SAT "adversity" adjustment

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I can not believe how many of you affluent advantaged people are now online rallying against this. Have you no shame? As you no empathy? Have you no understanding? This is not designed to hurt your kids, but to help other kids.

Because it dumbs down our colleges and our country.

I'm not defending the adjustment, but No it doesn't dumb anyone or anything down. There are enough colleges and universities in the country for anyone who can pay or get the funds to go. Smart rich kids will get a degree, probably two, and continue to be smart rich adults. If it means a handful of rich kids don't get the "marketing prestige" schools, they will still be more than fine (most of my successful colleagues did not attend prestige schools but they knocked it out of the park everywhere they went). The affluent, and in fact most people, do not need the prestige schools to succeed. Kids coming from adversity might, and your attitude is a huge part of the reason why. You assume a lot when you see that Harvard sweatshirt, and you barely notice the ones you haven't heard so much about. But neither tells you as much about the person wearing it as you think it does. For the adversity kid, the Harvard sweatshirt opens a whole new world; the rest of us don't need the sweatshirt (and probably wouldn't wear it anyway).

Maybe the true end result of this will be that we can finally abandon the ridiculous and meaningless attempt to "rank" universities.

[Anonymous]

Hey W school parents,

Sorry that my kids' poverty infected gangland schools are taking all of the ivy league spots with this new system!!

$$DCC RePreZeNT$$

[Anonymous]

Where is the adversity cheat sheet, so I guess everyone will be add, sexual assaulted, depressed, etc no way of verification

[Anonymous]

Why don't they put effort into cheating. This is subjective stupidity that will be challenged in Court

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why is the assumption the kids with higher adversity scores can’t handle the rigor?

The adversity score isn’t added to the test score. So if two kids have the exact same score and Tommy has an adversity score of 20, and Billy has an adversity score of 80, why are we assuming Billy won’t do well or graduate, but Tommy will?

If anything, I would saw it’s the opposite: Tommy was likely tutored and prepped, coached and piloted by his two UMC family, and will crack once he expected to perform on his own. Billy likely had few of those resources and has been performing on his own for quite some time.

That’s not how the score is being measured. The scores are being calibrated relative to SES/demographic class. So if Tommy comes from a SES/demographic clas where the average SAT is 950 but he scores an 1150 (+200) and Johnny comes from an SES/demographic class where the average SAT score is 1225 but he scores 1400 (+175), college admissions officers are expected to take the position that Tommy did better despite scoring in the 65th percentile of all test takers and Johnny being in the 93rd percentile.

Ok. My family is the "poor" (relatively speaking) family in an UMC neighborhood. We are able to afford living here because we bought a foreclosure that is smaller than most of the other houses and in need of repairs. We did this because we would rather our kids attend better schools than have a nicer house. If the college is basing this on the overall income of kids who attend the same HS as ours, they will be "punished" by receiving a lower adversity score than their more affluent peers who live in the same neighborhood. All because we chose to prioritize schools over housing!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I believe this is a move that is well-intentioned but will end badly.

The intent is to identify those students who may not perform as well as others on standardized type testing or who don't have the highest grades but have great potential for success.

The outcome will be excluding students who have "adversity" that is not accounted for by those giving the score. It will also encourage others to cheat to claim adversity (lying about living address, for example). And, it will end in schools being encouraged to accept students who do not have the academic background nor the stamina to be successful at college.

And, the ultimate losers here are those students who work really hard and are from middle class, stable families.

Yes. Big time. Yet again the middle class gets screwed. The disadvantaged get their adversity scores and financial aid. The rich get their tutors, donations, legacies and full college funds. The middle class gets... nothing. Shrinking everyday.

That’s because, as usual, the powers that be willing deem anyone from 100k to 100 million and above to be rich ‘n privileged.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why is the assumption the kids with higher adversity scores can’t handle the rigor?

The adversity score isn’t added to the test score. So if two kids have the exact same score and Tommy has an adversity score of 20, and Billy has an adversity score of 80, why are we assuming Billy won’t do well or graduate, but Tommy will?

If anything, I would saw it’s the opposite: Tommy was likely tutored and prepped, coached and piloted by his two UMC family, and will crack once he expected to perform on his own. Billy likely had few of those resources and has been performing on his own for quite some time.

