A new tool from the College Board will let schools see information about prospective students like the average family income in their neighborhood, crime and housing stability in addition to their SAT scores. The aim of the tool is to help admission officials assess the level of disadvantage and other challenges faced by a student.
The tool, being called the “Environmental Context Dashboard” by the College Board, was piloted at 50 colleges and universities, including Yale University. The College Board said that officials viewing applications at the test schools reported that applicants from higher levels of disadvantage were more likely to be admitted.
Click Here: COLLINGWOOD MAGPIES 2019
The additional information also more positively influenced admissions decisions when those reading applications were less familiar with the high school, according to the College Board.
News of the new tool was first reported by The Wall Street Journal, which referred to the measure as an “adversity score.”
The New York Times reported that the score would be a number between 1 and 100. According to the Times, the average student would get a score of 50 and the score would not be reported to students, only to colleges.
While colleges and universities will be able to see information like AP performance, average number of AP courses taken, percentage of students eligible for free and reduced-price lunch and neighborhood information like familial structure and stability and educational attainment, the dashboard does not include race, according to the College Board.
“Through its history, the College Board has been focused on finding unseen talent,” David Coleman, College Board CEO, said in a statement. “The Environmental Context Dashboard shines a light on students who have demonstrated remarkable resourcefulness to overcome challenges and achieve more with less. It enables colleges to witness the strength of students in a huge swath of America who would otherwise be overlooked.”
The College Board said it is continuing to pilot the tool and plans to make it more broadly available to colleges for free in 2020.
“There is talent and potential waiting to be discovered in every community – the children of poor rural families, kids navigating the challenges of life in the inner city, and military dependents who face the daily difficulties of low income and frequent deployments as part of their family’s service to our country,” Coleman said. “No single test score should ever be examined without paying attention to this critical context.
“We are proud that results from our pilot of the tool show that using the Environment Context Dashboard makes it more likely that students who demonstrate strength and resourcefulness in overcoming challenges are more likely to be admitted to college.”
News of the tool comes at a time when college admission practices and the SAT exam are under the spotlight. Federal prosecutors announced charges against dozens of wealthy parents this year, alleging that they participated in schemes to bribe sports officials to get their children admitted into colleges and paid someone to take the SAT exam for their children. Several have pleaded guilty in the scheme, including actress Felicity Huffman and Mark Riddell, the man accused of taking the SAT exam on behalf of hopeful college students.