SAT "adversity" adjustment

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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.

None of the data is private.

[Anonymous]

If you don’t want this calculated, take the ACT or go to a test optional school. Simple.

[Anonymous]

It's not an adversity"adjustment." You get a adversity score to go along with your test score. The colleges can do with that info as they wish, but the adversity score doesn't change your test score.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

None of the data is private.

Yes, but linking that data to an individual's score is a bit of unchartered territory. There are currently legal challenges around public data mining practices that may impact how these scores are reported/used.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

None of the data is private.

Yes, but linking that data to an individual's score is a bit of unchartered territory. There are currently legal challenges around public data mining practices that may impact how these scores are reported/used.

Right now many colleges are ALREADY purchasing the census tract data, and adding it to an applicant's file, right along with their SAT scores.

The high school counselors ALL provide school profiles that share the amount of APs available and indicate if the student took the 'most rigorous' or a less rigorous path compared to their peers, the percentage of students who matriculate to a 4-year college, the percentage of students who qualify for subsidized or free meals, and whether the schools receive Title 1 funding. This information is linked to their transcript.

All this change is doing is trying to establish the College Board as a one-stop shop for data that the colleges already gather. It will save colleges money and time. Literally, the only new piece is to show how the applicant's SAT score ranks in comparison to other students in their graduating class (top 25% and so on).

I think it's caused controversy because people didn't realize the extent that colleges are using data mining already to recruit and shape their classes.

[Anonymous]

So need-blind is a farce? Does being needy, coming from financially disadvantaged circumstances, help or hurt? It would seem much fairer to simply unblind the need angle -- at least that would be accurate information rather than guesses based on secondary measurements.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

None of the data is private.

Yes, but linking that data to an individual's score is a bit of unchartered territory. There are currently legal challenges around public data mining practices that may impact how these scores are reported/used.

Right now many colleges are ALREADY purchasing the census tract data, and adding it to an applicant's file, right along with their SAT scores.

The high school counselors ALL provide school profiles that share the amount of APs available and indicate if the student took the 'most rigorous' or a less rigorous path compared to their peers, the percentage of students who matriculate to a 4-year college, the percentage of students who qualify for subsidized or free meals, and whether the schools receive Title 1 funding. This information is linked to their transcript.

All this change is doing is trying to establish the College Board as a one-stop shop for data that the colleges already gather. It will save colleges money and time. Literally, the only new piece is to show how the applicant's SAT score ranks in comparison to other students in their graduating class (top 25% and so on).

I think it's caused controversy because people didn't realize the extent that colleges are using data mining already to recruit and shape their classes.

I know this is common practice, but there are a lot of privacy/data mining legal challenges in the works and these high visibility examples give them more impetus.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So need-blind is a farce? Does being needy, coming from financially disadvantaged circumstances, help or hurt? It would seem much fairer to simply unblind the need angle -- at least that would be accurate information rather than guesses based on secondary measurements.

Only about ten colleges are both need-blind AND meet the full demonstrated need for every student they admit. About another 90 are need-blind but do not commit to meeting 100% of demonstrated need. So for all intents and purposes, the need angle has been unblind-ed already. https://www.cappex.com/index.php/articles/match-fit/need-blind-admission-colleges

Overcoming difficult circumstances / demonstrating extraordinary 'grit' (for lack of a better word) can be a plus. So can being the first in your family to attend college, regardless of your environmental index score. There are limits to how much that would help a particular candidate because different colleges have different budgets available for financial aid.

And on the whole, students who come from financially or socially disadvantaged circumstances still borrow more to go to school than the middle class or donut hole students.

[Anonymous]

One other thing to consider is 'undermatching' - when highly qualified, disadvantaged students do not even apply to elite institutions (see article below). The elite colleges want to FIND and recruit these students -- which is why they use data mining for their marketing and use it to guide their in-person outreach.

https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/04/when-disadvantaged-students-overlook-elite-colleges/558371/

"Every year, scores of gifted students have their college prospects hampered by life circumstances. Imagine a teenager attending a high school where few of his peers make it to graduation, much less college. This student, however, is a high achiever. His grade-point average and test scores show it. In fact, they’re good enough to get into some of the best institutions in the country. But he doesn’t go to any of those institutions—let alone apply for them. Actual high-schoolers like this hypothetical student and the issues they face are very real.

The phenomenon—in which students do not attend the most selective colleges their qualifications suggest they could—is called “undermatching.” Few theories have garnered as much attention from the higher-education crowd as quickly as undermatching has. As Matthew Chingos, a policy expert at the Urban Institute, puts it, perhaps the chief problem with undermatching is that it disproportionately happens to low-income and minority students. A range of benefits comes with attending an elite institution: name recognition, more financial resources, and oftentimes an alumni network connected to powerful places. And by undermatching, capable students with unique perspectives on the world might miss out on those advantages—exacerbating a trend in which affluent students dominate the pipeline of those positioned for leadership roles....

Minority and low-income students undermatch for countless reasons. They may not have been made aware of their college options, some because they didn’t have a guidance counselor to do so. Those who did learn about their options may have received the information after the application deadline. Then there’s the fact that college recruiters tend to look for students at high-achieving high schools. And sometimes students may feel—or have been told—that selective colleges, or college more generally, is simply out of their league. Or that those selective schools are cost-prohibitive—even though such institutions tend to be more generous with financial aid than less-selective ones."

