Reply to SAT "adversity" adjustment

Forum Index » College and University Discussion

Reply to "SAT "adversity" adjustment"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=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[/quote]

Your assumptions are incorrect. There are schools in Montgomery County that are 90% FARMS and ESOL, and many schools with majority poor kids. Of course those kids will have high adversity scores.[/quote]

Not necessarily. I read it's nationally normed. My local school is about 60% FARMS and about 30% ESOL. In Maryland, we're in the bottom 25% of the state. But nationally, we're middle 50%. [b]Poor MD kids may be privileged compared to poor Appalachian kids[/b].[/quote]

But the poor MoCo students will have higher adversity index than others in Montgomery County, such as Whitman or Walter Johnson. And since admissions at selective colleges works by region (x many from DMV, x many from Illinois, etc) Appalachia is pretty irrelevant to a student from Montgomery County.[/quote]

Except before that poor MoCo student might have benefited from being in an environment where some of the college basics were understood. Colleges have always been able to fill their "Maryland quota" with wealthy, privileged Maryland students. Now, they'll have an easier time seeing that those disadvantaged Maryland students are less disadvantaged than those kids from Appalachia. Where's the benefit in picking up a couple disadvantaged Maryland students, since they're not disadvantaged compared to others nationally?

This isn't an issue for us. Because we live in a disadvantaged neighborhood, by Maryland's standards, my kids will show up as more disadvantaged than they are economically. Because our kids got scholarships to private schools, they will show up as more advantaged than they are economically. It's likely to all be a wash.

But my neighbors who were not fortunate enough to get their kids into private schools with scholarships are going to show up as middle of the road. No reason for a college to "reach down" to lift them up, without other hooks such as being first generation college (which many of them are, given the neighborhood). I think a nationally normed adversity score is going to miss the boat in a number of ways, and one of them is potentially missing the challenges of poor folks in generally wealthy areas because they're surrounded by wealth. [/quote]

So you think Harvard will have a hard time figuring out that the cost of living is higher in the DC Metro area than in Appalachia?  They will compare the adversity scores by region, not nationally--even if the adversity scores are nationally normed.  People who work for these Universities do this for a living.  If you can figure it out, so can they  :roll: [/quote]

No, I don't think they'll have a hard time figuring that out, if they cared to. But that College Board has decided to nationally norm this metric is telling, don't you think? They aren't displaying it regionally, and they could. Why not? Because they suspect their customers, the colleges, don't need or want it to be regionally normed. Nationally normed works for them. They still get to say they're helping disadvantaged students. They don't care if those students are from MoCo or Appalachia.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics