AFAIK the asking price was not totally out of reach
for the common working family, so it'd be unfair to say cheating the exam
favors the rich either.

------
khawkins
The SAT itself has been shown to be a poor measure of performance in college
when compared to high school GPA or the challenge level of the coursework
offered [1]. Instead of trying to turn students into numbers, we should demand
college admissions employees do their jobs and actually look at the
applications.

[1] [http://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/What-
Matters-M...](http://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/What-Matters-Most-
for-College-Completion.pdf)

~~~
musicale
That's crazy talk. ;-)

Though from experience talking with people who work in admissions at
"selective" schools, SAT scores and grades are mainly used to filter out the
bottom 90% of non-preferred (e.g. not athletes, legacies/donors, or
geographic/demographically desirable) applicants and the rest is extremely
subjective and/or random, and is influenced by many non-academic factors such
as whether you are too similar to some already-accepted applicant, etc..

If you are rejected it often has nothing to do with your qualifications so it
should not be taken as a negative judgment of same; similarly, if you are
accepted often it's often due semi-random factors that placed you ahead of
students with better qualifications.

------
weberc2
Presumably the SAT is meant to indicate a student's likelihood for success in
a university setting; surely bumping up the scores of students based on how
likely they are to be unprepared is counterproductive? This seems like it's
going to set underprivileged students up for failure _and_ deprive well-
prepared students of an opportunity, no?

~~~
jmull
"Presumably..."

You might done well to have stopped there.

I think broadly, the SATs aim to provide some independent consistent data
points a school can use to determine the desirability to admit certain
students vs. others.

You're thinking academic aptitude is the only thing the SATs should measure
and report, but if schools want more, it's just good business to provide it.

"...surely bumping up the scores..."

You might have misunderstood. It doesn't look like they will be changing SAT
scores here but rather providing a separate "adversity score".

~~~
sib
"You're thinking academic aptitude is the only thing the SATs should measure
and report"

It _is_ pretty hard to make that logical leap from something that is (ok, was
once) called the "scholastic aptitude test"...

/s

Maybe if they had changed its name to the "admissions desirability test,"
people wouldn't be so aggravated by this.

------
didgeoridoo
This new metric seems to be mostly based on ZIP and school-level data, not
individual circumstances, so it may not be trivially gameable (short of moving
your family to an impoverished neighborhood, which seems... unlikely).

That said, colleges already have access to this information through publicly-
available high school rankings and ZIP-level demographic data. All this new
metric does is add opacity and plausible deniability, shifting responsibility
from college admissions departments to a centralized (and, most importantly,
private) authority.

~~~
toast0
> mostly based on ZIP and school-level data, not individual circumstances, so
> it may not be trivially gameable

Once the ZIP code to score mapping is known, it's trivially gameble to get a
mailing address in the best scoring ZIP code that won't get you kicked out of
your school, if the ZIP code comes from school records. People do this all the
time in reverse to get kids into desirable schools.

Actually getting your kid into an undesirable school to get the full score
might be less likely, although that may depend on the specific time
requirements to get the score and the magnitude of the score related to other
factors.

~~~
harryh
I can't say for sure, but I'd bet a decent amount of money that the variation
in scores for zips in the same school district will be quite small compared to
the variation in zips for different school districts. I doubt the kind of
gaming you describe would have much of an impact.

------
jasonhansel
My (apparently unpopular?) opinion: this is an _excellent_ move. Colleges
already try to take adversity into account in admissions. Now they'll have a
more uniform, clear, objective, and standardized way of doing so. I do wish it
was more transparent--i.e. that students could see their own scores--but this
is clearly a step in the right direction.

~~~
fullshark
> Now they'll have a more uniform, clear, objective, and standardized way of
> doing so.

How do we know this? Why should the College board be reporting this? The lack
of transparency is the real issue. What data are they collecting to generate
this score and why? Is it just going to be an 0-100 index of the average score
for that particular test location?

~~~
harryh
The College Board has been quite transparent about what data will be used to
calculate the scores if you read the relevant articles.

    
    
      - Neighborhood environment
        - Crime Rate
        - Poverty Rate
        - Housing Values
        - Vacancy rate
    
      - Family Environment
        - Median income
        - Single parent
        - Education level
        - ESL
    
      - High school environment
        - undermatching
        - curricular rigor
        - free lunch rate
        - AP opportunity

------
crazygringo
> _It would be calculated using 15 factors, like the relative quality of the
> student’s high school and the crime rate and poverty level of the student’s
> home neighborhood. The score would not be reported to the student, only to
> college officials._

This sounds like affirmative action only at a much more granular and non-
racial level.

Even better if it can take into account a student's whole academic history
(e.g. if a student used to go to a fancy prep school and then moved to a local
public school the year they took the SAT, or vice-versa).

Given the incredible disparities between schools/neighborhoods, they feels
like it can only give a more accurate picture of a student's abilities
relative to their situation.

~~~
lallysingh
Hopefully it will also help cancel out there effects of biases in the test.

I wonder how, 4+ years after it's implemented, the results of the test's
predictive accuracy are shown.

------
DenisM
I would like to put forward best arguments for both systems, maybe it will
direct our discussion somewhat.

\--------

 _Method 1._

Give everyone equal chance at competing in the admission process itself,
regardless of how they got prepared. Someone who prepared well, for any
reason, might do well in the future too, for the same reason.

Result 1: Get the best prepared students to best colleges, maximize the number
of top scientists / engineers / lawyers / etc graduating. Stronger academia
and industry in the end.

Result 2: Meritocracy.

Result 3: On the feeling level: objective reward for hard work (no good
example comes to mind, but maybe a Cinderella-type story).

\--------

 _Method 2._

Give everyone equal chance _both_ during the preparation and taking the test.
Since that cannot actually be done by the time tests are taken, instead
normalize the test result to adversity levels, on the assumption that someone
held back by difficult circumstance is likely to perform ~25% better once
released from the difficulty.

Result 1: Uncover potential geniuses in the rough, remove mediocre-or-lazy-
but-pampered kids.

Result 2: Reduce stratification of society, even if at the expense of overall
academic performance of the country.

Result 3: On the feeling level: a fighting chance for poor kids in bad
situations (think "The Wire" type kids).

------
iamtheworstdev
This is all that I could think of:

Privilege Points:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKcWu0tsiZM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKcWu0tsiZM)

~~~
svd4anything
Great video thank you.

This “Adversity” score has me thinking of an analogy to physical
beauty/attractiveness. I believe there is an incredibly high correlation,
especially residual to other factors, between physical traits and success and
wealth. Something very unfair for those who are uglier.

Obviously the logical solution to that inequality isn’t to kick in the faces
of the beautiful and handsome but instead focus on opportunities for those
uglier to try and make themselves more attractive. In extremes plastic surgery
for those with say cleft lip or other deformations.

Those who can’t understand the analogy says much about the source of their
rage.

Hating the rich is still hate.

If the college board really wants to love the poor why don’t they come up with
a plan to provide FREE tutoring to all the zipcodes in their model. I bet if
they asked a few billionaires like Gates and Buffet they would even fund it.

Lifting the bottom up is not done by holding the top down. It just doesn’t
work in reality.

------
apo
> A growing number of colleges, in response to criticism of standardized
> tests, have made it optional for applicants to submit scores from the SAT or
> the ACT. Admissions officers have also tried for years to find ways to gauge
> the hardships that students have had to overcome, and to predict which
> students will do well in college despite lower test scores.

Taken to its logical conclusion, the SAT will cease to exist and the only
thing the College Board will report to schools is a secret student dossier.

This dossier can contain _anything_. Think about the ways in which it might be
possible to compute an "adversity" score.

What if we mix this "adversity" score with some factors indicating
"deservingness?"

Today the dossier may be composed of mostly harmless stuff. In the very near
future it may well become a terrifying concoction of privacy infringements.

There may be a silver lining in all of this, though. College today is
increasingly a mere credential. The information conveyed through a degree can
be obtained by those who want it from numerous sources.

If initiatives like the one in the article become widespread in admissions,
then a degree will increasingly symbolize not accomplishment but rather
something much less worth talking about. Colleges themselves would have
precipitated their own well-earned demise.

------
ralph84
It will become just like credit scores. A whole industry will sprout around
gaming the score. There will be "adversity score repair" companies
guaranteeing to increase your score in 30 days. There will be "Adversity
Karma" where you can log in and see your score and its trend over time.

------
CryoLogic
Soon we will have SAT advisers suggesting how to game the "adversity score" as
well.

\- Get a summer job "because your family needed money"

\- Move out of your parents house for a summer "bad living conditions"

\- Adopt some non-binary gender temporarily "bullied for identifying as x"

\- CEO dad drops salary to $20k for a year and instead gets stock vesting
equivalent "poor family"

etc. etc.

~~~
crazygringo
The article says:

> _It would be calculated using 15 factors, like the relative quality of the
> student’s high school and the crime rate and poverty level of the student’s
> home neighborhood. The score would not be reported to the student, only to
> college officials._

None of those suggest they're linked to individual actions like your examples
are -- and that makes sense since the SAT can know the student's schools and
addresses but little else.

And I don't think sending your kid to a worse school is gaming the system...
because they'll probably do worse.

~~~
SeanAppleby
You could do three years at a great school and then cap off with one year at a
bad school to grab the diploma.

~~~
lotu
That is going to look like you fucked up horribly at great school and where
going to get expelled but managed to avoid it by transfering.

~~~
WalterSear
Surely you mean "had to leave due to systemic oppression".

------
BooneJS
Did I miss seeing anything where they factor in kids with anxiety or other
mental issues that make school overly challenging?

~~~
borkt
They have disability accommodations for that (which are abused by the wealthy
apparently). I learned from the recent scandal news.

~~~
souprock
This is the real scandal. It is possible to convince a doctor to provide a
disability. This gives advantages on the test, such as extra time. The
abnormal testing is not reported to colleges.

Probably the only solution here is to offer those advantages to everybody. If
you want double time, you should get it. If you want food during the test, you
should get it. Whatever it is, let everybody have it. Anything less makes a
mockery of "standardized" testing.

------
yibg
Fundamentally I think pretty much everyone agrees on the concept of equal
opportunity. But what people don't seem to agree on is the definition of equal
opportunity. Or even I guess what is opportunity?

If we have 2 people, A and B. A belongs to a wealthy family and lives in a
nice neighborhood and goes to a nice high school. B has a poorer family, lives
in a worse neighborhood and goes to a worse high school. What would providing
equal opportunity look like? It seems like it should be something along the
lines of B should also be able to attend the nice school, have access to
tutors if desired etc. Not adjust B's scores up by some arbitrary amount
because of circumstance.

~~~
rexpop
I was with you until the very last sentence.

Look, it's a question of implementation. There's a quantitative threshold at
which students qualify for admission. Either we change that threshold, or we
fudge the score.

~~~
yibg
Not sure I agree with that. The two choices are not just change the threshold
or fudge the score. Ideally it would be to provide the right conditions so
that neither is needed.

Of course real world is more complex than that, and that condition is not easy
to provide. I'm just not sure having an subjective, arbitrary and opaque fudge
factor is the right answer.

~~~
rexpop
Sure, there are many other solutions. A world of solutions.

My point was only that it's an understandable implemention.

------
aabajian
I'll play devil's advocate. I went to a public high school that served a large
area (it's Rim of the World High in Southern California in case anyone is
curious). It's the only high school in the mountains, and services "poorer"
areas like Crestline and "wealthier" areas like Lake Arrowhead. To my
knowledge, I was one of the only honors kids from Crestline. My morning
consisted of getting up at 5:30 am and taking a 45 minute yellow bus ride to
get to school (and school started at 7 am!) and back. How do I explain to
colleges that every day of my high school was 1.5 hours longer because of that
bus ride?

~~~
adelie
i'd actually say that's an argument against having an 'adversity score' \- a
single value simply isn't enough to capture the nuances of your situation, and
having a standardized score might pressure colleges to rely more heavily on
those values.

specifically for your example, there doesn't seem to be any factor in the
score calculation that takes into account 'distance from school,' while
'quality of high school' does play a role. so it's quite possible that since
your high school did better overall (i.e. serviced 'wealthier' kids, skewing
the score), your score would look better than things actually were.

~~~
learc83
There's several neighborhood scores as well. Crime rate, poverty rate, home
vacancy rate etc...

Presumably OPs neighborhood would score lower on those.

------
elagost
>Higher scores have been found to correlate with students... having better-
educated parents.

And this is a problem why?

------
unnamedprophet
This is a terrible policy. These factors aren't subject to being quantified,
and thus can't be compared equally.

You can't compare one zip code versus another to say which is geographically
more "adverse". Poor white, trailer trash neighborhood vs drug-infested, gang-
ridden city streets. Schools with 75% of students on free-lunch vs schools
that have suffered mass shootings. Single black mother working as a nurse
making $80k a year raising two kids versus Indian single mom who was abused by
her husband and filed for divorce and custody.

On the flip side, what message do you tell to a white male from an upper
middle class background who is raised in a good school district? He wants to
go to an Ivy League. What should he do, how can he prepare?

------
leemailll
The WSJ article has a more detailed list for this:
[https://www.wsj.com/articles/sat-to-give-students-
adversity-...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/sat-to-give-students-adversity-
score-to-capture-social-and-economic-background-11557999000?mod=rsswn)

Also it seems Chinese and Indian kids with immigrant parents will be affected
the hardest in general

------
abakker
This seems fine if you wanted to use the SAT to measure an _outcome_ for a
given level of _inputs_. If all you actually care about is the actual outcome
though, then this doesn't actually help.

