Is It Time to Abolish the SAT?
The SAT’s new adversity score might not be the best way to increase campus diversity
The College Board, the organization that administers the SAT exam, announced last week that it would start providing colleges with information on students’ high schools and neighborhoods. These “adversity scores” — which will incorporate quantitative factors such as neighborhood family income, crime rates, and percentage of single-parent homes — are designed to mitigate some of the disadvantages low-income and minority students face in the college admissions process. But before the test is overhauled, we should ask whether the SAT is worth saving in the first place.
The new protocol comes at a time when many view the admissions process as rigged in favor of the privileged few who attend the best high schools and can afford to pay for test prep and private college consultants. The College Board says the goal of the new adversity scores, which will not include any information about individual students and their families or students’ race or ethnicity, is to help “de-rig” the admissions process. College admissions officers — including those who work in states that prohibit race-based admissions policies — will get useful social context around individual students. Indeed, several schools that used a pilot version of the adversity…
