It would be nice to think that high school students can get into a good university based on their abilities or talents, but a proposed change to the SAT shows how the concept of meritocracy has been turned into a sham.

The College Board, according to The Wall Street Journal, will now assign an “adversity score” to SAT test takers, “calculated using 15 factors including the crime rate and poverty levels from the student’s high school and neighborhood.”

“There are a number of amazing students who may have scored less [on the SAT] but have accomplished more,” said David Coleman, chief executive of the College Board, according to The Wall Street Journal. “We can’t sit on our hands and ignore the disparities of wealth reflected in the SAT.”

The adversity rating has already been used by 50 colleges in 2018, but will eventually extend to significantly more colleges.

Every student who takes the SAT will receive this adversity score, according to the Journal, but the students and parents won’t know what it is.

Of course, how something as subjective as “adversity” can actually be boiled down to a number for each person is already dubious.

Worse, it can be so obviously gamed by both students and schools.

Clever students and parents may simply find ways to artificially boost “adversity” in any way they can, just as colleges can use this tool to continue what they have rightfully come under scrutiny for in recent decades: race-based admissions.

Race-based admissions systems, even surreptitious ones, could be on the way out as these practices are challenged in court.

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