That’s not how the score is being measured. The scores are being calibrated relative to SES/demographic class. So if Tommy comes from a SES/demographic clas where the average SAT is 950 but he scores an 1150 (+200) and Johnny comes from an SES/demographic class where the average SAT score is 1225 but he scores 1400 (+175), college admissions officers are expected to take the position that Tommy did better despite scoring in the 65th percentile of all test takers and Johnny being in the 93rd percentile.

Ok. My family is the "poor" (relatively speaking) family in an UMC neighborhood. We are able to afford living here because we bought a foreclosure that is smaller than most of the other houses and in need of repairs. We did this because we would rather our kids attend better schools than have a nicer house. If the college is basing this on the overall income of kids who attend the same HS as ours, they will be "punished" by receiving a lower adversity score than their more affluent peers who live in the same neighborhood. All because we chose to prioritize schools over housing!

Yup. But the actually wealthy people will be perfectly fine, as usual. Middle gets screwed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I actually don't see the problem with this. If I understand it correctly, the adversity adjustment is not going to take anything away from anyone, but simply bump up those in disadvantaged circumstances. I think this country is so screwed up in terms of the haves and the have nots. So many outside of our bubble don't have access to tutors, enrichment, stability, etc. We are very well off and both my kids get tutors when needed. My kid is going to a top 20 school and that's because he scored very high on the ACT and we were able to pay for all sorts of enrichment in his high school career. This is SO not typical in other parts of the country, and these kids should have some sort of an opportunity to break out of that cycle.

The people upset about this are probably the same ones who think that learning disabled kids should not get extra time or that everyone should get extra time. It is just amazing how selfish and heartless people can be.

I feel blessed that my kid will have an amazing college experience, but even if he didn't get into his first choice, he would have been FINE!! That would probably not be the case with these kids with the high adversity scores.

And if you really have a problem with it, just prep for the ACT. It's not like you don't have choices.

By bumping some people up, other people by default are going to be bumped down. And the reason people are upset is because the college board has no way of knowing who has faced adversity in their lives and who hasn't. Simply living in a lower income zip code or even being lower income does not necessarily mean that one is disadvantaged disproportionately. An example would be my own family. We have a HHI of $130,000 which is not low income but is lower than the majority of families that my kids go to school with, because we made the decision that I should stay at home. Our lower HHI should be a disadvantage and in some ways it is. However, we are laser focused about education and enriching our kids (which is why I stayed home in the first place) I would say our family is more education focused than the majority of other families who live near us that have higher incomes. And my kids are pretty much the top students at their school. But the College Board would only see a lower HHI and assume that my kids are actually disadvantaged as compared to the families that make more.

??? That's not how it works. They aren't comparing $130,000 HHI with higher HHI and assigning significant adversity score differences. They know that a family with a HHI of $130,000 is fine. They are looking at lower income families and comparing them to you. Do you think they are also comparing those making $500,000 vs. $1M and giving the $500,000 an adversity score benefit that colleges would care about?

My point is that it is difficult for an outsider to determine who faces more adversity than others. You can't no what factors come into play in someone's life that make them more disadvantaged than others and not even income tells you everything. Most people would consider a kid come from a family with an income of $130,000 to be more disadvantaged than a kid coming from a family making $300,000. But in our case, I would not consider my kids to be disadvantaged at all because even though they have less money, they have had a sahm who has basically made a career out of raising them to be well educated, and they are performing higher than most of their peers who come from much more affluent families. This is the problem with solely using income to determine who is advantaged or not. There are so many other factors that could play into it (like the advantage of having an invested sahm) that it is basically impossible for the college board or anyone else to try to gauge who is more advantaged than others and try to put a score to it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I actually don't see the problem with this. If I understand it correctly, the adversity adjustment is not going to take anything away from anyone, but simply bump up those in disadvantaged circumstances. I think this country is so screwed up in terms of the haves and the have nots. So many outside of our bubble don't have access to tutors, enrichment, stability, etc. We are very well off and both my kids get tutors when needed. My kid is going to a top 20 school and that's because he scored very high on the ACT and we were able to pay for all sorts of enrichment in his high school career. This is SO not typical in other parts of the country, and these kids should have some sort of an opportunity to break out of that cycle.

The people upset about this are probably the same ones who think that learning disabled kids should not get extra time or that everyone should get extra time. It is just amazing how selfish and heartless people can be.

I feel blessed that my kid will have an amazing college experience, but even if he didn't get into his first choice, he would have been FINE!! That would probably not be the case with these kids with the high adversity scores.

And if you really have a problem with it, just prep for the ACT. It's not like you don't have choices.

