SAT "adversity" adjustment

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I obviously haven’t read all 40 pages but I’m kind of a cynic of this. This will essentially make need blind schools no longer need blind, right?

Yes, I've been thinking the same. It would be a lot more accurate to simply end need-blind. Financial/home circumstances that are below "average" for the zip code and/or school are not correctly reflected in the adversity score.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Single mom to a white boy here; English is not my first language, so I guess some bases are covered.
Now, when do I need to move to a bad school district?
As for poor disadvantaged kids, I feel for them but my ultimate responsibility is towards my own kid (and I wish their parents felt the same).

You can afford to live in a good school district. I'm pretty sure most poor families would exchange the adversity score for a good school. Also, the families do feel ultimate responsibility for their kids, it's just a harder hurdle for them because of systemic societal biases against their kids. The adversity score is race blind and helps people of lower SES, regardless of race. For a Christian society, there is a lot of whining about helping those less fortunate. The adversity score puts the actual scores in context. It doesn't add points to the actual score. Colleges still see the actual score.

Actually, families in poor neighborhoods hav a much better shot at schools. Consider the highly coveted VA state colleges - only so many applicants are accepted from the wealthy districts. It is so much easier to get in from a poor district. I thought this was well known?

If it's so much better to be at a poor school, why do people on this board constantly trash Eastern Fairfax schools, and why aren't people doing everything they can to get into title I schools? How many kids from Justice, Falls Church and Annandale get into highly rated schools? If it's so easy to get in from poor schools, shouldn't the stats from those schools rival McLean and Langley?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’ve been hearing parents in affluent schools say on here for years basically “I got mine and screw you.” Well, my family is educated and loves our kids and nonetheless lives on the wrong side of town and sends our kids to an average school with plenty of poor kids.

So, with this new adversity score, I say... “I got mine and screw you.”

The Common App asks about the parents' education level, which colleges they attended and their occupations. They aren't going to just blindly go with the adversity score when they see that your kid is from a well educated family.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’ve been hearing parents in affluent schools say on here for years basically “I got mine and screw you.” Well, my family is educated and loves our kids and nonetheless lives on the wrong side of town and sends our kids to an average school with plenty of poor kids.

So, with this new adversity score, I say... “I got mine and screw you.”

The Common App asks about the parents' education level, which colleges they attended and their occupations. They aren't going to just blindly go with the adversity score when they see that your kid is from a well educated family.

They will only see that if the kid reports his family as well educated. No one is going to go through each SAT form and verify

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’ve been hearing parents in affluent schools say on here for years basically “I got mine and screw you.” Well, my family is educated and loves our kids and nonetheless lives on the wrong side of town and sends our kids to an average school with plenty of poor kids.

So, with this new adversity score, I say... “I got mine and screw you.”

The Common App asks about the parents' education level, which colleges they attended and their occupations. They aren't going to just blindly go with the adversity score when they see that your kid is from a well educated family.

They will only see that if the kid reports his family as well educated. No one is going to go through each SAT form and verify

So you plan to leave the Common App section about parents' education level and occupation blank?

[Anonymous]

The fact is that admissions people know the schools in their territory, so they know the difference between going to Justice and going to Langley.

Need blind means admissions isn’t charged with worrying about how the tuition bill is getting paid. It doesn’t mean they aren’t considering context.

College Board is a little money now that so many schools have moved to self-reported scores and test-optional (the bigger revenue comes from high schools paying to be part of the AP program). Folding this index into the official score report might be a strategy for getting some colleges to require those reports again, but no one seems to have budged.

[Anonymous]

*CB is losing a little money now.

[Anonymous]

So, how much does the adversity score "drill down" to the neighborhood/home address level?

Let's take a school like South Lakes or Edison or Hayfield. There are kids who live in apartments (or public housing) and their are kids who live in $$800K+ homes. Sometimes these homes are just a block or two apart.

Is the "adversity index" looking at your actual home/street? When they look at crime, how tight is the area they are considering?

