Family A makes $X and goes through significant sacrifices (e.g. commuting 4 hours) to live in a wealthy neighborhood with good schools.
Family B makes the same $X and lives a leisurely live in a cheap neighborhood with bad schools.
Which should have a better chance of succeeding? This adversity score says family B deserves a bonus over family A.
> Almost all people, including poor people, make sacrifices and want what is best for their kids.
I don't doubt that people of all income levels want their kids to succeed. But there definitely are differences in behavior between demographics. The wealthier people are the more likely they are to use test prep across all demographics, but Asians are more likely to do so regardless of income. Asians also spend more than twice as much time studying outside of class than any other race [1]. There are differences in how much emphasis is put on education, this cannot be denied.
1. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2017/...
Sure, the Angleton guy's parents may be strung out on opioids or whatever, but I gotta be honest, I'm just not seeing why Stanford takes a chance on you as opposed to just giving it to one of the two kids who've proven they can perform at a high level academically test prep or no test prep?
There's still a shitload of applicants between a 34 and 36. Easily more than one for every five spots. When you're talking about these universities with single digit admittance rates its not enough to just get good grades and good standardized test scores. Nine AP classes, fives on all the tests, and 4.0 GPA, and a perfect SAT score will guarantee you enough to get in the pile but you've still gotta make yourself shine like the diamond in the bush that all these schools are looking for. Having this 'Adversity Score' that's supposed to measure how much challenge you faced in life make it seem like you're an underdog that toughed it out against all the odds has the potential of being a big advantage.
> Sure, the Angleton guy's parents may be strung out on opioids or whatever, but I gotta be honest, I'm just not seeing why Stanford takes a chance on you as opposed to just giving it to one of the two kids who've proven they can perform at a high level academically test prep or no test prep?
Because not everyone believes in meritocracy. Some believe that Stanford should take bet on the guy's parents that are strung out on opioids even if he has lower test scores to advance their perception of social justice. That's just one possibility. There's also plenty of evidence to suggest that this may be a mechanism to enforce certain informal caps (like the one proven to be enforced on Asians) through geographic discrimination. Basically, a deliberately opaque (remember, this score is private and not given to the student) set of knobs and dials that can be used to achieve what normally can't be achieved legally.
No, it does not say that it deserves a bonus _over_ family A. It deserves that that circumstance (a circumstance of the parents, not the kid!) is taken into account to close the gap somewhat.
Family B gets a triple mushroom, basically, and family A a green shell.
Yeah, but whatever version of Mario Kart this is, it's pretty obvious how those two objects are going to stack up in terms of balance. Affirmative action has always been used for either of two purposes: to advance a left leaning view of social justice, and to enforce de-facto caps on disproportionately successful minorities. If you're an optimist you can portray this as giving groups labeled disadvantaged a better chance that they deserve (but invite criticism from those that may not believe in either how you define disadvantage, and from those that more broadly disagree with putting one's finger on the scale). If you're a pessimist you suspect that this is a way of enforcing informal caps on successful groups, namely Asians which have been demonstrated to have been subjected to such caps in the last several decades.