I guess there could be both use cases for test scores, given that higher
education might actually find itself more concerned with showing _improvement_
as an important metric. They might prefer students that show more aptitude for
a given level of input, moreso than the total aptitude achieved.

I constantly hear employers mentioning that same desire - to have "lifelong
learners" are employees. I have to believe at some level that there is some
desire for a measure of absolute capability, too.

~~~
tlb
Past adversity is in the past. So if someone grew up in a poor environment but
you're thinking of admitting them to a good college on full scholarship,
they'll soon be progressing at the rate they're capable of without the
adversity.

So the best predictor of future success in a good environment probably does
include a correction for past adversity.

~~~
graeme
The tests are correlated with grades. You're trying to say the correlation
isn't there for some subgroups. Are you basing it on anything?

The same gaps that appear on these undergrad tests show up on the grad school
tests such as the LSAT, GMAT, GRE etc.

~~~
lallysingh
Correlation between two factors doesn't tell you how to compare two sets of
values. Kids who have to work after school until bedtime won't get as good
grades in HS, but if no longer made to do so, may perform substantially better
in college.

~~~
graeme
>but if no longer made to do so

And that's the key. You're positing that the disadvantage magically stops in
university.

I work in law school admissions prep, and you see these disadvantages all the
way down the line: SAT, college grades, LSAT, law school grades, Bar exam
passage rate

There are some cases where it stops. Maybe the college board can identify
_which_ variables may indicate a poor correlation. There might be some factors
that indicate transient issues and some that indicate worse lifelong
expectations.

But I'd be cautious about too readily assuming that a cause of a lower SAT
will vanish in later life.

~~~
lallysingh
> you see these disadvantages all the way down the line: SAT, college grades,
> LSAT, law school grades, Bar exam passage rate

Can you say more about this? Do students who (presumably) leave home to go to
college still have as-significant challenges after? How so?

~~~
graeme
Actually, I should have been specific: you see disadvantages related to ethnic
group down the line. If a group has a lower SAT score, they generally have the
same gap on the LSAT, GRE, GMAT etc.

This is heavily related to socioeconomic status in the US. IIRC, in the UK for
example you don't see these same gaps between ethnic groups. So it's something
specific to US social circumstances, and not racial.

I don't know so much about particular circumstances, I just know what the high
level stats say, and am inferring from that. I'm not American, so I don't have
lived experience of the class structure there.

There are probably studies about income, but the test makers tend to only
collect official data about ethnicity. It's commonly used as a proxy for
social class, but I wish the test makers had better data about the elements
the College Board is trying to capture with this new policy.

It's about one standard deviation between high scoring groups and low scoring
groups across the tests.

* SAT: [https://collegereadiness.collegeboard.org/pdf/sat-percentile...](https://collegereadiness.collegeboard.org/pdf/sat-percentile-ranks-gender-race-ethnicity.pdf)

* MCAT: [https://www.aamc.org/download/321498/data/factstablea18.pdf](https://www.aamc.org/download/321498/data/factstablea18.pdf)

* GMAT: [https://www.gmac.com/-/media/files/gmac/research/gmat-test-t...](https://www.gmac.com/-/media/files/gmac/research/gmat-test-taker-data/gmat-profile-north-america-ty2016-web-release.pdf)

* GRE [https://www.ets.org/s/gre/pdf/snapshot_test_taker_data_2017....](https://www.ets.org/s/gre/pdf/snapshot_test_taker_data_2017.pdf)

LSAC no longer has theirs posted publicly, but it was much the same.

So, to the extent ethnicity is a proxy for social class in the US, we can say
that the disadvantage these groups have at SAT time doesn't vanish by the time
they take graduate level exams.

I wish I had some data for you that was based on social circumstances other
than race, but I don't have deep knowledge in the domain, only what I've seen
looking at the reports produced by the test companies recently.

------
the_jeremy
Colleges can already access this information in other ways. This is just a
proprietary weighing of these things into one number. Given the information
the SAT has access to, the number seems likely to be based around the
student's address and school, rather than unique challenges to that student,
like how present parents are in the student's life and if they have to care
for younger siblings or need a part time job to help out. I don't remember
having to give the SAT any sort of income or family data, but that sort of
thing would be equally, if not more, relevant to the discussion of experienced
adversity.

~~~
lotu
Just because a school has access to the information doesn't mean they have the
expertise, time, or money, to turn that information into a number that can
then be used in admissions. Admissions tests have existed for centuries the
idea of the SAT is by having a single standard you can have one group of
people make a better test for less money (and student time). This is very much
the same thing, figuring out how to rank high schools and estimate adversity
by street address for the whole nation is a HARD problem.

------
testfoobar
There are so many solutions that are possible if we are honest about
underlying problems. For example, minority children are more likely to live in
places with high lead exposure - lead has devastating consequences on brain
development - and presumably future SAT scores.

Contaminated Childhood: The Chronic Lead Poisoning of Low-Income Children and
Communities of Color in the United States:
[https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hblog20170808.06139...](https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hblog20170808.061398/full/)

------
babyslothzoo
The only way to be truly fair with admissions is to admit blind of any defacto
discriminatory identity/categorization method and based entirely on competency
and scores. I realize that is unpopular for a variety of reasons, but are
elite academic institutions meant to be elite academic institutions, or are
they social engineering laboratories?

~~~
fjsolwmv
They are meant to educate students for success in the world, and success for
the world. Of course they are social engineering laboratories; that's in their
charters.

They are schools, not prize contests.

------
cljs-js-eval
Because it appears that no news outlet wants to link to the actual dashboard:

[https://secure-
media.collegeboard.org/digitalServices/pdf/pr...](https://secure-
media.collegeboard.org/digitalServices/pdf/professionals/data-driven-models-
to-understand-environmental-context.pdf)

Looks like they try to account for neighborhood environment, family
environment, and high school environment. Seems a bit fairer than I expected,
_assuming_ family environment is given the weight it deserves. Otherwise it
may penalize people who try to go to a better school or a better neighborhood.

Also looks like a play to sell a dashboard. Maybe related to the regulatory
environment of colleges - they can prove they're selecting across a broad
enough socioeconomic stratus, similar to how banks like to prove they're
meeting HUD requirements for lending.

------
EventH-
Have these people never read Harrison Bergeron? How do they think this is
going to end?

~~~
dunstad
Don't believe everything you read. Vonnegut is an author, not a prophet.

~~~
EventH-
Totally irrelevant; this isn't a matter of the author being one thing or
another. The point Vonnegut makes in the story is a philosophical one, namely
that a blind pursuit of equality is wicked and inhuman, which is transparently
correct.

~~~
knolax
Arguing that point with a fictional novel seems incredibly opaque,
inefficient, and sometimes disingenuous.

