Lander, WY: After years of “ignoring the problem” as student organization Cowboys for Social Justice claims, Wyoming Catholic College has agreed to add the innovative new idea of “adversity scoring” to its rigorous admissions process. Like a similar system in development for the SAT standardized test, this adversity scoring provides a metric which affects the way the school will assess student’s applications to negate external factors which may help or hinder any one student in the process.
“It’s been a long time comin’ and I’m glad to finally be able to tell my friends that I live at a tru-lee welcoming and open school,” states Marcus Gardner, a college Junior, who heads Cowboys for Social Justice. “WCC is laughingly underrepresented in so many minorities, probably all of the A through Zs I guess, and this decision finally offers hope that the school will take into account the full person, that they’ll ‘experience the real’ you might say of each person, and judge on what they’ve had to face.”
Marcus, claims his the admission process for him nearly two years ago was “a traumatic and nearly impossible experience” as he faced adversity from his small family, leadership of a biker gang, and lack of knowledge of “what hiking is”. “I thought it was an app,” he commented further in an interview last year as he pressured the school to change it’s admissions policies. “When I said it on my application interview,” he continued “while I was playing 35ChickensInAMixer on my phone that just about killed my application. But otherwise I was such a good student. Why should WCC have based their admissions process so practically when they always talk so much about the real? It’s almost as if this school was set up for homeschooled large family Catholic students. What about me?”
And Marcus is not the only student who faced trouble getting in to WCC. He, of course was admitted after he faked an admissions letter to TAC to use as leverage, but “there are hundreds of students just like him every year who never even get a chance” argues Maria Versa, an incoming Freshman from California. “You may not know it, but WCC has like a 13% acceptance rate or something, or at least that’s what the TAC admissions office told me. I was lucky also to get in for the Class of 2023, but just thinking about is scary; what if they rejected me? I really what have hated to have to go through the trouble of a discrimination lawsuit.”
Like Marcus, Maria is also now quite pleased about the WCC decision but wants to wait “to see it in action as to whether we really get more diversity at the school”. Like nearly all students at WCC, Maria was homeschooled, but bringing “more diversity” in this measure is a goal even for her.
Launching with admissions for the Class of 2024 next year, the WCC system will “go further than the recently announced SAT system,” says WCC spokesman and Philosophy professor Dr. Grant Williams. “When students apply, we’ll add a fifty question personal assessment that will allow our trained experts in admissions to determine the true level of adversity against each student that would otherwise preclude or pose problems for their admission. It won’t add much to the admissions difficulty, as that is a problem some have raised concerns over with the implementation of such a system, but will help us find the best students for this curriculum.”
Asked by some “homeschooled liberal arts curriculum, Catholic outdoor aficionados whether this scoring would work against them” Dr. Williams declined to provide statistical predictions but advised that “a little more enculturation wouldn’t hurt. Perhaps you should get a cell-phone this year or make sure you’re big screen TV is at least 120 inches long to make sure we give you that particular bonus in the scoring. “
Even as the school declines to provide exact information on the metrics they will score on, a source inside the WCC Student Life office provided IIT with “a few examples” of what could help or hurt one’s score in this new system.
Things that will help you:
- Being in a small family: “Large families are over-represented at WCC” claim external observers at NOLS and “the school seems to be biased to picking students who are from such families, so they should adjust for that.” According to our source – they are!
- Having a cell phone: Banned at WCC, a cell-phone is seen, as in Marcus’ case typically as a detriment to an application. Thus, they’ll change to account for that
- Large TV: The larger the TV the more time spent watching it, and the less time spent outside, a great adversity to preparing for the WCC curriculum. Thus, this’ll now be accounted for.
- Not being homeschooled: Homeschoolers make up 80+% of WCC students, and all of the admissions staff, so non-homeschoolers have faced great adversity at getting into such an “un-diverse” school.
Things that hurt you:
- Pretty much anything that’s the opposite of the above
- Not having a cell phone means you’re probably from one of those LHCWF (large-homeschooled-Catholic- weird families which have such privilege at WCC)
- Wearing a bandanna – makes you look too undiverse for Wyoming. You’ll need to wear a hijab, turban, or sport tattoos all over your face instead.
- Reading books – Unless you can prove that you’re not a conservative, this also pegs you as a member of a LHCWF
For more information about the changes to the admissions process visit: https://wyomingcatholic.edu/admissions/apply/
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