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SAT to Add ‘Adversity Score’ That Rates Students’ Hardships

nytimes.com

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Re: SAT to Add ‘Adversity Score’ That Rates Students’ Hardships

#791

Post by firstplacelast »

intenex wrote: post #749
summm wrote: post #717

How about having lots of decent, desirable universities instead of a few elite ones and many weak ones? Furthermore, one could abolish tuition and provide students with living expenses, either all or those who need them. Furthermore, reverse grade inflation in school such that the final grade is a better predictor for learning aptitude. That would solve the stupid admissions problem once and for all. Btw we had all t…

As someone who went to Harvard, I'm pretty sure there are a lot of extremely decent universities that all basically provide the same quality of instruction. People just get unreasonably hung up over the 'best' schools, but there are easily at least like 100+, if not several hundred, that provide easily roughly the same educational experience as far as I'm aware. The peer group may definitely dramatically different fr…

Oof. This is a very out-of-touch comment. This isn't about the difference between Harvard and a good state school.

Re: SAT to Add ‘Adversity Score’ That Rates Students’ Hardships

#792

Post by arkh »

GhostVII wrote: post #215

I think instead of trying to lower the bar for low income students, we should work on solving the actual problems causing them to perform more poorly on the SAT (or adjust the SAT so it is more representative of their actual skills). If students are accepted with a lower SAT score because of their background, they are likely going to struggle in University, since they have lower scores than the rest of their class, s…

> On the other hand though it might be essentially impossible to close the gap between low income and high income students.

If this is a goal a society set it is possible. Remove the parents from being involved in their children education. When born, remove the children from their parents and send them to some national education system until they're adults.

Re: SAT to Add ‘Adversity Score’ That Rates Students’ Hardships

#793

Post by _iyig »

applecrazy wrote: post #783
_iyig wrote: post #771

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>How about having lots of decent, desirable universities instead of a few elite ones and many weak ones? In practice, this is pretty much the case. State schools (e.g. the University of Virginia, University of California-Berkeley, Georgia Tech, etc.) are often quite good in terms of the education provided, and offer lower tuition rates to in-state residents. Forbes and U.S. News & World Report maintain rankings of th…

The schools you listed-Berkeley, UVA, and GA Tech-are comparable in acceptance rates and in quality to Ivy League schools. Still doesn't solve the problem of having a few elite schools and many weak ones. These schools are equally, if not harder, to get into as a first-year freshman.

I listed just a few strong non-Ivies off the top of my head. A list of other strong, non-“elite” CS schools might include the likes of GMU, WPI, RPI, RIT, or UMBC. I have friends and co-workers from each of these schools who are all fine engineers. Conversely, I’ve worked with Ivy Leaguers who couldn’t code their way out of a wet paper bag.

Also, schools with higher acceptance rates do not necessarily offer lower-quality educations, or have lower standards for graduation. One metric to consider is the four- or five-year graduation rate. For financial reasons, second-tier schools may initially admit more freshmen but ultimately wash more of them out. While this can turn out poorly for the student who takes out student loans only to wash out sophomore year, it can be a boon to strong students who, for one reason or another, didn’t have a standout high school experience.

Re: SAT to Add ‘Adversity Score’ That Rates Students’ Hardships

#794

Post by manfredo »

andrepd wrote: post #586
manfredo wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not exactly. This adversity score penalizes people who good character (insofar as making sacrifices to provide better education opportunity for ones' kids is good character). Family A makes $X and goes through significant sacrifices (e.g. commuting 4 hours) to live in a wealthy neighborhood with good schools. Family B makes the same $X and lives a leisurely live in a cheap neighborhood with bad schools. Which should…

>Which should have a better chance of succeeding? This adversity score says family B deserves a bonus over family A. No, it does not say that it deserves a bonus _over_ family A. It deserves that that circumstance (a circumstance of the parents, not the kid!) is taken into account to close the gap somewhat. Family B gets a triple mushroom, basically, and family A a green shell.

> No, it does not say that it deserves a bonus _over_ family A. It deserves that that circumstance (a circumstance of the parents, not the kid!) is taken into account to close the gap somewhat. Family B gets a triple mushroom, basically, and family A a green shell.

Yeah, but whatever version of Mario Kart this is, it's pretty obvious how those two objects are going to stack up in terms of balance. Affirmative action has always been used for either of two purposes: to advance a left leaning view of social justice, and to enforce de-facto caps on disproportionately successful minorities. If you're an optimist you can portray this as giving groups labeled disadvantaged a better chance that they deserve (but invite criticism from those that may not believe in either how you define disadvantage, and from those that more broadly disagree with putting one's finger on the scale). If you're a pessimist you suspect that this is a way of enforcing informal caps on successful groups, namely Asians which have been demonstrated to have been subjected to such caps in the last several decades.

Re: SAT to Add ‘Adversity Score’ That Rates Students’ Hardships

#795

Post by sgift »

maceurt wrote: post #767
robotresearcher wrote: post #761

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We decide how life works, between us. You want the kids of rich people to win the next generation unquestioned? I think we can do better.

> You want the kids of rich people to win the next generation unquestioned? I am not the person you were replying to, but no. However, the person who wins should be the more qualified person based on merit not based on some standard of suffering. Just because you had a harder environment does not mean you are more qualified than someone with an easier environment.

> However, the person who wins should be the more qualified person based on merit

This has never been the case and will never be the case as long as some people are rich and other are poor. A "standard of suffering" tries to show that. Maybe it's a bad idea, but the current system is extremely bad, so people who dismiss this better come up with a better alternative.

