The Problem With The New SAT Adversity Score

The CollegeBoard has created a new hidden value that is sent to colleges, along with students' scores. This value, is a measure of the students' adversity. Or privilege in Layman's terms. This score is the result of several bits of compiled information on the test taker and scores them on a scale of 1 to 100.

1 being the most privileged and 100; the least.

This may be the dawn of the time that many families under the poverty line may have been waiting for, but the CollegeBoard's system has many downfalls that may not be inherently apparent.

First off, the CollegeBoard didn't even release this information on their on will, the information was made public shortly before the May 4th date for the SAT and Subject Tests. Since there has been an influx in the institutes participating. Last year, the CollegeBoard designed it, and implemented it in sort of a beta era with a few colleges. Without someone speaking up from these colleges' admissions offices, we wouldn't even know about this little secret going on behind the scenes.

The CollegeBoard creates this score based on many different categories, that would entail a person's privilege. But the majority of the information harvested is based on averages in the students' geographical location. Not the students' actual information. For example, a student from Salem who took the SAT may be above the poverty line, but with Salem having a trend to swing more to the poor side, this student would receive an undeserving advantage in their adversity score.

The CollegeBoard is very strategic in how it runs its company, and they've caught onto this. They knew that people who really researched and thought deeply about the adversity score, would see this flaw. So they've devised a way to cover this up! Not that it's any better or wields any more merit than the community average method, but it uses the students' true information. That's all that matters, right?

Wrong. Very wrong.

If you've taken an SAT test before, especially in recent years when registration has been digital, you may remember those strange little questions they asked you before you could register. Like your race, language, parental income and parental education. You may not have thought much of this, as the CollegeBoard uses demographic information all day to compare in polls and trends. But this year, things went a bit different. The CollegeBoard sapped your answers to these questions and incorperated it into your Adversity score. There was no release or terms of agreement, describing how they'd use this sensitive information.

Which brings me to my last point. The Adversity score system is not only sneaky, but it's unfair. No score can describe how much merit a person's score is. Even the most rich and affluent person could struggle on a test more than one who is middle class or poor. Same thing goes for school, a lower income or public school may have a better education or equal to one of a private school's.

Bottom line is, no demographic information can correctly depict the validity of a student and the struggles they have faced in achieving what they have. Or in assuring the integrity of their score.

Let's leave that to the colleges' financial aid offices.