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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

#731

Post by pathseeker »

jachee wrote: post #722
remote_phone wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pre-rigging? I’ve worked my ass off for nearly 30 years, as has my wife. We are both smart and very hard working and it paid off. My roots are middle class at best. My parents are immigrants and were extremely poor as children but they also worked hard and went from poverty to middle class. I’m teaching my children to work hard and be good people and contribute to this world. How pray tell am I benefiting from “pre-r…

The system is pre-rigged against: • People of color • LGBTQ • Lower-than-upper-middle-class • Divorced and/or single-parent homes • Rural families You talk about the decisions you made. The fact that you even had a choice is a privilege denied to many. For each of the above that you didn't have to overcome, that's a way the system is rigged in your favor. Your children won't be disadvantaged in any way, and you're fr…

Did you even read the comment? Child of immigrant barely in middle class is not privilege.

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

#732

Post by xenihn »

I'm late to the party, but I think this is a good first step towards actually prioritizing/penalizing around class, instead of using race as a proxy for it.

I've always felt that it was completely ridiculous that a Laotian student from a low-income family would be penalized under modern American systems when competing against an African-American student whose parents are both doctors/lawyers/engineers, and surpass the aforementioned family's income by 10x or more.

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

#733

Post by pathseeker »

ryanobjc wrote: post #567
remote_phone wrote: post #551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who work hard deserve the fruits of their labor, regardless of their economic status. I have no problems with economically disadvantaged hard working people getting into great colleges, I have problems with equally hardworking people being disadvantaged because their parents are successful.

Wouldn’t you agree that two people who achieve the same score on the test may not have worked equally hard? If someone scored the same as your child, except they didn’t have good security, good quality schools, parents that could help them, etc, I would say that they in fact worked much harder than your children. And by the logic of “those who worked harder deserve it more”, well I think you see where this is going.…

Growing up in a zip code is not a challenge. This "adversity score" doesn't measure adversity.

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

#734

Post by pathseeker »

jachee wrote: post #259
GhostVII wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Punishing those in privilege is how you achieve equality. They can't give up that inequality voluntarily, and wouldn't if they could.

>Punishing those in privilege is how you achieve equality.

Tall poppy syndrome. Destroying things does not create things. You can drop a nuclear bomb on silicon valley and punish lots of privilege. It's not going to achieve any notion of equality.

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

#735

Post by robotresearcher »

Papirola wrote: post #719
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…

I disagree on this as a goal. Some things take generations: my great-grandparents had a good standing back in pre-war Europe. Then the war came and my grandparents escaped to South America - not great. My parents got up to high school level education. I got a B.Sc. Maybe my kid will go farther. Play with the cards you were dealt.

In your stance, let’s hope you don’t have some bad luck with your circumstances or health, and your kids drop back a couple generations.

In my stance, your kids can get ahead on their own merit.

I don’t know how to achieve this perfectly, but it’s an aspiration.

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

#736

Post by fiblye »

spamizbad wrote: post #563
fiblye wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me preface by saying I disagree with everything you say, but I still think you have the right to say it. Universities are meant to be institutions of learning. Learning isn’t always comfortable. Some long held truths turn out to be wrong at some point. What we all think is true or right right now could completely reverse in a decade. Letting people speak especially when it’s against your morals is important for l…

I generally agree, but here's a concern I have: The student body is going to have its own set of values, some of which may challenge the prevailing norms of society or the university itself. Should a university ignore, nurture, or challenge the views of its students? I feel like, as a student, you should be allowed to pick. Because depending on the issue, or the individual, the answer may change. For example, at one…

I think there’s a difference between challenging and shutting down. Challenging should be encouraged since it (at least theoretically) forces people to have a reasonable basis for their beliefs. Students who don’t want to be challenged and just want to be correct and shut down opposing thoughts shouldn’t really be called students. They’re not seeing to broaden their horizons. If they only want to learn about their speciality topic, that’s okay, but university isn’t really the place for that. Technical and speciality schools exist to focus on small fields of learning.

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

#737

Post by orbifold »

robotresearcher wrote: post #711
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 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 you never had a chance to change your genetics in the first place.

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

#738

Post by lamarpye »

remarkEon wrote: post #718
jachee wrote: post #715

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the status quo systematically oppresses one group and benefits another, the beneficiaries of said system will perceive any change to the status quo that would reduce the oppression of the former group as an unfair attack.

Nope, not going to play this ridiculous game. And this is a game. I don’t know how or why the modern left started employing the rhetorical tactics mastered by Lenin but here we are.

I suspect this is what is taught in college these days. I would add punishing people for hard work seems to be more of a Stalin thing.

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

#739

Post by pathseeker »

jachee wrote: post #715
remarkEon wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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."

If the status quo systematically oppresses one group and benefits another, the beneficiaries of said system will perceive any change to the status quo that would reduce the oppression of the former group as an unfair attack.

Cute device to hide behind without actually defending unfair attacks.

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

#740

Post by snaggletooth »

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".

To be fair, this is kind of impressed on people when so many are judged by the name of the school on their diploma or a score they received in the first quarter of their life. There's no guarantee a Harvard accepted child will have a happier life than someone "destined" to be a fast food cashier, but when we pressure young kids with so much judgment before they even experience life, it feels like a race from the start.

Couple this with the lack of class mobility and sometimes people feel participating in that race was the only way to control your future.

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