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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

#811

Post by tty2300 »

arkh wrote: post #792
GhostVII wrote: post #215

I think instead of trying to lower the bar for low income students, we should work on solving the actual problems causing them to perform more poorly on the SAT (or adjust the SAT so it is more representative of their actual skills). If students are accepted with a lower SAT score because of their background, they are likely going to struggle in University, since they have lower scores than the rest of their class, s…

> On the other hand though it might be essentially impossible to close the gap between low income and high income students. If this is a goal a society set it is possible. Remove the parents from being involved in their children education. When born, remove the children from their parents and send them to some national education system until they're adults.

They tried that in Australia. Didn't work well.

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

#812

Post by jakeogh »

boomlinde wrote: post #804
jakeogh wrote: post #787

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't you instead articulate why you disagree?

The point is that it's hard to make a constructive answer to a post that doesn't really offer a clear argument of its own.

What's unclear?

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

#813

Post by manfredo »

nostromo wrote: post #669
ceph_ wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It most certainly is. I recently attended a diversity workshop at a large organization that you’d recognize where we were taught some key elements of white supremacy are things like: perfectionism, urgency, defensiveness, individualism, etc. https://www.showingupforracialjustice.org/white-supremacy-cu...

Wow. Apparently "Objectivity" is white supremacy, along with "Individualism". This honestly surprised me.

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

#814

Post by devcpp »

rexpop wrote: post #756
newen wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well yes...the person you're replying to is saying that those schools should get enough funding (and whatever else) so that they can offer those benefits.

And where's that funding going to come from? Currently, we're funding schools in proximity to household wealth. Perhaps increasing poor working families' wealth is the solution that fits in with our current setup.

Or perhaps we should just even out the funding. Crudely redistributing wealth is a historically very poor way to solve inequality (assuming it is a problem), since it doesn't address the root cause. Investing in education, in particular trades, is an arguably better way. They are practical, have the most bang-for-buck value, and are not time-consuming or demanding.

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

#815

Post by devcpp »

firstplacelast wrote: post #791
intenex wrote: post #749

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who went to Harvard, I'm pretty sure there are a lot of extremely decent universities that all basically provide the same quality of instruction. People just get unreasonably hung up over the 'best' schools, but there are easily at least like 100+, if not several hundred, that provide easily roughly the same educational experience as far as I'm aware. The peer group may definitely dramatically different fr…

Oof. This is a very out-of-touch comment. This isn't about the difference between Harvard and a good state school.

Except it is. Education in the US is relatively cheap and easy to get if you don't aim for private or top schools.

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

#816

Post by air7 »

theon144 wrote: post #797
qazpot wrote: post #754

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why does my parents’ achievement have a fundamental impact on my opportunities? Because they are your parents and they will have an impact on your life whether you like it or not, right down from the genes you inherit to the kind of people you hang out with. So yes there achievement will have an impact on your opportunities. What you want can only happen when parents are no longer associated with their children in…

>What you want can only happen when parents are no longer associated with their children in any way and all children are raised by the State so that everyone can be provided "equal opportunities" and even then the type of genes you inherit will impact your opportunities because although social inequality has been removed, biological inequalities can never be removed. This is one of the weariest types of hyperbolic st…

> Is it fair that a child from a better-off family is more likely to enter better academic institutions regardless of their merit?

At the point of admission, the merits of our two imaginary college kids are not same, even if they started out "the same". The current system, that only looks at objective test scores, is actually blind to anything but merit. You seem to be making the same strawman mistake you described: No one claims that rich kids can buy their way into elite schools, but rather that they can buy better education along the way.

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

#817

Post by shriphani »

avocado4 wrote: post #784
shriphani wrote: post #150

How are they going to boil all this down to a single number? So ridiculous. All these pseudoscientific people have taken the comfy position of unaccountable gatekeepers. Society's true vultures.

I think this is simply a service for universities to easily get info which they already estimate manually. Some colleges will like and use this service, others (schools who already have systems in place to measure these disadvantage points) won't.

With a number like this the typical outcome is that it becomes a factor in a school's US News ranking (average adversity score of incoming class for example). At that point a cottage industry is formed around this metric.

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

#818

Post by devcpp »

summm wrote: post #717

How about having lots of decent, desirable universities instead of a few elite ones and many weak ones? Furthermore, one could abolish tuition and provide students with living expenses, either all or those who need them. Furthermore, reverse grade inflation in school such that the final grade is a better predictor for learning aptitude. That would solve the stupid admissions problem once and for all. Btw we had all t…

> Lots of [...] desirable universities

You are aware that it is their small number that makes them desirable right? If you make them all the same level, they will be equally undesirable.

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

#819

Post by Dylan16807 »

jakeogh wrote: post #787
Dylan16807 wrote: post #752

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disingenuous mockery doesn't help. (If you actually believe that's where people are trying to go then I have worse insults for you.)

Couldn't you instead articulate why you disagree?

It's pretty simple. "we should work on solving the actual problems causing them to perform more poorly on the SAT" doesn't even resemble "guaranteed opportunity throughout life"

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

#820

Post by bilbo0s »

manfredo wrote: post #790
bilbo0s wrote: post #683

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but if you're doing all that, and you're landing between 34 and 36? I mean, let's be frank, Stanford is not looking at you if you're lower than 33. (Unless you have a wicked 3 point shot. Or you're a genius on the piano or something.) So, yeah, you did all that test prep, and end up scoring about the same as some local yokel from Angleton, TX who took the test cold? Or some broke kid from Chicago who took the t…

> Yeah, but if you're doing all that, and you're landing between 34 and 36? I mean, let's be frank, Stanford is not looking at you if you're lower than 33. (Unless you have a wicked 3 point shot. Or you're a genius on the piano or something.) So, yeah, you did all that test prep, and end up scoring about the same as some local yokel from Angleton, TX who took the test cold? Or some broke kid from Chicago who took the…

I mean, it's just common sense though.

As an analogy, that automatically popped to my mind when I initially heard the idea of "adversity scores", we can think about a common squad or platoon level personnel situation in the military.

Some guys win lots of trophies at shooting contests, and display impressive marksmanship down at the shooting range. But some guys can shoot at that same superhuman level in a fog, with contacts all around them, at night, and under a level of fire so high you'd probably label it "Hollywood". Well, if you get to pick and choose, the guy who can shoot at that level while under fire is obviously a superior pick for you than the show pony who shoots well at the equivalent of beauty pageants.

To me, this seems like the same kind of situation.

No one is taking a bet on anyone's parents, strung out or not. They're taking a bet on one of these kids. I posit that Stanford or SAT or whoever would be correct. The impoverished local yokel from Angleton, TX with strung out parents and a cold, unpracticed 35, is a better bet than the guy with 35 through the efforts of a ton of expensive test prep. And it's obvious that part of why he's a better bet is that he can score the 35 under much less optimal conditions than the guy with expensive test prep can.

Now you can call that difference the "adversity score". Or you can call it "performance consistency". Or you can even just call it "common sense". But it really does seem obvious to me that given two applicants, the one who performed at a high level consistently under sub-optimal conditions is a better choice.

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