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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

#61

Post by max76 »

I think the goal of quantifying the amount of adversity a person experiences in their life is a fools errand. This is like asking "On a scale of 1-100 how beautiful is The Mona Lisa." Somethings can only be poorly approximated in numbers.

Once we have a number it tends to become An Important Thing, regardless of how much the number reflects reality. It is ironic that SAT is making a new number that has little reflection of reality to provide more context with their SAT test scores, which is another number that has only a poor approximate measurement of reality.

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

#62

Post by [deleted] »

SaintGhurka wrote: post #42
markwaldron wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being able to afford $100+ an hour for a pro to teach you exactly what you need to know to do well on the SAT is gaming the system

What if I hire an inexpensive tutor? Is that acceptable? Is there a price threshold? This is actually a serious question. I want to get an understanding of the mind-set that creates this class wedge.

[deleted]

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

#63

Post by chongli »

SaintGhurka wrote: post #42
markwaldron wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being able to afford $100+ an hour for a pro to teach you exactly what you need to know to do well on the SAT is gaming the system

What if I hire an inexpensive tutor? Is that acceptable? Is there a price threshold? This is actually a serious question. I want to get an understanding of the mind-set that creates this class wedge.

I think the argument is that no specific prep for the SAT should be necessary, the exam should measure your abilities from your schooling.

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

#65

Post by writepub »

At what point in life can one's hardships be discounted? First job application after college? Should every job application have an adversity score? Should every promotion consider this? Should you be entitled to more government benefits, because of adversity?

At what point, if any, does the responsibility of getting out of adversity lie on the individual?

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

#66

Post by SeanAppleby »

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…

Hypothetically, what if it was true that wealthy people's exposure to better education over a lifetime, reduced stress distracting them from learning, better and more abundant roll models, etc, meant they would do better on pretty much literally any test you could put in front of them?

Most research points to this being true.

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

#67

Post by xienze »

didgeoridoo wrote: post #57
xienze wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of that’s going to make any difference. Let’s be real here, it’s going to be based on race alone (and perhaps being gay or trans). White or Asian? You don’t suffer any adversity. Black or Hispanic? Congratulations, your score just improved by 200 points. This just sounds like the SAT board doing what school admissions boards already do: decreasing or increasing scores based on race. https://www.latimes.com/local…

How would you reliably capture race, or sexual orientation, or gender identification — or even income — on a self-reported metric with no third-party validation? They aren't talking about sending the College Board your tax returns. Realistically, this will be based on ZIP code and registered high school. Information that's already publicly-available. This changes nothing except potentially making neighborhood-level a…

Sexual orientation, yeah they might not be able to get that one. But here's the factors they're using: https://twitter.com/i/moments/1129009648214921216

I do believe with just a few pieces of the information they're taking into consideration (namely, neighborhood, if you have a single parent, and if you're ESL [not sure if they're talking about the child being ESL or the parents]) you could reliably determine if the child is black or Hispanic and therefore worthy of an adversity score boost. Everyone else, get stuffed. They may also be making a big show of using these factors that "technically" don't identify the test taker's race and instead are just disregarding them and relying solely on the self-reported racial information provided when taking the test. Who knows? But I highly doubt you'll find a lot of poor white kids in West Virginia getting boosted scores via this scheme.

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

#68

Post by SamReidHughes »

lallysingh wrote: post #53
graeme wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tests are correlated with grades. You're trying to say the correlation isn't there for some subgroups. Are you basing it on anything? The same gaps that appear on these undergrad tests show up on the grad school tests such as the LSAT, GMAT, GRE etc.

Correlation between two factors doesn't tell you how to compare two sets of values. Kids who have to work after school until bedtime won't get as good grades in HS, but if no longer made to do so, may perform substantially better in college.

That's what the SAT is there for. Ability, not grades. If that doesn't cut it, add a third component that is a pure IQ test.

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

#69

Post by nostrademons »

CryoLogic wrote: post #7

Soon we will have SAT advisers suggesting how to game the "adversity score" as well. - Get a summer job "because your family needed money" - Move out of your parents house for a summer "bad living conditions" - Adopt some non-binary gender temporarily "bullied for identifying as x" - CEO dad drops salary to $20k for a year and instead gets stock vesting equivalent "poor family" etc. etc.

Most of the 15 factors are reported here, 4 paragraphs down:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/adversity-score-sat-exam-colleg...

"Neighborhood environment will take into account crime rate, poverty rate, housing values and vacancy rate. Family environment will assess what the median income is of where the student's family is from; whether the student is from a single parent household; the educational level of the parents; and whether English is a second language. High school environment will look at factors such as curriculum rigor, free-lunch rate and AP class opportunities."

These are hard to game, and in many cases if you do game them it's a "Mission Fucking Accomplished" situation. Most billionaires are not willing to move into a high-crime, high-poverty neighborhood with shitty housing, nor are they willing to put their kids in bad schools with poor people. If they are, great, that neighborhood probably won't stay poor with shitty schools for long.

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

#70

Post by babyslothzoo »

The only way to be truly fair with admissions is to admit blind of any defacto discriminatory identity/categorization method and based entirely on competency and scores. I realize that is unpopular for a variety of reasons, but are elite academic institutions meant to be elite academic institutions, or are they social engineering laboratories?
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