~~~
gred
this comment : thought :: soylent : food

~~~
knolax
Your comment isn't nearly as clever or original as you think it is.

~~~
gred
At least it was clear, efficient and sincere!

------
busymom0
As a brown immigrant from a poor south asian family who recently moved to
Canada, I still oppose this. I don't think measuring one student's hardship to
another student's can be achieved objectively. What if someone comes from a
rich family but was always beaten, ignored, molested, raped by their
siblings/parents? Is this person's hardship not as measurable as someone from
a poor family but never had to face those issues?

Let's take an example of Elon Musk. His childhood was full of abuse but they
weren't poor. How would you compare objectively his score from someone who
wasn't abused but was poor? And let's say you give lesser points to Elon, do
you think you did the right thing considering he has achieved a ton to push
mankind forward?

------
kolbe
I don't get the point of this. The SAT is never used by colleges outside of
the context of the applicant's background. I have full faith that there's
nothing College Board can add to knowledge of an applicant that admissions
committees don't already factor in.

------
MrZongle2
FTA: _" The score would not be reported to the student, only to college
officials."_

Brilliant. Another aspect of the already sketchy admittance process that will
be overanalyzed and ultimately gamed to death -- assuming that this score
truly has value to begin with.

~~~
MagicPropmaker
Now rich parents can buy a house or rent an apartment in a poor area to game
the system. The can live there on paper only.

------
GreaterFool
Just introduce a random pool. _RANDOM_.

I don't trust any of these people to do it correctly. I wouldn't even trust
them to make random truly random.

------
civilian
When I have kids, I think I'm going to direct them to check the "Decline to
respond" box for any race/income/parents-education-level questions.

I used to believe in the value of collecting these stats to problem solve what
we can do to help everyone achieve. But increasingly these stats are just
being used for a different kind of discrimination.

We've all got problems, and they're immeasurable. In high school I had severe
anxiety that led to a lot of procrastination and avoiding school clubs. And as
a 1st-generation immigrant, there were subtle cultural differences, even
though I fit in with my appearance.

------
uptownfunk
This whole thing is about who deserves the opportunity for higher education.

The truth is, except for a small handful of schools (whose seats are mostly
already spoken for, either through donors, athletes, or the elite prodigies
who are going to get in regardless of their socioeconomic background) it is
almost irrelevant whether or not you go to school A or school B in the long
run.

Your grit, your personal talents, your luck/karma/destiny etc are basically
what carry you through anyway.

Anyone who blames their failure in life on “some kid took my seat at Harvard
because adversity score” probably doesn’t have what it takes to make it
anyway.

------
austincheney
This whole conversation is stupid. I graduated from high school class rank 380
out of 386 and nearly failed the SAT. I still got into college without any
challenge and graduated.

I am now both a US Army officer and a self-taught senior software developer
working for a company that until recently generated more revenue than Google.
As a hobby I write open source software that is arguably superior and
outperforms similar projects coming out of Facebook. My adversity and
persistence allowed me to learn a skill that formal education did not and I
have been rewarded accordingly.

------
xenihn
I'm late to the party, but I think this is a good first step towards actually
prioritizing/penalizing around class, instead of using race as a proxy for it.

I've always felt that it was completely ridiculous that a Laotian student from
a low-income family would be penalized under modern American systems when
competing against an African-American student whose parents are both
doctors/lawyers/engineers, and surpass the aforementioned family's income by
10x or more.

------
lopmotr
Wouldn't it be hilarious if universities found that higher adversity score
predicted worse outcomes and used it to penalize applicants afflicted with
adversity! Once it's well accepted that it's OK to discriminate based on the
adversity score, they can discriminate in whichever direction they want and it
will be hard for critics to complain without admitting that it's really racial
discrimination in disguise.

------
stale2002
So I think that it is OK to be taking these factors into account at the
college admissions level, but I am not sure if the "neutral test
administration organization" is the correct place for this to be at.

This is a very thorny issue, and I am uncomfortable with a centralized
organization influencing it to such a large degree.

Whether, and how much, to take into account these factors should be a local
decision made by the college itself.

~~~
jandrese
The problem with doing it at the admission level is you have to adjust ALL
admissions processes. Doing it at the SAT level avoids the problem where
disadvantaged kids are cut off by hard score limits right at the start of the
process.

It could also be used to signal to schools which kids are likely to need some
remedial classes in the first year despite what they scored on the SAT. Of
course one can imagine a scenario where the admissions looks at the adversity
score to weed out kids who they don't think are going to be prepared
regardless of how smart they are.

This whole process assumes that the universities are interested in reforming
the kids that the school system failed in the first place.

~~~
stale2002
Ok, but SAT cutoffs are a thing that the college itself decides.

If a college wants to not do that, fine, I just don't want a centralized
organization short circuiting the issue and making decisions _for_ the
college.

------
_hardwaregeek
Kinda feels like admissions departments are not doing their job/the College
Board is attempting to do their job for them. Why should I trust a metric from
the College Board? Anybody who has taken an AP test can tell you the courses
are in no shape or form close to college level. And the SAT is an exercise in
anal perfectionism, not intelligence. I don't trust them to accurately judge
the socioeconomic background of a cow, let alone a student. And anyways, isn't
it the job of the admissions department to judge a candidate by more than
their scores? Isn't that the point of "holistic" admissions?

Also, is it just me, or are SAT scores wildly overvalued? Maybe it's just my
high school, but SAT scores were never emphasized, versus the ridiculous race
for grades, extracurriculars and good essays. The days of a "good" SAT score
getting you into a college are over. I can generally tell how old someone is
just from how much they emphasize SAT scores.

~~~
nimblerabit
When you say AP tests are nowhere close to college level, do you mean they are
easier or harder? Personally I think they are morw difficult, but your comment
seems to be implying they are easier (and obviously so).

~~~
_hardwaregeek
At least for Computer Science A, BC Calculus, Physics C and US History, the
tests are nowhere near college level. Plenty of people get 5's on Calculus BC
and can't tell you how to derive, say, integration by parts. Or how the Mean
Value Theorem works. Or really anything beyond regurgitated power rules, etc.
And Physics C? I got a 5 on both tests with some pretty terrible answers. The
courses, sure, depending on your school they can be really great and beyond
college level. But they'd still be great and beyond college level if they were
just regular advanced classes.

Not to mention some AP tests are rather ridiculous. Like AP World, which is a
test on all of history. Could you imagine a test on all of math? Plus it
doesn't count for anything. AP US History doesn't get me out of any classes.
It didn't add anything to my application other than another number. And I
didn't really learn much either.

------
oh_sigh
This seems like a better system than just blindly adjusting scores based on
race. It never made sense to me how a white kid from a broken home in rural
West Virginia could be considered by some colleges as privileged over a black
kid with multimillionire lawyer parents living in NYC.

But, I don't understand why College Board is computing this score, and not
colleges themselves.

------
writepub
At what point in life can one's hardships be discounted? First job application
after college? Should every job application have an adversity score? Should
every promotion consider this? Should you be entitled to more government
benefits, because of adversity?

At what point, if any, does the responsibility of getting out of adversity lie
on the individual?

------
jtr1
The underlying assumption in all of this is that quality education should
remain scarce, in which case it must be doled out based on broadly applicable
metrics that end up being arbitrary in practice.

If education and opportunity were abundant, maybe we wouldn't be at each
other's throats and/or concocting elaborate ways to game the system.

------
rhegart
Equality of opportunity over outcome for me. Now Asians will be discriminated
against secretly. My family sacrificing vacations and eating out for 12 years
(literally ate out 5x max) to afford to live in a good school district
shouldn’t penalize us. My dad commuted 4 hours daily instead of moving...I’m
getting pushed further and further to the right.

