The adversity score in college admissions (skill, degrees, boarding school, careers)
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Won't adversely affect the wealthy but May just level the playing field slightly for the lower middle class...very underrepresented in college. Some colleges have more students in the TOP 1% than the BOTTOM 60%...a complete joke!
They should verify with employers if the kid has worked at McD's, Taco Bell or retail. After all, privileged young people don't work at these places. It would help to establish at least some degree of financial hardship.
We live in a relatively affluent area and our daughter goes to a pricey private high school in coastal Orange County, CA. At least 50% of her friends ages 16 and up have part-time jobs, but that does not mean they are not privileged! Not all the privileged kids are spending summers golfing and yachting on Cape Cod, or taking private art lessons in Florence. MANY "rich" kids are encouraged or even required by their parents to get jobs while they are high school, and it has nothing to do with financial hardship.
They should verify with employers if the kid has worked at McD's, Taco Bell or retail. After all, privileged young people don't work at these places. It would help to establish at least some degree of financial hardship.
This comment is out of line. My kids would be considered privileged. My son has been mowing lawns since middle school. He's worked summer maintenance at schools both inside and on the grounds (he and another student actually built a first class cross country trail through the woods and designed/built a bridge over water), worked at a landscape yard, was trained to be a carpenter, he's a tutor for all levels of Spanish, physics and calculus and on the weekends he volunteers his time as a barista for a fundraiser. This summer he is a full time engineering intern and he chose the 7 am to 3 pm shift so he still had enough daylight hours to get home and cut all those lawns he's had since the 7th grade. He has 2-3 jobs while going to school full time. He left the carpentry job because the schedule didn't work with school, but they give him as many hours as he wants over Christmas break because he is such a good employee. What a privileged brat!!
My daughter has been making and selling stationary since she was in the 8th grade. She's in college now and has continued to build her business to the point where she is a commission only oil painter. Now that school just got out for the summer, she is full speed ahead on all the work she has negotiated. She will work 10-12 hours a day until school starts again to get it all finished. She also has a job on campus which she will continue to do over the summer. I wish she wouldn't just laze about!!
Loads of my kids friends have worked at fast food, retail, labor jobs. These are private school kids. You can bet if my kids didn't find stuff do on their own to make money they would working at a fast food place with their friends.
Turns out the SAT is planning to use am "adversity score" to submit with a college student's test scores. they've already tried it out with some schools and plan to expand it.
But I don't see the point of any of it. If an applicant self reports his/her hardships, they can simply lie.
But if all of the data is from public sources, which is what it seems like here, then the schools could find out anyway. Selective schools certainly know which schools and homes are in very tough neighborhoods and they can tell a lot of other things through the applicant's own essay and teacher recommendations.
I'm all for giving smart kids from a tough background some extra leverage in selective college admissions. I'm just not sure this is the best way to do that. What do you think?
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Couple of things on this that should outrage everyone: how the number is calculated and that it is secret. In my opinion, it is impossible to actually create a single number that is fair.
This is what it is: "number that rates the level of adversity applicants typically face — or privilege they enjoy — based on crime and poverty data and other demographic information about neighborhoods and high schools."
This what it is supposed to be: "The “overall disadvantage level,” known in admission circles as the “adversity score,” will be a single number from 1 to 100. With 50 set as the average, under a formula established by the College Board, higher scores will indicate higher adversity. Colleges that use it will see the number on a template called an “environmental context dashboard,” which also includes data on Advanced Placement participation and SAT scores at the applicant’s high school."
So it is based on demographic data not available to everyone. But how do you calculate a single number for (a) a middle class neighborhood where both parents work to pay for outrageous real estate taxes vs (b) an inner city neighborhood where people collect welfare vs (c) an neighborhood with a high percentage of non-English speaking illegals vs (d) a neighborhood in a dying coal town where both parents are out for work vs (e) a neighborhood of active duty military where kids move every couple of years and dads are on their 3rd deployment. Who decides what suffering is better than others?
I for one welcome this vapid nonsense - moving my kid for the last year of school to some rundown impoverished district and let them take as many sick days and truancy days as they like as long as they are on track to graduate.
I can imaging buying an apartment in a Spanish-speaking area with a crappy high school and even actually living there and receiving their mail there while renting out the house in the nice neighborhood to an in-law.
They should verify with employers if the kid has worked at McD's, Taco Bell or retail. After all, privileged young people don't work at these places. It would help to establish at least some degree of financial hardship.
What are you talking about? I grew up in an affluent family. My mom is a surgeon and my dad is a lawyer. I worked at Chuck E Cheese when I was in high school. I went to a private school with other kids from affluent households who worked at Mickey D’s, Jack in the Box and the like.
How can they not know that this will decrease the value of a college degree even more than it has been already? We just had the under qualified students getting in through bribery scandal, and now we could be seeing less qualified students getting into college, for unknown reasons having to do with where they live, or whatever social shortcomings du jour they might have experienced.
I guess this is one way to take the heat off of colleges and universities giving out athletic scholarships to some kids who can’t even read.
Ah, but isn't it racist to assume that black and Latino kids will have higher "adversity scores"? I work with, and live around, many blacks and Latinos who are college-educated, own rental properties, etc. Heck, my doctor, who resembles the actress Cecily Tyson, went to Princeton for her undergrad in Chemical Engineering and got her MD at Columbia. I'm guessing her kids will have a low "adversity score" and the Ivies will totally miss them using that criteria.
Until people stop equating diversity of culture/experience with skin color, this will continue to be a mess.
Part of growing up, and growing as a person is overcoming adversity, and trying to figure out ways to get ahead. If government or an agency does this for you, then you do NOT learn those skills. People do not value what is given to them.
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