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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

#221

Post by sjy »

remote_phone wrote: post #170
Glyptodon wrote: post #18

This seems likely to end up being ugly. For example wealthy people could buy or rent addresses in "adverse" neighborhoods, or charter schools might locate offices there, in order to attempt to improve scores on this metric. At the same time this won't be able to identify many adverse life circumstances like abusive parents, cancer, etc. What it does do is outsource components of admissions decisions the colleges may…

I already talked to my wife about this. I would retire, we would divorce, and I would rent a shitty apartment in East Palo Alto all the while living in our house. If they think they can boil my kids into a single number without bothering to find the context of who my kids are then I will game it to as much as possible. I don’t know why my family should be punished because my wife and I worked our asses off to get ahe…

Choosing to get a fake divorce so that you can game the system as much as possible isn't punishment; it's probably fraud. You could also choose to relax and let your children enjoy all the other benefits of a great upbringing, and accept that "the children of hardworking parents should be more likely to be admitted" isn't a design goal of the admissions system.

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

#222

Post by musicale »

khawkins wrote: post #142

The SAT itself has been shown to be a poor measure of performance in college when compared to high school GPA or the challenge level of the coursework offered [1]. Instead of trying to turn students into numbers, we should demand college admissions employees do their jobs and actually look at the applications. [1] http://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/What-Matters-M...

That's crazy talk. ;-)

Though from experience talking with people who work in admissions at "selective" schools, SAT scores and grades are mainly used to filter out the bottom 90% of non-preferred (e.g. not athletes, legacies/donors, or geographic/demographically desirable) applicants and the rest is extremely subjective and/or random, and is influenced by many non-academic factors such as whether you are too similar to some already-accepted applicant, etc..

If you are rejected it often has nothing to do with your qualifications so it should not be taken as a negative judgment of same; similarly, if you are accepted often it's often due semi-random factors that placed you ahead of students with better qualifications.

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

#223

Post by cycrutchfield »

droithomme wrote: post #208
logicx24 wrote: post #44

This, like every other similar attempt made to "equalize" the SAT, is misguided and will accomplish little. If the SAT correlates too strongly with wealth, then Collegeboard should make a better test. Make one that changes significantly every year so direct test-prep is hard. Choose different types of critical reading passages and questions each year, vary the style of the math questions - make the test different eno…

The student who spends time preparing for a test, reviewing the material, studying previous tests, drilling with practice tests, actually has more scholastic aptitude than the students who do not do this because these are actual research and preparation skills that are valuable to success in mastering college material.

The only skill you gain while cramming for the SAT is how to cram for tests like the SAT. The gameability of the SAT is not an indication of general scholastic aptitude

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

#224

Post by GhostVII »

jachee wrote: post #210
GhostVII wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Admissions is generally a zero sum game, so whenever you help one group, you hurt everyone else who doesn't have that benefit.

Well, then every privileged person who gets in is "hurting" someone of lesser inherent opportunity. They can use that privilege to spread their applications around to increase their opportunities.

Sure, and every non-privileged person who gets in also hurts others who are in the same situation, since they have taken up a spot. The difference is in this case there is an actual policy which is actively punishing people for being in a perceived state of privilege.

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

#225

Post by pacala »

gugagore wrote: post #162
rhegart wrote: post #131

Equality of opportunity over outcome for me. Now Asians will be discriminated against secretly. My family sacrificing vacations and eating out for 12 years (literally ate out 5x max) to afford to live in a good school district shouldn’t penalize us. My dad commuted 4 hours daily instead of moving...I’m getting pushed further and further to the right.

I might be missing the point, but from a quick glance at the article, it's about geographic location, and not race. Is there some second-order effect?

One issue with discriminatory initiatives like this one is that they invite corruption. Given human nature, the invitation will be readily answered and then some. Triple so if the procedure is secret.

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

#226

Post by sisu2019 »

fwip wrote: post #156
bluthru wrote: post #39

>Higher scores have been found to correlate with students coming from a higher-income families and having better-educated parents. Which makes a lot of sense since income correlates with intelligence and intelligence is partially heritable. A century ago the SAT was used to fine diamonds in the rough for first-generation college students. After multiple generations of college students mating with college students, yo…

Income correlates with intelligence because measures of intelligence measure income.

IQ predicts future income even if the subjects environement is controlled for. It's a very good meassure, probably the best we have in the social sciences. What it tells us is not nice, sure, but denying reality is not going to help anyone.

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

#227

Post by hnaccy »

enraged_camel wrote: post #211
remote_phone wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I already talked to my wife about this. I would retire, we would divorce, and I would rent a shitty apartment in East Palo Alto all the while living in our house. If they think they can boil my kids into a single number without bothering to find the context of who my kids are then I will game it to as much as possible. I don’t know why my family should be punished because my wife and I worked our asses off to get ahe…

>>I don’t know why my family should be punished because my wife and I worked our asses off to get ahead. Just to offer some general commentary, I think this mentality is probably the root of most of our social ills: people see everything as a "race" and they work hard to "get ahead", and they therefore get angry at policies that attempt to even the playing field because it might help others "catch up".

Sorry I don't want to live in Harrison Bergeron world.

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

#228

Post by learc83 »

danmaz74 wrote: post #212
learc83 wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The OP had the same opportunity, but because they did the traditional things for a poorer family to encourage their students to succeed (moving to a good school district and sacrificing on the commute) they will be considered a privileged student in this analysis. Compared to the poor students whose parents didn't make those sacrifices, they are privileged.

In general, if you make a sacrifice to earn something, that something isn't a privilege.

Your parents making a sacrifice isn't the same thing as you making a sacrifice.

If my dad makes a sacrifice by working 100 hours a week to buy me a Maserati, the car is definitely a privilege not something I earned. And yeah, I may have lost out on spending time with my dad, but that wasn't a choice I made, so while it cost me something it wasn't a sacrifice on my part.

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

#230

Post by cardine »

danmaz74 wrote: post #212
learc83 wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The OP had the same opportunity, but because they did the traditional things for a poorer family to encourage their students to succeed (moving to a good school district and sacrificing on the commute) they will be considered a privileged student in this analysis. Compared to the poor students whose parents didn't make those sacrifices, they are privileged.

In general, if you make a sacrifice to earn something, that something isn't a privilege.

The student is not making the sacrifice, the parent is. The student has the privilege of benefiting from their parents' sacrifices.
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