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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

#491

Post by ryanobjc »

ausjke wrote: post #286
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.

Free lunch, low-income pays no incoming tax(47% and more of them), food stamps, disabled benefits, medicare medicaid, CHIP for kids, etc etc, I'm fine so far. But AA for college admission(and jobs too these days)? followed by SAT score manipulation? this is literally pushing me to the far right side, it makes me feel hard working, sacrificing for next generation made no sense, this is getting close to robbery. what's…

Far to the right side at this point is basically the idea that some races are better than others.

Really? Is that what you really mean? Because if you come at me being proud of the color of your skin, I’ll know you have nothing better in your life.

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

#493

Post by ryanobjc »

enraged_camel wrote: post #198
kevinh wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Equality of opportunity seems like a pipe dream to me. Are you really going to equalize socioeconomic status? Parental skills? Pollution? Proximity to opportunities? Those all determine the opportunities one has access to.

That's not an argument against trying to equalize those things.

It too hard! Give uppppppp

The siren call of hackernews.

Who the hell is even here anymore?

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

#494

Post by shiven »

jdsully wrote: post #174
fuzz4lyfe wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I’m getting pushed further and further to the right. Maybe not, it feels like to me that the Overton window[0] has been sliding left. My views on freedom of speech made me a 'leftist commie' when I used them to defend South Park and Eminem now most often I'm accused being 'alt-right' by those who disagree with those same views. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window

A one dimensional left/right view doesn't really explain our current politics very well. Factions in both parties have strong reasons to be against freedom of speech.

This. So much this. FoE is attacked from both sides. Each with their own self-serving justifications.

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

#495

Post by Gibbon1 »

jdsully wrote: post #174
fuzz4lyfe wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I’m getting pushed further and further to the right. Maybe not, it feels like to me that the Overton window[0] has been sliding left. My views on freedom of speech made me a 'leftist commie' when I used them to defend South Park and Eminem now most often I'm accused being 'alt-right' by those who disagree with those same views. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window

A one dimensional left/right view doesn't really explain our current politics very well. Factions in both parties have strong reasons to be against freedom of speech.

There is a very strong tribal/identity politics thing going on with both the left and the right in the US.

Scares the hell out of me.

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

#496

Post by ceejayoz »

YjSe2GMQ wrote: post #285
harryh wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You still get the score for how well you did. You don't get your "adversity score" which is not based on how well you did, but only on where you live and what high school you attend.

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?

> Which is absurd, considering it's involved in college admission process.

Your SAT score is just about the only bit of the admission process you have access to. You don't get the admissions officers' opinions on your essay, what they thought of your extracurriculars, how they perceive the reputation of your high school, what their alumni interviewers said, etc.

(Chances are you can make a pretty good guess at what the adversity score is going to be, too.)

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

#497

Post by solveit »

throwawayjava wrote: post #442
solveit wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For many students, I tutored them weekly or biweekly, for 1-3 hours per week, for multiple years! This... is a feature, not a bug. The SAT is a tool to measure educational attainment, and you boosted scores by legitimately educating students. The SAT is not a test to measure natural ability (I can't believe this needs to be said, but so many people claim that no intervention should be able to boost SAT scores, and…

There's a huge spectrum between "raw ability" and SAT/ACT. A good test would measure somewhere in the middle of that spectrum. It's not impossible to do, but is really hard. The SAT (and other standardized tests) make a lot of sense when you're comparing people who have spent more-or-less the same amount of time and money preparing. They also make sense as one component of a holistic picture, weighed appropriately. T…

Oh okay, I think we mostly agree. People ragging on the SATs and other standardized exams for being teachable is a pet peeve of mine and I overreacted.

Back to the hardship score, I just don't think that the College Board should be in this business at all. Individual colleges certainly know where an applicant is coming from, and what high school they went to, and they have a lot more additional information not available to the College Board. So they have a much better idea of what hardships the applicant went through. Furthermore, different colleges want different things from their students which would and should lead to them weighing different kinds of hardships differently. Reducing all of this to a single number based on very coarse data is exactly the opposite of what holistic admissions is supposed to achieve.

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

#498

Post by remarkEon »

jachee wrote: post #188
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…

How is giving underprivileged people a leg up "punishing" anyone? Privileged people need to start recognizing their inherent pre-rigging of the system. For those in power, equality feels like oppression.

>For those in power, equality feels like oppression.

This is a classic Kafka-trap, and I see this rhetorical payload delivered more and more these days.

"If you have a problem with changing the status quo, then you're in power and thus deserve to have the status quo changed on you."

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

#499

Post by kaitai »

lr4444lr wrote: post #437
tankerdude wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article: "The score will be calculated using 15 factors, including the relative quality of the student’s high school and the crime rate and poverty level of the student’s neighborhood." So no, it doesn't account for you to secretly discriminate against you. What it does do, for the penalization part, is that the schools that are in affluent neighborhoods have access to much better resources than ones from Co…

I dated a girl once whose family had a ton of money - think billions. She lived in the ritziest of neighborhoods, went to the best private schools, and had private tutors galore. I was a middle class income kid from a middle class neighborhood. She however, was also unfortunate enough to have early onset M.S. and could not sit comfortably for a very long, no matter how many tutors you gave her, and extra time couldn'…

That's why there are college essays!

I gotta say, people in this discussion are acting as if suddenly colleges will totally forget that they need to admit for the lacrosse team and the rowing team and make sure they get the legacy admits in etc. That will not happen. Those people make money for the college. People who pay full tuition will always statistically have an advantage. You know how I know? I have done admissions scoring for higher ed! I don't decide who gets in, I just read all the letters of rec and the personal statements and look at the transcripts and send in an Excel spreadsheet.

Of course a single numerical score never captures the complexity of students. I really don't understand why HNers think this will make or break admissions. Any college has to meet their budget first. People who pay full price fill those spots. Everyone else is fighting for the remaining spots. Ok, maybe I answered my own question: HNers realize that despite being moderately successful in our current regime, they can't afford to pay full price and so their kids will be scrapping it out with every poor kid who busted their ass too, and it's just less compelling to hear "son/daughter of software engineer from well-off neighborhood, with robotics team experience and high SAT score and hours of tutoring and an internship at a local biotech firm" than "son/daughter of welfare mom, with robotics team experience and high SAT score and an internship at a local bank"....

Rich people can have crappy lives. No doubt about it. But they sure do help a small liberal arts college meet their budget goals more easily anyway.

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

#500

Post by sokoloff »

mirrorlake wrote: post #476
grawprog wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How? I chose to learn the things i learned outside of school and to an extent the things i chose to learn in both high school and university. I didn't have to learn those things. I could have spent my time watching tv or doing other things. I know the things i know because i spent time and effort learning them.

Think about an extreme case: a hypothetical person who was born an autistic savant who is a musical genius. They sold out concert halls at age 9-10, playing the hardest classical music ever written. To what degree did they “earn” their skills and their genius? At a certain point you must agree that people are born with brains that are wired better, and they had no control over that. Effort should be rewarded, but luc…

When it comes time to enroll in college, I want that savant to go to the best music secondary school that they want to attend. I don't care whether they were "born with it" or "earned it", but I do care that they demonstrate outstanding ability.

Not "outstanding ability, after considering factors X, Y, and Z", but simply "outstanding ability".

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