It's the gold star thing, folks. Gold star + Jewish evokes Judenstern, to use the historic name, not preschool accomplishments. It's definitely true that Harvard and other US colleges/universities discriminated against Jews under the influence of anti-Semitism, and it's also true that there were American Nazis, for instance the German-American Bund in the 1930s.
I don't think that this adversity score has anything to do with the Nazis, I have to say. It sounds like the data is publicly available financial information. So this whole little branch of HN commentary is an unnecessary diversion.
To return to the article, colleges have been giving extra points to legacy admits, children of donors, people from X region, tuba players, violists (but not violinists haha), rowers, lacrosse players, merit students, Lutherans, etc etc etc forever. I think schools should have to option to get the adversity score or not. I went to Caltech; they probably don't care and should stick to their quirky admissions as many of us 'minority' admissions found it comforting in the midst of failure to know that we were admitted on nothing but the material in the application. But other schools serve a different purpose and if they want to admit twelve poor kids by "adversity score" that's great. I have to say I read the coverage and it's just a bunch more rich parents freaking out that they don't have every single last advantage possible. Ask me in 15 years -- maybe I'll be doing the same.