[Anonymous]

oops... "there are kids who live..."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So, how much does the adversity score "drill down" to the neighborhood/home address level?

Let's take a school like South Lakes or Edison or Hayfield. There are kids who live in apartments (or public housing) and their are kids who live in $$800K+ homes. Sometimes these homes are just a block or two apart.

Is the "adversity index" looking at your actual home/street? When they look at crime, how tight is the area they are considering?

I don’t know how fine grained it is, but it is likely focused on census tract data which isn’t street by street but closer to a voting precinct.

What people forget are the two other components of the index - which are about the students’ Hugh school. Some of what they will put in the scores is already in the school data sheet the counselors prepare and submit with the students transcript and rec letters.

Includes how students SAT score compares with others in their high school (top 25% etc) and the numbers of APs offered, average AP load.

https://professionals.collegeboard.org/environmental-context-dashboard

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So, how much does the adversity score "drill down" to the neighborhood/home address level?

Let's take a school like South Lakes or Edison or Hayfield. There are kids who live in apartments (or public housing) and their are kids who live in $$800K+ homes. Sometimes these homes are just a block or two apart.

Is the "adversity index" looking at your actual home/street? When they look at crime, how tight is the area they are considering?

If you live in public housing or are in foster care there is already a place on your FAFSA to indicate that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So, how much does the adversity score "drill down" to the neighborhood/home address level?

Let's take a school like South Lakes or Edison or Hayfield. There are kids who live in apartments (or public housing) and their are kids who live in $$800K+ homes. Sometimes these homes are just a block or two apart.

Is the "adversity index" looking at your actual home/street? When they look at crime, how tight is the area they are considering?

If you live in public housing or are in foster care there is already a place on your FAFSA to indicate that.

Right. But being in foster care or public housing doesnt necessarily equate to being in a neighborhood with high crime.

The College Board - whether you agree or not - has created a dashboard that shows:

1) the high school profile data [includes AP opportunity at the school (average number of AP Exams taken, average AP score from that HS); the percentage of students who meet federal eligibility criteria for free and reduced-price lunch; rurality/urbanicity; and senior class size].

AND

2) SAT scores in context [A students' SAT scores can be seen within the context of the 25th, 50th, and 75th percentile of SAT scores from their high school].

AND

3) the neighborhood/HS school factors (typical family income, family structure, educational attainment, housing stability, and crime)

Right now a college admissions office has or can find all these pieces of data if they seek it out and synthesize it themselves (and many do, for marketing AND admissions purposes), or learn it over time by being familiar with their region.

But as we all know, the volume of applications is up and the number of admissions staff and their travel budgets aren't growing enough to keep up. This could save work for those who WANT this data (not all do) and standardize it.

[Anonymous]

How will adversity scores be reflected for kids going to magnet schools in SS neighborhood? WIll they have a higher adversity score? Majority of these kids live in affluent neighborhoods of MC

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How will adversity scores be reflected for kids going to magnet schools in SS neighborhood? WIll they have a higher adversity score? Majority of these kids live in affluent neighborhoods of MC

Why would they? Let's assume Blair HS.

The school academic context component: will show that Larlo is in the top tier of their high school ; that many advanced courses are offered and Larlo took many of them (in other words he isn't attending a school that only offers 2 AP classes).

The contextualized SAT score: will likely show that Larlo's score is the top 25% of all students who took the SAT from the HS.

The neighborhood score: will reflect that Larlo lives in an affluent area with low crime, and most adults have college degrees. Since Blair HS as a whole does not qualify for Title 1 funds, and only 121 of nearly 800 students (as of 2 years ago) qualified for free and reduced meals, it isn't going to be considered a disadvantaged school..

So we can assume that Larlo's environmental index (aka adversity score) will not indicate that Larlo has faced a lot of adversity which should perhaps be taken into account when reviewing his application.

Because ... he has not.

[Anonymous]

Anyone not in favor of adversity should be lobbying CB to make it optional for the student to disclose along with their SAT scores. CB should not be disclosing it. Then there's no controversy. Done.