~~~
fuzz4lyfe
>I’m getting pushed further and further to the right.

Maybe not, it feels like to me that the Overton window[0] has been sliding
left. My views on freedom of speech made me a 'leftist commie' when I used
them to defend South Park and Eminem now most often I'm accused being 'alt-
right' by those who disagree with those same views.

[0][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window)

~~~
p1necone
Anecdotal, but I notice a lot more people clamoring about freedom of speech
when it's white supremacists being affected and a lot less when it's ISIS or
Al-Qaeda. I find it very hard to take them seriously because of this, despite
agreeing with a lot of the sentiment.

~~~
fiblye
I’m pretty tired of people linking any sort of complaint, worry, and defense
of their rights to white supremacy or whatever hate group.

Plenty of people stand up for their rights because they legitimately care
about freedom. It’s not all some conspiracy by hate groups to defend
themselves.

~~~
Apocryphon
Perhaps, but there is also a cultural trend of alt-right/far right groups
clamoring about free speech in response to de-platforming and being uninvited
to speak at college campuses. Most contemporary American free speech protests
aren't apolitical affairs where nonsectarian activists are just "standing up
for their rights because they legitimately care about freedom" for the sake of
free speech as an ideal- they view freedom as a means to promote their
ideology.

~~~
manfredo
> Perhaps, but there is also a cultural trend of alt-right/far right groups
> clamoring about free speech in response to de-platforming and being
> disinvited to speak at college campuses.

For public universities, this is a breach of the first amendment no matter how
heinous the speakers' viewpoints are. And for private universities it's a big
blow to the institution's reputations for all but the most objectionable
speakers.

> Most contemporary American free speech protests aren't apolitical affairs
> where nonsectarian activists are just "standing up for their rights because
> they legitimately care about freedom" for the sake of free speech as an
> ideal- they view freedom as a means to promote their ideology.

I don't disagree with you. But you're drawing the wrong conclusions from this
observation. If the concerns over free speech is more prevalent on one end of
the political spectrum, it could easily be due to the fact that said end of
the political spectrum is being censored more frequently and more
aggressively. And I can't argue with that, I've seen very stark disparities in
enforcement over the past several years.

~~~
spamizbad
> And for private universities it's a big blow to the institution's
> reputations for all but the most objectionable speakers.

Numerous private universities (Christian schools in particular) enforce strict
student code of conduct rules that severely limit the student body's freedom
of expression as to way to enforce religious or secular compliance. And it
doesn't hurt their reputation but instead is an integral component of the
school's identity.

I know it's an unpopular opinion, but I'd argue that colleges and universities
should have the right to police speech and expression: they should just be
upfront about it. "Our house: our rules" as they say.

~~~
fiblye
Let me preface by saying I disagree with everything you say, but I still think
you have the right to say it.

Universities are meant to be institutions of learning. Learning isn’t always
comfortable. Some long held truths turn out to be wrong at some point. What we
all think is true or right right now could completely reverse in a decade.
Letting people speak especially when it’s against your morals is important for
learning and understanding. Even if it’s bizarre and incoherent, if somebody
believes it, we should try to understand why so that we can better educate
those who were persuaded.

As an example of the rapid change in public thought and what’s acceptable,
almost nobody publicly supported gay marriage a little over a decade ago.
Saying you did would result in mockery, people questioning your sexual
identity, people bringing up the religious history of America, etc. Now
publicly opposing it is career suicide.

~~~
spamizbad
I generally agree, but here's a concern I have:

The student body is going to have its own set of values, some of which may
challenge the prevailing norms of society or the university itself. Should a
university ignore, nurture, or challenge the views of its students? I feel
like, as a student, you should be allowed to pick. Because depending on the
issue, or the individual, the answer may change.

For example, at one time Gen-Xers and Millennials were significantly more
tolerant of homosexuality than society overall (they still are, but society
has largely come around). Did universities do them a disservice by either
nurturing or ignoring these views, rather than intellectually challenging
their pro-gay marriage views?

~~~
manfredo
> The student body is going to have its own set of values, some of which may
> challenge the prevailing norms of society or the university itself. Should a
> university ignore, nurture, or challenge the views of its students? I feel
> like, as a student, you should be allowed to pick. Because depending on the
> issue, or the individual, the answer may change.

And what happens when students cease to challenge their own views? They become
accustomed to a monoculture and become adverse to views other than their own.
In time, the refusal to challenge their own views morphs into hostility
towards those that dare challenge those views.

> For example, at one time Gen-Xers and Millennials were significantly more
> tolerant of homosexuality than society overall (they still are, but society
> has largely come around). Did universities do them a disservice by either
> nurturing or ignoring these views, rather than intellectually challenging
> their pro-gay marriage views?

It did them a service. By being force to challenge these views, these students
were prompted to developed effective arguments to refute those challenges.
This better equipped them to turn around and challenge the rest of society's
views on these topics.

------
cheesymuffin
I've actually thought quite a bit about this issue over the past few years.
Essentially the problem is that students with parents who did not score well
are fighting a constant uphill battle.

Grade families like classes. The "class average" should always be a C (assume
for sake of explanation that a C is 2000).

C, the student's initial score (call it the "crude score", C) is computed the
same way it's always been

P is the student's penalty, computed from a weighted average of all of their
ancestors' crude scores (w_k...w_1) as well as theirs (w_0).

For the next generation,

set w_k := w_(k-1)

if C > C_av: w_0 = w_1 * w_2 else: w_0 = w_1

normalize w_0...w_k

P = (sum(w_0...w_k) - C_av) * urgency

Where urgency is a measure of how in need the disadvantaged groups are as well
as their numbers. This can be adjusted manually based on the political
climate, maybe by a DAO that governs the College Board on the Ethereum
blockchain.

