Every student taking the SAT will now be given an 'adversity score' to level the playing field between people with different social and economic backgrounds, but critics say children of affluent parents could be penalized by the new system.

The scoring system was established by the national College Board, the nonprofit which administers the test, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The new system will use 15 different factors to weigh a student's adversity score, based on things such as the crime and poverty rates in the neighborhood where the teens grew up.

Other elements of the adversity index include housing values, family median income, whether a student is a child of a single parent, or speaks English as a second language.

This graph breaks down the average (mean) score for all test takers, as well as for those of different races. Source: The College Board

The new system will use 15 different factors to weigh a student's adversity score, based on things such as the crime and poverty rates in the neighborhood where the teens grew up. Source: The College Board

The quality of the high school that students attend will also be factored into the final adversity score.

'There are a number of amazing students who may have scored less (on the SAT) but have accomplished more,' David Coleman, chief executive of the College Board, told The Journal. 'We can't sit on our hands and ignore the disparities of wealth reflected in the SAT.'

We can't whittle down people's background and experience into a number and assume that will give us a good idea of who they are and if they will succeed in college. -Mary Clare Amselem, The Heritage Foundation

The score does not include race as a factor. Students will be rated on a scale of one to 100, with an adversity score of 50 considered average. Anything higher indicates hardship, while scores lower than 50 indicate privilege.

Mary Clare Amselem, a policy analyst with the right-leaning Heritage Foundation said the new system is 'wildly dehumanizing.'

'We can't whittle down people's background and experience into a number and assume that will give us a good idea of who they are and if they will succeed in college,' she told DailyMail.com.

The College Board did not immediately return requests for comment by DailyMail.com, and declined to share details with The Wall Street Journal on how the scores are calculated.

Students will never learn their own scores, but universities will have access to them when reviewing applications.

'I find it extremely problematic that students won't know what number is assigned to them you have people behind the scenes working to determine what kind of a student you will be in college,' Amselem said.

The change comes in the wake of a college admissions bribery scandal that has ensnared more than 50 people including actresses Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman, who were accused of paying big money to get their teen daughters into top universities.

The scandal has raised serious questions about how privilege helps many students buy their way into the nation's best schools - or at the least allows wealthy families to pay for tutors, extra-curriculars and SAT test prep that low-income households could never afford.

This file photo shows a student taking the SAT, which will now incorporate an 'adversity score' to factor in the cultural and socioeconomic challenges affecting each student

The new scoring system has already been tested in 50 different colleges, with plans to extend to 150 universities this fall, followed by a broader expansion in 2020.

Yale University is among the schools that has started implementing the adversity score measure.

Smart, poor students have less chance of growing up wealthy than their low-performing rich peers In America, rich children who perform poorly on tests have 71 percent chance of being affluent by the time they're 25, while their brilliant – yet poor – counterparts only have a 31 percent chance of achieving wealth, according to a new report by Georgetown University's Center on Education and the Workforce. Researchers describe the trend as 'the great sorting of the most talented young people into the haves and have-nots' and said the phenomenon begins long before students are applying for college. In fact, the process starts as early as kindergarten, where top-scoring children from poor families who earn a college degree have a 76 percent chance of achieving wealth by age 25, compared to 91 percent among their low-scoring but rich peers who earned college degrees. Nearly 40 percent of poor kindergarteners in America grow up to become low-income adults. Researchers say the disparity is largely due to the fact that wealthier students tend to have safety nets that keep them on track academically when they start to struggle, while lower-income students are more likely to fall behind. Poor kids even start out further behind, with just 23 percent of the poorest kindergartners scoring in the top half in math, compared to 74 percent of the wealthiest students. As they get older, some students are able to rebound, but it is more likely among the richest kids. High income families invest an average of $8,600 on education and recreation on each child – nearly five times the average $1,700 that America's poorest families are able to spend. Advertisement

The school has already made an effort in recent years to increase the number of low-income and minority students it accepts, nearly doubling the number of those students to reach 20 percent of admissions, Jeremiah Quinlan, the dean of undergraduate admissions at Yale, told The Journal.

'This (adversity score) is literally affecting every application we look at,' he said. 'It has been a part of the success story to help diversify our freshman class.'

John Barnhill, assistant vice president for academic affairs at Florida State University, told The Journal that wealthier parents who have kids attending high-performing high schools will be frustrated by the change.

'If I am going to make room for more of the (poor and minority) students we want to admit and I have a finite number of spaces, then someone has to suffer and that will be privileged kids on the bubble,' he said.

However, some believe the new effort is a step in the right direction, including Sandra Timmons, president of the New York City-based nonprofit A Better Chance, which promotes diversity and works to develop leaders within minority communities.

'We all know and acknowledge that the playing field is not level,' she told DailyMail.com. 'This new score appears to combine a number of mostly objective, quantifiable factors that can reflect this disparity without considering race.'

'This appears to be a step in the right direction to ensure that all hard-working students have a fair look and a better chance for success in the college admissions process,' she added.

The issue of how to factor in a student's race and class into admissions decisions has been controversial, finding its way to the center of a lawsuit against Harvard University.

A group of Asian-American students brought the case against the Ivy League school claiming they were being unfairly discriminated against by being held to a higher standard.

The suit claims the university has artificially limited the number of Asian-American students it will accept because that population is disproportionately high performing.

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