College Board

I’m back. And I’m madder than ever. College Board just released a program to assign a score to students by looking at how much adversity they face. This score is taken into account by college admissions officers when they look at applicants’ SAT scores. The worse the adversity score, the more admissions officers are likely to overlook lower SAT scores.

Let me clarify something. I’m not at all against programs made to help underserved students do their best on the SAT, or any testing for that matter. But I don’t think an SAT score and an “adversity score” are comparable at all. That’s apples to oranges. Programs made to help tutor underprivileged students and help them do better due to their own work are amazing! More power to them! But College Board just assigning students another number to adjust their score after the test has already been taken? That’s not okay.

I worked tirelessly to achieve my goal score for the SAT. I feel like it’s a great representation of my academic potential. Of course, I had tutoring for months to help me improve, and I want tutoring to be easily accessible to every student who wants it. But what I don’t want is to receive an adversity score that will have admissions officers overlook my application because I “didn’t face enough hardships.”

I think Jane Brown summed up my opinion very succinctly and clearly: “You want to level the playing field, but you don’t do that by making some people higher.” She’s right. What I want is for College Board to stop being a money-hungry, power-thirsty company and offer some affordable tutoring, a resource for every kid who choses to take their tests. That’s the only way to fix the problem.

By Caroline Parrish