------
zimablue
The real problem is way more fundamental than this, imo the real problem is
the concept of school as a discriminator of aptitude rather than an educator
(or indeed as both). When you're teaching someone, teach them. Test them as
late as possible, in a way as close as possible to the task you're testing
them for (programming assignment completed in-house instead of weird
whiteboards, piece of writing completed in house instead of screening English
degree).

Hopefully micro-credentialling/MOOCs/the fact that a lot of good careers are
slowly turning into software (which is one of the easiest things to
objectively test) eventually kill this fake-meritocracy bullshit.

From the perspective above, this is lipstick on a pig.

------
prirun
Nature and life is full of diversity, from where you are born to the structure
of your brain to the occupation of your parents.

We say "celibrate diversity", but then try to quash it by making everyone
appear equal and the same.

We are born in different circumstances. Sometimes being rich is a hindrance,
making people lazy and unmotivated. Sometimes being poor is a hindrance. But
sometimes it is motivation to work hard to escape poverty.

I think it's a little crazy that a committee of people get together and think
they can "fix" someone's life circumstances, while in the process they are
also hurting others'. We are not wise enough to make these decisions for
others.

------
alexgartrell
I don't think people realize that SAT scores are a lot more arbitrary than
they look. If you're one of the lucky kids whose parents set them up with
reasonable coaching (and academic expectations in general), you do much
better.

I did good but not great on the SAT and only got into CMU because I was a
student athlete. But once I had my foot in the door I did very well (high gpa,
TA'ed, graduated w/ honors and awards) and then continued to do very well in
industry (arguably).

If an adversity score can help out other kids like me who don't happen to be
"impressive-for-a-D3-school" level athletes, then I think it's a great thing.

------
JoshTko
Private higher education will always increase inequality in the long run as
the wealthy can find ways to optimize/game filters. For the wealthy the more
complex the filter the better as they can pay to navigate the complexity.

------
caseymarquis
The SAT selects for two things: Can you give this school prestige with your
brain (high score, low income, no test prep)? Or, can you give this school
money with your (parent's) wallet (high score, high income, test prep).

All this will likely serve to do is show that given two equally scored
students, the one with less adversity tends to get in because they help the
college pay its bills or provide connections to their family's firms.

Schools already have financial aid data for poor students for grants, so this
just makes this data more transparent to the rest of us.

I'll be interested to see if future data shows I'm correct on this.

------
james_s_tayler
I feel like a lot of people just don't understand the normal distribution, the
central limit theorem and the square root rules.

I don't think it's ever going to work trying to rally against the math the
universe is built out of.

~~~
tyopiuy
What are the square root rules

------
tropo
The availability of AP classes is part of the calculation. This will backfire
for College Board. Now it becomes undesirable to offer any AP classes in the
high school!

Assuming that means AP classes that have been properly registered to use the
trademark on transcripts, we will likely see pseudo-AP substitutes. The
material will be taught, and students will take the tests, but officially
there will not be AP at the school. Students will have to go elsewhere on test
day.

Another possibility is that a completely different alternative will become far
more popular. This could be dual-enrollment or International Baccalaureate.

------
hetman
While equalising opportunity is a noble endeavour, I fail to see how this
particular initiative would achieve that. In short, it's too little too late.
If someone struggled through high school because of environmental factors,
they're not going to suddenly be on their A-game because they were admitted
into university. At the end of the day, we should still expect the highest
levels of excellence from our professionals.

If we want to have a real impact we need to be examining the factors
contributing to the disadvantage leading up to this point and find a way to
address those.

~~~
ViViDboarder
The article said that it won’t alter the score.

If someone went to a decent school, lived a care free life, and scored
decently well, and then another student had the same score despite coming from
a worse school district and having to work a part time job throughout high
school, my bet would be on the later persons success.

Maybe they’d perform similarly in college, and the struggler would still
struggle, but post graduation my bets would be on the person who had to
struggle.

~~~
barbecue_sauce
Had to work a part time job throughout high school? Don't most people do this?

------
kilotaras
This reminded me about the quote from "Winners take all"

> A true critic might call for an end to funding schools by local property
> taxes and the creation, as in many advanced countries, of a common national
> pool that funds schools more or less equally. What a thought leader might
> offer MarketWorld and its winners is a kind of intellectual counteroffer—the
> idea, say, of using Big Data to better compensate star teachers and weed out
> bad ones.

Hardship score is a symptom. A large part of the problem lies in aristocratic-
like school funding system.

------
systemBuilder
My sons best friend is Asian, 1600 SAT, 4.0 GPA, top-5 California high school,
top-50 in country, almost 20 AP/honors courses, but I guess just too low an
adversity score to get into UCLA ....

------
hawaiian
Part of me wonders if this is an effort by the universities, in cooperation
with the College Board, to keep their hands clean and position themselves as
objective, data-driven entities.

"Adversity" levels are already assessed by all big name universities in the
United States. This score will likely change very little, especially if the 15
factors are broken out and included in the report. What's more likely is that
the score will oversimplify "adversity" to a level that can be exploited (even
more so).

------
tuesdayrain
I wonder how much of the correlation between income and SAT scores is due to
wealthier people's children just being more intelligent, rather than due to
having access to better education.

~~~
qntty
They do control for that when they study the correlation between the two, so
none.

~~~
ve55
Correlations are everywhere, it is unreasonable to expect one of '0' on traits
that broad.
[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41588-018-0147-3](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41588-018-0147-3)

------
seizethecheese
If colleges are doing this anyway, then this is just a standardized way to do
the scoring. This is basically a service the college board is providing to
colleges.

This could be seen as a good thing, even if you don’t like affirmative action.
Instead of relying on crude metrics like zip code, race and income, this will
allow for a more granular approach. If we are going to give a leg up to the
disadvantaged (and therefore a push down for the advantages) we might as well
do as good of a job as possible.

------
cabaalis
And in the end, they'll read the same books, study the same math, learn the
same history. No SAT score or college admission can replace an inquisitive
mind and a library.

------
portal_narlish
It seems people are conflating "low adversity score" with "my perfect SAT
score is ruined because my family lives in the nice suburbs".

I think this is just meant to add some standardized and measured context for
admissions officers, like an objective version of other "adversity factors"
already present in the admissions packet.

However, I think College Board have no business doing this themselves. Seems
out of line and very different from standardized testing.

------
djg321
The supply of high quality education and credentialing services needs to
increase to meet demand. Otherwise, college admissions will just be a zero sum
game.

------
serf
Sounds like a jumping off point to introduce the US to the Chinese social
credit system[0], to me.

[0]:
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2019/01/21/chinese-...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2019/01/21/chinese-
social-credit-score-utopian-big-data-bliss-or-black-mirror-on-
steroids/#37f37cf48b83)

------
jorblumesea
So a kid is lacking math/science/reading skills, how will boosting their
scores help? They're still behind, you just rigged the game in their favor.
They'll still show up at some prestigious college and do poorly for the same
reasons they do poorly at the SAT. Testing will never erase the inequality
between income, class and race.

------
systemBuilder
I can see a new score based up height and good looks which are correlated with
higher incomes and executive success. After all, these colleges care more
about polishing their own scores (sat, rejection rates, library volumes, GPA
scores, alumni starting salaries) even more than the poor kids trying to gain
admission ...

------
duxup
>15 factors

That just seems so limited considering the variability of life.

It seems there are so many well intentioned efforts out there that seem
focused on sort of economic or just easily measured statistics .... and people
just try to unweave the weave by putting pressure on those easy to measure
numbers.

I'm not sure that solves anything.

------
stanfordkid
Shouldn't college admissions officers already be able to take this into
account based on data in the application? I am pretty neutral on it, but think
the idea is pretty pointless and just leads to people trying to game the
system, rather than having decision making criterion distributed.

------
systemBuilder
A friend of my sons is brilliant with a 1600 SAT and top grades at a top-5
high school in California. Still, he is not admitted to UCLA. Probably his
family needs to Move across town to East Palo Alto where there are gunshots
every night to increase his adversity score ....

------
spookybones
This seems extremely hypocritical if they do not also account for personal
adversity (with evidence). Both of my parents died while I was young. It
certainly interfered with schooling as I questioned the point of existence as
well as not growing up with consistent role models.

------
parsamzand
This is a terrible idea. Why further punish kids for the success and efforts
of their parents? Even if this isn't outright lowering the score of high-
achieving kids, this is lowering the worth of their accomplishments in the
greater college-admissions market.

------
objektif
On a related note I always thought that US college admissions are very
sketchy. Why should children of alumni have have a higher chance of getting
into an ivy school. Same goes for extra cirricular activities. Who gives a
shit about your exceptional cello playing skills?

------
dwinston
The SAT is designed and delivered by a private, for-profit company. They are
providing additional information that they think will add product value for
their customers (schools). Do we want our public schools to continue
encouraging/requiring such products?

------
resters
The problem isn't the adversity score, it's the admissions practices that
reward mediocre performance in rich public school districts.

Colleges already weigh a GPA as better if the school district is more wealthy
(competitive). So the adversity score counter-balances that existing bias.

If you go to a big state school you meet a lot of mediocre people who went to
rich public schools and got mediocre scores and high (memorization-oriented)
GPAs. They had access to lots of AP credits and get admissions advantages not
just for the results but for taking the AP classes in the first place
(weighted GPAs, etc.).

The adversity score, if it works correctly, will help colleges find students
who attended high schools that were little more than daycare, offered no
weighted GPA, few AP classes, lousy teachers, etc. A high potential student
from one of those districts will fly under the radar compared to the kid who
had a memorization 3.8 GPA and 8 AP classes from a big suburban high school.

------
cwperkins
I prefer this to school's independently coming up with their own non-
transparent systems. That being said I hope this is like Affirmative Action,
only meant to be instituted for a length of time ~10 years once the problem
has been deemed solved.

------
pndy
This sounds like thing what we had during communistic times in Poland;
universities were giving extra points for place of origin of student
candidates during entrance exams, adding these to the sum of points obtained
for results in individual exams and for grades on the secondary school exit
exam aka matura exam. The general idea was to give better chances for young
people coming from workers and countryside families

~~~
randunel
This sort of "positive" discrimination led to more discrimination where I grew
up, in Romania. Highschools and universities had "reserved spots" for
Moldovans and ethnic gypsies who where placed in classes ahead of ethnic
Romanians with higher grades. This led to them being hated and bullied more,
many to the point where they dropped out.

Don't fight discrimination with discrimination.

------
DaniloDias
This nourishes some and hurts others. What an authentically American decision.

------
plandis
Im all ears to be convinced this won’t be a proxy almost exclusively for race.

------
MagicPropmaker
The purpose of the SAT is supposed to be to predict if a person would succeed
or not at college. I don't see how adding an adversity score will aid in
making this prediction.

~~~
dragonwriter
> The purpose of the SAT is supposed to be to predict if a person would
> succeed or not at college. I don't see how adding an adversity score will
> aid in making this prediction.

If adversity measures correlate with lower test scores more than they do with
lower performance, then it would obviously help.

Of course, the adversity score—which is separate from the main test score—may
serve a separate function for institutions using it, just because the existing
score serves one purpose doesn't mean that everything the College Board
packages with it must serve that purpose.

------
dba7dba
I checked NYT's discussion on this article and a quick check shows top voted
posts are mostly negative against this new scoring from SAT board.

------
EGreg
College is now an artificial scarce resource and a signal to arbitrarily
select well connected people (ivy league) or people who check a box (others)

~~~
rc_kas
This is off topic, but .. My cousin graduated from Harvard and he's like the
least well paid and least connected person I know. Just a nerdy introvert kind
of person.

------
ummonk
This is potentially a good thing since it could be easier to monitor for
fairness and lack of discrimination than subjective holistic admissions.

------
thoughtstheseus
The question is should people be selected for admission by varying standards
based on what set of X number of categories you fill on an SAT test.

