What is the adversity score?

What is the adversity score? and how does it affect you?

It has recently been reported by NYTimes and the Wall Street Journal Journal that CollegeBoard will soon begin gauging a student’s “adversity.” Previously referred to as the “Overall Adversity Percentile,” this will then be provided to colleges along with a student’s SAT score.

This score is designed to put a student’s “environment” into context for college admissions counselors.

Will “race” a factor in the scoring?

As reported by the NYTimes, CollegeBoard claims that race is not a factor in determining an adversity score. However, the “neighborhood environment” portion of the study did identify peer culture, and influences as markers on how they would gauge adversity.

Although these factors don’t identify race directly, implementation of the score will depict of these show a racial divide between scoring.

When will the adversity score be implemented?

A paper by CollegeBoard titled “Data-Driven Models to Understand Environmental Context” identified the following as an “environmental dashboard prototype.”

Figure 2: Environmental Dashboard Prototype from “Data-Driven Models to Understand Environmental Context“ published by CollegeBoard

It is still unclear if this will be the exact interface that college admissions counselors will use.

The NYTimes reported that 50 universities have implemented the system, with 150 more universities adding it by the fall of 2019. CollegeBoard will likely implement this more broadly by 2021.


Source: https://www.tasnewyork.com/whats-the-new-sat-adversity-score-how-does-it-affect-you-your-top-5-questions-answered/