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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

#361

Post by tyopiuy »

sjy wrote: post #221
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…

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.

It could come down to a large scale societal prisoners dilemna. It’s gonna get ugly

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

#362

Post by rayiner »

darawk wrote: post #347
rayiner wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ironic thing about your post is that the adversity score is just accounting for the ways in which children are denied "equality of opportunity." For example, it factors in: "the relative quality of the student’s high school and the crime rate and poverty level of the student’s neighborhood." Your post confirms it--why would your dad commute four hours a day to live in a particular neighborhood unless he believed…

...and his point is why should his dad make that sacrifice for his kids if the SAT board is just going to subvert his efforts?

Why should the College Board not recognize that kids in fact have unequal opportunities for reasons totally outside their control?

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

#363

Post by tyopiuy »

james_s_tayler wrote: post #346

I feel like a lot of people just don't understand the normal distribution, the central limit theorem and the square root rules. I don't think it's ever going to work trying to rally against the math the universe is built out of.

What are the square root rules

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

#364

Post by solveit »

harryh wrote: post #344
YjSe2GMQ wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is absurd, considering it's involved in college admission process. Maybe we should also have a hidden citizen score, to be used behind the scenes in the courts of law?

The college admission process (especially for more elite schools) already involves lots of secrecy.

And all that secrecy should go burn in a fire. Colleges have more impact than many government institutions, and they certainly take in a lot more government funding than many government institutions. They should be as transparent as government institutions if not more (What's the rationale against? National security?).

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

#365

Post by RcouF1uZ4gsC »

thosakwe wrote: post #354
xyzzyz wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who said anything about Nazis? Top schools, Harvard in particular, have long tradition of discriminating against Jews.

> Who said anything about Nazis? "put a gold star on all of the Jewish applicants"

Nazis weren't the first or only people to discriminate against Jewish people.

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

#366

Post by jeffdavis »

AcerbicZero wrote: post #186
jeffdavis wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about the student?

The value of the diploma is directly linked to the value of the college. When you break it down a college diploma is only worth as much as the reputation of the college.

What about the education itself? Do the awesome professors actually teach? Are the social circles at the college going to lead the student where they want to go in life? What about potentially-burdensome loans at the end of it?

I think we need to get away from the idea of college admissions as a tournament with Harvard at the top. "Good" depends on many things and different students may best be served by different universities.

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

#367

Post by mgkimsal »

grawprog wrote: post #356
thosakwe wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now Asians will be discriminated against secretly. So, a separate number being added to College Board's overall package is secret discrimination against Asian students? The "adversity score," according to the article, is calculated based on 15 different factors. The two listed (relative quality of the student’s high school and the crime rate/poverty level of the student’s home neighborhood) are not directly tied to…

I did pretty well on the standardized tests in high school. If this had existed, i likely would have scored higher than average on adversity. I would be pissed to find out my score was altered in any way due to factors outside my control. If I do well on something, i want it to be from my own merits, whatever my current situation. I don't want to be pandered to because i grew up poor in a shitty neighbourhood. Everyt…

> because of my own intelligence and skill... Fuck anyone giving me points for things i didn't work for or that are outside my control...

Your "intelligence" is definitely one of those things completely outside your control. What you've done with it is at least partially under your control, but you probably weren't born with any sort of brain disorder, for example.

EDIT: adding on things like your visual appearance - race, hair color, pigmentation, height, etc - all of those are outside your control, and you generally can't control how other people initially react to those things outside your control.

You didn't control where you were born, or - at least early on - what resources you had access to. You were a victim of (or success due to) your geography, at least early on in your life.

But hey, you 'worked hard' and didn't watch as much tv as some lazy bastards who might get a $1000 scholarship because they grew up in a high-crime area, and fuck that, right?

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

#368

Post by roenxi »

thosakwe wrote: post #328
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.

> Now Asians will be discriminated against secretly. So, a separate number being added to College Board's overall package is secret discrimination against Asian students? The "adversity score," according to the article, is calculated based on 15 different factors. The two listed (relative quality of the student’s high school and the crime rate/poverty level of the student’s home neighborhood) are not directly tied to…

There is some correlation between race, culture and outcome. In the bad old days it was thought that race was the causal variable of the 3. Now it is accepted that culture probably plays the causal role.

The classic example is Shylock in the Merchant of Venice. The Jews had a racial stereotype of being moneylenders; that stereotype didn't evolve because of a racial disparity, it evolved because Christians generally didn't charge interest. So the moneylenders were non-Christian and that correlated with being a different race.

There is evidence of a slight bias where Asian migrants sacrifice more to set up their children's educational future. Policies that cheapen the impact of sacrifice will disproportionately affect them. It may not be explicitly racist, but the outcomes will likely be delectably different in different racial groups, to the net loss of the Asians.

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

#369

Post by solveit »

bilbo0s wrote: post #342
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.

Well, no dog in this race obviously, but doesn't that mean that instead of penalizing you for your parents' good character, we penalize poor rural and urban kids for their parents' bad character?

Obviously both are bad, but if you had to choose (and you kind of do, because admissions is zero-sum in the short term), you should incentivise good character.

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

#370

Post by ceph_ »

manfredo wrote: post #311
p1necone wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotal, but I notice a lot more people clamoring about freedom of speech when it's white supremacists being affected and a lot less when it's ISIS or Al-Qaeda. I find it very hard to take them seriously because of this, despite agreeing with a lot of the sentiment.

Keep in mind that the definition of "white supremacy" has been expanded to include things like opposition to affirmative action, or support for enforcement of existing border control regulations (let along their expansion). Of course calls to censor those things are going to garner much more opposition than censoring explicit terrorist organizations.

The definition of white supremacy isn't expanding, but those are two topics white supremacists vocally support.
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