------
pishpash
It's really time to give ugly people, short people, fat people, etc. an
adversity score boost. I mean what could be more adverse?

~~~
hyperdunc
What we really need to do is remove all adversity and all other incentives for
people to better themselves. I mean, what good ever came from people trying to
overcome struggle and strife?

------
redorb
Beyond the score - I see this as colleges accepting more people having more
remedial classes and collecting more in tuition.

------
jerkstate
I'm not sure why this is necessary. College admissions boards already consider
adversity stories, if they want to.

------
pkaye
I can see wealthy parents moving their kids to a worse school district for the
year of SAT exams to game that score.

------
daodedickinson
Don't the universities have all they need to know already? Probably someone's
excuse to get more data.

------
bikeshed
Jesus this thread is toxic. I can tell the SAT board made the right decision
based on the salt content here.

------
dba7dba
I see a lawsuit on the way. How can college admission related score be a
'secret'?

------
RenRav
This just enables unpredictable discrimination on behalf of college admissions
officials...

------
sologoub
Not paywalled article: [https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/sat-add-
adversity-score...](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/sat-add-adversity-
score-will-factor-student-hardships-college-admissions-n1006571)

Pretty concerning and really doesn’t capture various types of adversity faced
in childhood. Feels like another box kids would need to fit in to...

------
pps43
If a bank did that, the regulators would shut it down in a heartbeat for
redlining.

------
DiseasedBadger
It might help us all avoid people with serious problems, and likely bad
attitudes.

------
Footkerchief
What is the complete list of factors? None of the news articles seem to have
it.

------
aj7
Hopefully some poor Queens Asians will now get >800 scores in math.

------
rlt
"Adversity Score" sounds a bit like something you'd find at the "Oppression
Olympics", which is a term often used to criticize exactly this type of thing:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oppression_Olympics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oppression_Olympics)

Identity politics is becoming a parody of itself.

------
robzhu
During China's Cultural Revolution, the Communist party also kept track of an
adversity score.

------
hotpockets
A valedictorian from an impoverished community has the same merit as one from
a wealthy school (on average). Think about that and the solution seems
obvious.

------
KaoruAoiShiho
This is not a good solution. :(

The only solution is UBI.

------
mlindner
This is a terrible idea! We shouldn’t allow people to arbitrarily pick scores
on data they don’t even have a full picture of.

------
candybar
As someone who's somewhat ambivalent about race-based affirmative action (in
short, I feel it's oversold at elite institutions and underused elsewhere) - a
widespread adoption of something like this seems like an improvement over the
status quo from the perspective of fairness. With that said, I don't think it
will end up being used in this manner because fundamentally institutions are
indifferent to your hardship and generally want the least fair process
possible. At least as far as you can infer from their actions, top schools
don't want students that overcame hardships. They want students that are
likely to be successful. And given equal test scores, those that overcame more
hardships are probably less likely to be successful, since they are likely to
face more difficulties and less support in the future.

For example, if Harvard admitted purely by academics (assuming that a suitably
hard version of SAT exists), they'd certainly have a student body that
overcame more adversity they currently do. But they'd miss out on the likes of
Jared Kushner who, despite low test scores, certainly had better career
prospects than the average Harvard student. In reality top schools are
generally looking for well-bred, well-rounded rich kids that are going to be
successful no matter what. Everything about their process optimizes for this -
relatively easy tests and low cutoffs, focus on extra-curricular and well-
roundedness in general, ridiculous emphasis on sports no one without money
would play, legacy preference, the list goes on. Admissions officers are even
known to prefer more expensive extra-curricular activities - it's not about
ability, it's not about effort, it's about interestingness and rarity, which
are essentially synonymous with expensive.

Then to mask the fact that this is what their admissions process optimizes
for, they just put the lipstick on the pig to make the result superficially
palatable. This is where race-based affirmative action comes in - the whole
holistic admissions process is fairly blatantly regressive, but somehow it's
sold as a package deal with race-based affirmative action (it doesn't have to
be) to put the critics on the defensive, as though they are the ones defending
privilege. It's a fairly brilliant rhetorical technique, I must say. The
holistic admissions process is primarily used to admit rich kids who aren't
quite good enough academically over middle-class/poor kids who are great
academically, but just have a hard time distinguishing themselves due to their
chea, extra-curriculars that are available to far too many people to be
interesting. But the fact that this process, combined with race-based
affirmative action, yields a few more upper-middle class African immigrants
and far fewer poor white and Asian kids, is apparently enough to give them the
moral high ground.

They've done such an amazing job pushing this narrative that most people seem
to think rich kids getting SAT tutoring is a big problem from a privilege
perspective and de-emphasizing objective metrics is about leveling the playing
field. It's the exact opposite - they want every excuse to admit the people
that they think are going to be successful (and what better predicts success
than growing up already successful?) and de-emphasizing objective metrics
allows them to fill the entire class with mostly privileged people, without
the riff-raffs that are academically good, but don't have the connections or
the upbringing or the money to be successful.

------
ARandomerDude
SAT: tries to distinguish the individual from the crowd

Adversity score: tries to make the student a statistic

------
adrenalinelol
Perhaps... We could increase the amount of seats at colleges instead?

------
maxk42
This isn't right.

------
StreamBright
Nor Christians neither Jews are a race

~~~
roenxi
The Jews actually have a pretty strong family component. In theory they aren't
a race but for practical purposes it might as well be a racial stereotype (eg,
the classic hook-nose propaganda - clearly a racial stereotype).

Anyway, the point was that the culture is what is important. Jewish culture is
clearly somewhat different from Christian culture. If you seep a person in a
specific culture that will define how they think in a way that their race does
not.

~~~
kornsh3ll
> eg, the classic hook-nose propaganda - clearly a racial stereotype

Please, do not repeat this filth. It is anti-Semitic nonsense that there is
are “Jewish racial characteristics”. Jews come in every shape and skin tone. I
know a very nice black man who is an African Immigrant and he is Jewish.

There is no Jewish race - Judaism is only a religion.

~~~
lopmotr
Converts and outliers are of course are excluded, but for people with a long
Jewish ancestry, there are clusterings of genetic markers that uniquely
identify them as distinct from non-Jews. There are different groups of Jews
too.

Judaism is well accepted as being both a race and a religion. Of course it has
fuzzy borders with people who don't believe the religion but are genetically
Jewish and vise versa, but so does every race and every religion.

It's not helpful for thought to demonize an idea by calling it "filth". How
can you consider possibilities if you've decided in advance what's clean and
what's too dirty to even say?

~~~
lazyasciiart
How long is "a long Jewish ancestry"? Hundreds of years?
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Africa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Africa)

Judaism is not 'well accepted' as being a race, and it is quite dismissive for
you to assume that other commenters have taken up their positions 'in advance'
rather than having spent time on the topic before this conversation that led
them to their position.

------
nyfresh
A standardized test should consider all contributing variables when
determining a score. In any other context this wouldn't be news.

------
malcolmgreaves
Good for them on starting to incorporate more realities into the all-too-often
unrealistic confines of standardized testing.

------
staunch
This seems like a potentially good first step in trying to counter wealthy
people's gaming of the system with SAT "prep" and the like.

~~~
calvinmorrison
studying is gaming the system?

~~~
markwaldron
Being able to afford $100+ an hour for a pro to teach you exactly what you
need to know to do well on the SAT is gaming the system

~~~
SaintGhurka
What if I hire an inexpensive tutor? Is that acceptable? Is there a price
threshold?

This is actually a serious question. I want to get an understanding of the
mind-set that creates this class wedge.

~~~
chongli
I think the argument is that no specific prep for the SAT should be necessary,
the exam should measure your abilities from your schooling.

------
bluthru
>Higher scores have been found to correlate with students coming from a
higher-income families and having better-educated parents.

Which makes a lot of sense since income correlates with intelligence and
intelligence is partially heritable.

A century ago the SAT was used to fine diamonds in the rough for first-
generation college students. After multiple generations of college students
mating with college students, you're not going to find that many first-
generation college students anymore.

Inserting dumber students into college because of their upbringing is hostile
towards the success of a nation.

EDIT: Please point out something that's incorrect instead of downvoting
because it makes you uncomfortable.

~~~
fwip
Income correlates with intelligence because measures of intelligence measure
income.

~~~
sisu2019
IQ predicts future income even if the subjects environement is controlled for.
It's a very good meassure, probably the best we have in the social sciences.
What it tells us is not nice, sure, but denying reality is not going to help
anyone.

