This adversity score is advertized so that it will help out poorer and more abused students, in an emperical way.

But what this is actually telling schools is if the person is rich-ish or not. Basically, can this family pay the bills and are they likely to attend football games and be donating alumni?

Call me cynical, but if anything, this is going to further segregate the schools towards the rich-ish.

This will give schools a guise under which they can say: 'Look, we're diverse!' But it will allow the space (and the ML inputs) for the schools to maximize profits.

I know that you are very unlikely to be able to maximize all diversity at once. Like, admitting more black women may come at the cost of matriculation rates for transgender people, or more Hispanic people in STEM classes may come at the cost of Asian people in humanties courses, etc. Nothing is perfect.

But this really feels like a Trojan Horse.