By bumping some people up, other people by default are going to be bumped down. And the reason people are upset is because the college board has no way of knowing who has faced adversity in their lives and who hasn't. Simply living in a lower income zip code or even being lower income does not necessarily mean that one is disadvantaged disproportionately. An example would be my own family. We have a HHI of $130,000 which is not low income but is lower than the majority of families that my kids go to school with, because we made the decision that I should stay at home. Our lower HHI should be a disadvantage and in some ways it is. However, we are laser focused about education and enriching our kids (which is why I stayed home in the first place) I would say our family is more education focused than the majority of other families who live near us that have higher incomes. And my kids are pretty much the top students at their school. But the College Board would only see a lower HHI and assume that my kids are actually disadvantaged as compared to the families that make more.

??? That's not how it works. They aren't comparing $130,000 HHI with higher HHI and assigning significant adversity score differences. They know that a family with a HHI of $130,000 is fine. They are looking at lower income families and comparing them to you. Do you think they are also comparing those making $500,000 vs. $1M and giving the $500,000 an adversity score benefit that colleges would care about?

My point is that it is difficult for an outsider to determine who faces more adversity than others. You can't no what factors come into play in someone's life that make them more disadvantaged than others and not even income tells you everything. Most people would consider a kid come from a family with an income of $130,000 to be more disadvantaged than a kid coming from a family making $300,000. But in our case, I would not consider my kids to be disadvantaged at all because even though they have less money, they have had a sahm who has basically made a career out of raising them to be well educated, and they are performing higher than most of their peers who come from much more affluent families. This is the problem with solely using income to determine who is advantaged or not. There are so many other factors that could play into it (like the advantage of having an invested sahm) that it is basically impossible for the college board or anyone else to try to gauge who is more advantaged than others and try to put a score to it.

Yes, I realize there are many typos in the above. No need to point them out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Hey W school parents,

Sorry that my kids' poverty infected gangland schools are taking all of the ivy league spots with this new system!!

$$DCC RePreZeNT$$

Sure does.

That is why I don't plan to hire any Ivy grads who entered after this year and majored in fluffy majors. I don't need entitled, sob story dorks at my company. Companies that need workers to actually do work, as opposed to RePreZeNT the diversity / adversity angle, will hire students who attend state school honors colleges and do well in hard majors. Several consulting companies and defense contractors in DMV have already informally made it their policy.

Harvard athlete URM first generation adversity poster kids can go work in politics or some other dumpster field where productivity means nothing, there is no output anyone actually needs, and workers are there for show and veiled money laundering.

If Ivies screw us, we screw the Ivies. Right now, the power balance is not right and they cannot feel it. In a few years, that will change.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I believe this is a move that is well-intentioned but will end badly.

The intent is to identify those students who may not perform as well as others on standardized type testing or who don't have the highest grades but have great potential for success.

The outcome will be excluding students who have "adversity" that is not accounted for by those giving the score. It will also encourage others to cheat to claim adversity (lying about living address, for example). And, it will end in schools being encouraged to accept students who do not have the academic background nor the stamina to be successful at college.

And, the ultimate losers here are those students who work really hard and are from middle class, stable families.

Explain this.

Easy - students who are low performing are given a "adversity score" and their low performance will be blamed on these adversity factors. While in reality, the student is not prepared for college, may not even WANT a college education, and would be better off learning a trade.

You have it backwards. Most lower income kids WANT a college education, it's the overindulged upper income kids like Olivia Jade who don't WANT a college education because they know they will be fine without it because of mommy and daddy's money/contacts.

And it's easier for them to get it because they qualify for grant. There is no such thing as being too poor for college anymore. The ones that really get screwed are the middle class who don't qualify for grants, yet parent's can't really afford to pay. These are the ones who will end up paying student loans for years.

[Anonymous]

This type of social engineering is great. Enjoy George Mason, rich kids!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This type of social engineering is great. Enjoy George Mason, rich kids!

No enjoy George Mason middle class kids. The rich are still appealing to colleges because they are full pay. The middle class won't necessarily be full pay but they aren't poor enough to benefit from having a high adversity score.

[Anonymous]

White privileged dad: but will our double legacy status at Big State University still count?
White privileged mom: of course or will!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This type of social engineering is great. Enjoy George Mason, rich kids!

No enjoy George Mason middle class kids. The rich are still appealing to colleges because they are full pay. The middle class won't necessarily be full pay but they aren't poor enough to benefit from having a high adversity score.

Good points,