‘Adversity Scores’ Take the Place of SCOTUS-Rejected Affirmative Action College Admission
After the Supreme Court’s rejection of affirmative action, or race-based admissions, colleges have implemented “adversity scores” to rank applicants based on a “disadvantage scale.”
The associate dean of admissions at the University of California Davis (UC Davis) School of Medicine, Dr. Mark Henderson, created the socioeconomic disadvantage scale (S.E.D.). The scale is used to rate applicants on their “life circumstances,” according to the New York Times. Henderson lamented in his interview with the New York Times that “mostly rich kids get to go to medical school,” which is why he deemed it necessary to create the S.E.D., to tip the scales to the advantage of the lower economic class, and potentially lower-scoring medical school candidate.
“I’d call it class-based affirmative action. Class struggles have a huge overlap with race – that’s how we skirted the issue,” Henderson explained, referencing the Supreme Court ruling against race-based affirmative action.
The New York Times praises UC Davis’ admissions policy, calling the university “one of the most diverse medical schools in the country.” The author says that the accomplishment is “notable in a state that voted in 1996 to ban affirmative action.”
The New York Times article also notes, “Children of doctors are 24 times more likely to become doctors than their peers, according to the American Medical Association.” As a result, Henderson’s ranking system dictates that applicants who come from a family of medical professionals will automatically receive a zero.
The S.E.D. ranks applicants from zero to 99, with 99 being the highest possible disadvantage score. This score would likely be given to someone who is a first-generation college student, with a low-income background, and is from an “underrepresented” location.
This is how the admissions process “skirts” blatantly siting race as the reason for selecting specific applicants, while still implying that race is a significant deciding factor. Henderson himself celebrated the “diversity” created by the S.E.D. — not of economic background or personal experience, but of race:
“There is no set formula on how to balance the scale with the academic record, Dr. Henderson said, but a simulation of the system revealed that students from underrepresented groups grew to 15.3 percent from 10.7 percent. And the share of economically disadvantaged students tripled, to 14.5 percent of the class from 4.6 percent.”
New York Times
The UC Davis School of Medicine also released a report to example the school’s commitment to admitting students from “disadvantaged backgrounds.” Out of the 133 students in the most recent class, 84 percent were highly rated on the S.E.D. 60 percent were female students, 42 percent were the first in their families to attend college, 36 percent were Asian, 30 percent were Hispanic, and 14 percent were African American. This would mean that 20 percent of the class was made up of white students.
The Association for American Medical Colleges found, “Among active physicians, 56.2% identified as White, 17.1% identified as Asian, 5.8% identified as Hispanic, and 5.0% identified as Black or African American.” Additionally, the AAMC observes that “the race for 13.7% of active physicians is Unknown, making that the largest subgroup after White and Asian.”
Henderson proudly informed the New York Times that “scores from the MCAT, the standardized test for medical school applications, dropped only marginally.” The progressive’s priority is not a medical professional’s skill, but rather their skin color.
