Higher scores have been found to correlate with students from wealthier families and those with better-educated parents. “Merit is all about resourcefulness,” David Coleman, chief executive of the College Board, said in an interview on Thursday. Admissions officers have also tried for years to find ways to gauge the hardships that students have had to overcome, and to predict which students will do well in college despite lower test scores. The new adversity score is meant to be one such gauge. College counselors said they were swamped with calls from parents on Thursday as word of the new measurement got out.

Source: New York Times May 16, 2019 16:41 UTC