Re: SAT to Add ‘Adversity Score’ That Rates Students’ Hardships

#796

Post by sgift »

orbifold wrote: post #737
robotresearcher wrote: post #711

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand the feeling, but how about if we rephrase it from another viewpoint: I don’t know why I should be punished because my parents didn’t succeed financially. I work hard in highschool but don’t have extra private tutoring or parents who can help me with calculus homework. I’m hard working and bright but how can I compete with kids from Saratoga High School where everyone’s parents went to MIT/Penn and work a…

Life is not fair, by the time you are six the number of distinct words you have heard varies drastically depending on your parents socio-economic status and education. The answer should be to extend the SAT with an IQ test, those are robust to environmental factors as twin studies have shown. Maybe you can couple that with a subject specific aptitude test. But also there is largely no equality of opportunity, because…

> But also there is largely no equality of opportunity, because you never had a chance to change your genetics in the first place.

We are probably hundreds of years away from solving all other factors besides genetics, which have an influence on SAT (or whatever equivalent other countries have), so this doesn't seem like a huge problem right now.

We can talk about genetics again when we've fixed everything else.

Re: SAT to Add ‘Adversity Score’ That Rates Students’ Hardships

#797

Post by theon144 »

qazpot wrote: post #754
robotresearcher wrote: post #711

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand the feeling, but how about if we rephrase it from another viewpoint: I don’t know why I should be punished because my parents didn’t succeed financially. I work hard in highschool but don’t have extra private tutoring or parents who can help me with calculus homework. I’m hard working and bright but how can I compete with kids from Saratoga High School where everyone’s parents went to MIT/Penn and work a…

> Why does my parents’ achievement have a fundamental impact on my opportunities? Because they are your parents and they will have an impact on your life whether you like it or not, right down from the genes you inherit to the kind of people you hang out with. So yes there achievement will have an impact on your opportunities. What you want can only happen when parents are no longer associated with their children in…

>What you want can only happen when parents are no longer associated with their children in any way and all children are raised by the State so that everyone can be provided "equal opportunities" and even then the type of genes you inherit will impact your opportunities because although social inequality has been removed, biological inequalities can never be removed.

This is one of the weariest types of hyperbolic strawmanning typically employed in discussions of unequal backgrounds, opportunities, etc.

Literally nobody wishes for this imaginary future you're presenting. Not the comment you're responding to, likely not even the staunchest of activists against social injustice.

The question is, do we see children with potential not being able to utilize it because of happenstance, as a problem? Is it fair that a child from a better-off family is more likely to enter better academic institutions regardless of their merit? Should we not help disadvantaged kids?

Of course you can throw your arms up into the air and say "life isn't fair", and hold people responsible for the situation they were born into - but right now we're having this discussion, and we can make decisions and change these things. What if there's a better way?

(PS: Standardized Adveristy Scores don't exactly sound like the better way though.)

Re: SAT to Add ‘Adversity Score’ That Rates Students’ Hardships

#798

Post by alexgartrell »

I don't think people realize that SAT scores are a lot more arbitrary than they look. If you're one of the lucky kids whose parents set them up with reasonable coaching (and academic expectations in general), you do much better.

I did good but not great on the SAT and only got into CMU because I was a student athlete. But once I had my foot in the door I did very well (high gpa, TA'ed, graduated w/ honors and awards) and then continued to do very well in industry (arguably).

If an adversity score can help out other kids like me who don't happen to be "impressive-for-a-D3-school" level athletes, then I think it's a great thing.

Re: SAT to Add ‘Adversity Score’ That Rates Students’ Hardships

#799

Post by akhilcacharya »

WillPostForFood wrote: post #755
rlue wrote: post #746

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100%. To truly level the playing field requires far earlier intervention (of the sort we see through LeBron James' I Promise initiative), and is entirely beyond the ability of the College Board or even the university system as a whole. But the road to hell is paved with good intentions. > (or adjust the SAT so it is more representative of their actual skills). The problem, as you point out just one sentence later, is…

Why fixate on Harvard? It can only ever serve a few thousand kids. There are hundreds of universities and colleges that can provide a good education and more than a fair shot. The problem isn't a poor kid who graduates from University of Wisconsin or University of Colorado instead of Harvard or Stanford, it is the kid who didn't even graduate high school, can't really read, and isn't prepared to show up at work in th…

The reason why the elites fixate on Harvard is because they’re completely out of touch with the 99% of folks that don’t apply to or don’t get into elite institutions. It’s pure condescension on their part.

Re: SAT to Add ‘Adversity Score’ That Rates Students’ Hardships

#800

Post by akhilcacharya »

intenex wrote: post #749
summm wrote: post #717

How about having lots of decent, desirable universities instead of a few elite ones and many weak ones? Furthermore, one could abolish tuition and provide students with living expenses, either all or those who need them. Furthermore, reverse grade inflation in school such that the final grade is a better predictor for learning aptitude. That would solve the stupid admissions problem once and for all. Btw we had all t…

As someone who went to Harvard, I'm pretty sure there are a lot of extremely decent universities that all basically provide the same quality of instruction. People just get unreasonably hung up over the 'best' schools, but there are easily at least like 100+, if not several hundred, that provide easily roughly the same educational experience as far as I'm aware. The peer group may definitely dramatically different fr…

While I agree with you, as someone that is inherently inferior to someone like you (on the basis of not getting into any elite school, much less Harvard) currently that inferiority has a cascading effect throughout life. I think the goal should be to equalize opportunities for everyone instead of just people who might be borderline elites at 18.
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