SAT "adversity" adjustment

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05/17/2019 14:16

Subject: Re:SAT "adversity" adjustment

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Anonymous

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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.

Again, no one is considering a child from a family with a HHI of $130,000 more disadvantaged than people making more money. They might think your kid likely has fewer luxuries, but not those that would arise to adversity. Someone from a family making $50,000 would likely have fewer benefits that actually would result in adversity that could significantly impact academics.

Really, at $130,000 for a family of four in NOVA we can't afford tutors for our kids, yet many posters seem to assume this is the norm for white kids.

I'm in that income range and could afford a tutor if necessary. Also, most people with that HHI are educated enough to help their kids if they "can't" afford a tutor. Poor people can't afford tutors and tend to be undereducated. My kids have never used a paid tutor, but my education level has enabled me to tutor them extensively myself. SES not only indicates the likelihood you can afford to pay for certain benefits, but it also is a decent predictor of the education level of the adults in the household.