The SAT will use the "adversity score" for college student applicants

The College Board, which oversees the SAT exam used by most US colleges during the admissions process, plans to introduce an "adversity score" that takes into account the social and economic context of each student.

The move is likely to revive the debate about race and class in admissions to the university.

The new adversity score is calculated using 15 factors, including crime rate and poverty level of high school and the student district, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Students will not be aware of their results, but colleges and universities will see them during the review of applications.

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So far, 50 colleges have used it to make a decision regarding the chances of a prospective student. The College Board plans to expand this number to 150 higher education institutions in the fall. The goal is to use it widely by 2021.

"There are a number of amazing students who may have gotten less points (at SAT) but who have done more," said David Coleman, Executive Director of the College Board. "We can not sit back and ignore the wealth disparities reflected in the SAT."

Yale University is one of the schools that used the adversity scores. Connecticut-based Ivy has lobbied to increase socio-economic diversity in recent years and has nearly doubled the number of low-income students.

"This (adversity score) literally affects all the applications we are looking at," Jeremiah Quinlan, Dean of Undergraduate Admissions at Yale, told WSJ. "This is part of the success story of helping the diversity of our freshman class."

Nevertheless, it is unlikely that the score of adversity is a success with advocates who have long argued that merit alone should dictate whether a student is allowed to be admitted.

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Many universities, like Harvard, claim that a diverse body of students is part of the college experience and should be the educational mission of a school. However, several lawsuits have been filed in recent years to accuse universities of unjust admission practices.

In October, the Dean of Admissions of Harvard University said that the Ivy League School was applying different SAT score standards to prospective students based on factors such as race, while claiming that this practice does 39, was not discriminatory.

Students for Fair Admissions, a group led by legal strategist Edward Blum, sued a school in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 2014, claiming that Americans of Asian descent, who have the highest academic achievements, unfairly receive the lowest admission rate of the elite university.

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Similar lawsuits have also been filed against the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of California system.

According to a Pew Research Center poll conducted in February, 73% of Americans believe that colleges should not consider race or ethnicity when they make an admission decision. Only 7% said that race should be a major factor.