Having an adversity index readily available can help admissions offices review and reach out to the disadvantaged students that do apply - inviting them to special visit days and paying for travel costs, for example to help convince them that they can succeed and afford a selective school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:One other thing to consider is 'undermatching' - when highly qualified, disadvantaged students do not even apply to elite institutions (see article below). The elite colleges want to FIND and recruit these students -- which is why they use data mining for their marketing and use it to guide their in-person outreach.

https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/04/when-disadvantaged-students-overlook-elite-colleges/558371/

"Every year, scores of gifted students have their college prospects hampered by life circumstances. Imagine a teenager attending a high school where few of his peers make it to graduation, much less college. This student, however, is a high achiever. His grade-point average and test scores show it. In fact, they’re good enough to get into some of the best institutions in the country. But he doesn’t go to any of those institutions—let alone apply for them. Actual high-schoolers like this hypothetical student and the issues they face are very real.

The phenomenon—in which students do not attend the most selective colleges their qualifications suggest they could—is called “undermatching.” Few theories have garnered as much attention from the higher-education crowd as quickly as undermatching has. As Matthew Chingos, a policy expert at the Urban Institute, puts it, perhaps the chief problem with undermatching is that it disproportionately happens to low-income and minority students. A range of benefits comes with attending an elite institution: name recognition, more financial resources, and oftentimes an alumni network connected to powerful places. And by undermatching, capable students with unique perspectives on the world might miss out on those advantages—exacerbating a trend in which affluent students dominate the pipeline of those positioned for leadership roles....

Minority and low-income students undermatch for countless reasons. They may not have been made aware of their college options, some because they didn’t have a guidance counselor to do so. Those who did learn about their options may have received the information after the application deadline. Then there’s the fact that college recruiters tend to look for students at high-achieving high schools. And sometimes students may feel—or have been told—that selective colleges, or college more generally, is simply out of their league. Or that those selective schools are cost-prohibitive—even though such institutions tend to be more generous with financial aid than less-selective ones."

Having an adversity index readily available can help admissions offices review and reach out to the disadvantaged students that do apply - inviting them to special visit days and paying for travel costs, for example to help convince them that they can succeed and afford a selective school.

This is a dated story, but I have a friend who grew up in poverty (Miami-Dade) but was really bright. Parents and siblings hadn't finished HS. Naturally STEM-inclined and scored a perfect 800 in Math on the SAT. He was bussed to a magnet school and it never occurred to him to apply to college until his (White) classmates asked him where he was applying to. He asked them and just applied blindly to every school that they did. He got into MIT, but was advised by the counselor at school that it would not be a good fit for a kid like him. He was urged to attend school locally instead. Heeding the advice, he attended University of Miami instead. Fine school, but no MIT. Kids like him are really out there.

[Anonymous]

Interesting story from 10:55. ^ I wonder what happened to the person who could've gone to MIT but was discouraged from doing so? It seems so wrong that the person was discouraged from attending. Hopefully he has been successful, anyway.
(To some degree, I wonder how much the choice of college matters in many professions, anyway, but that's another discussion).

I did have a question about the Blair HS magnet example.

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..

It's unclear to me from what I see online about the degree to which Blair would be considered a disadvantaged school. It looks like 36% of kids there qualify for FARMS. https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/regulatoryaccountability/glance/currentyear/schools/04757.pdf
Many U.S. schools have much higher percentages - a quick glance just at Wheaton and Northwood shows higher FARMS rates there- but it's also true that many Montgomery County schools have FARMS rates that are less than 5%.
That's just one factor in many - https://professionals.collegeboard.org/environmental-context-dashboard/detailed-data-description.
I'd be curious about what the numerical criteria is for the different factors and how different schools will end up being classified.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Interesting story from 10:55. ^ I wonder what happened to the person who could've gone to MIT but was discouraged from doing so? It seems so wrong that the person was discouraged from attending. Hopefully he has been successful, anyway.
(To some degree, I wonder how much the choice of college matters in many professions, anyway, but that's another discussion).

I did have a question about the Blair HS magnet example.

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..

It's unclear to me from what I see online about the degree to which Blair would be considered a disadvantaged school. It looks like 36% of kids there qualify for FARMS. https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/regulatoryaccountability/glance/currentyear/schools/04757.pdf
Many U.S. schools have much higher percentages - a quick glance just at Wheaton and Northwood shows higher FARMS rates there- but it's also true that many Montgomery County schools have FARMS rates that are less than 5%.
That's just one factor in many - https://professionals.collegeboard.org/environmental-context-dashboard/detailed-data-description.
I'd be curious about what the numerical criteria is for the different factors and how different schools will end up being classified.

Read this page to bottom for far more detail on the data going into the HS and especially the neighborhood factors. There a sample dashboard for a hypothetical high school so you can see how it would be presented

https://professionals.collegeboard.org/environmental-context-dashboard/detailed-data-description

[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.

The other people you were responding to were not me.

The SAT adversity score looks at your neighborhood and your school’s demographics. It creates a score. This score is unrelated to the Common App. So yes, if they look at my child they will see a child of educated parents who lives in a modest neighborhood and school.

[Anonymous]

No matter where you are on the political spectrum—you can be a heart-bleeding liberal, but the simple fact that you live in Fairfax, Arlington, or Montgomery County makes your child’s adversity score very low. If you believe that adversity scoring is wrong, do something. Please sign the petition at http://chng.it/QJqtJgq2

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No matter where you are on the political spectrum—you can be a heart-bleeding liberal, but the simple fact that you live in Fairfax, Arlington, or Montgomery County makes your child’s adversity score very low. If you believe that adversity scoring is wrong, do something. Please sign the petition at http://chng.it/QJqtJgq2

If any "bleeding-heart liberal" signs this petition because where they live makes their child's adversity score very low, it shows pure hypocrisy. You're only for diversity and helping disadvantaged kids for as long as you kid has a leg up? Sign away, but admit that you really are only concerned about getting yours and quit the farce.