Harvard is not alone. UC students Without 8th Grade Math Skills Skyrockets

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The funniest thing about this is US News claims with a straight face that having a lot of Pell grant/marginalized students makes a college academically superior to one with fewer such students.

This is so embarrassing for the anti-SAT crowd, US News' DEI methodology and the state of California in general.

Sure is shows that equity lowers the bar pretty substantially but if these types of revelations don’t become a chorus it will quietly fade away.

These policies will only lead to more government assistance programs and a greater push for ideas such as basic universal income since graduates and attendees of the fine UC system of university don’t have the basic skills to function in the real world.

I am confident that not a single word you have written will actually happen.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yeah, the math thing is crazy these days. My kid is at an Ivy and was given a math placement test at the beginning of freshman year. He took Calculus AB in high school and was placed into Calculus 2. However it turns out that almost all his classmates took BC in high school. Except most did not actually learn the BC because they are now getting Cs and Ds in this course (the average on the exams has been in the 60s).
My kid has had two 99% so far and he is a humanities kid. He attended a grade-deflating, private high school which rarely accelerated kids in math.

How are these kids getting 60% on material that they already took in high school? And yet of course they got high As in high school as they got into an Ivy.

The state of high school math education is worrisome.

Those kids probably also got 5s on the AP test. My humanities kid at a UC is very scared of taking math next quarter. He placed into UC’s last Calculus level which is supposedly after BC not sure if that maps to II or III . He had As in high school, 5 on the AP exam and 780 on SAT math but he’s hearing from so many kids with similar stats who are getting Cs and Ds and who are engineering kids that like math.

Is the problem these kids are not learning the material or are they not retaining the material? If they are indeed earning 5s on an AP exam then I would argue the latter... How do you fix that? I don't know.

The College Board has been explicitly making AP tests easier, because they found that they were losing kids to lightweight dual enrollment classes. I will give you three guesses as to the likely response by the providers of those dual enrollment classes, and the first two don't count.

And yet still so few still get all 5s! Both my sons scored 5s on every exam with no outside study/prep.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yeah, the math thing is crazy these days. My kid is at an Ivy and was given a math placement test at the beginning of freshman year. He took Calculus AB in high school and was placed into Calculus 2. However it turns out that almost all his classmates took BC in high school. Except most did not actually learn the BC because they are now getting Cs and Ds in this course (the average on the exams has been in the 60s).
My kid has had two 99% so far and he is a humanities kid. He attended a grade-deflating, private high school which rarely accelerated kids in math.

How are these kids getting 60% on material that they already took in high school? And yet of course they got high As in high school as they got into an Ivy.

The state of high school math education is worrisome.

Those kids probably also got 5s on the AP test. My humanities kid at a UC is very scared of taking math next quarter. He placed into UC’s last Calculus level which is supposedly after BC not sure if that maps to II or III . He had As in high school, 5 on the AP exam and 780 on SAT math but he’s hearing from so many kids with similar stats who are getting Cs and Ds and who are engineering kids that like math.

Is the problem these kids are not learning the material or are they not retaining the material? If they are indeed earning 5s on an AP exam then I would argue the latter... How do you fix that? I don't know.

The College Board has been explicitly making AP tests easier, because they found that they were losing kids to lightweight dual enrollment classes. I will give you three guesses as to the likely response by the providers of those dual enrollment classes, and the first two don't count.

And yet still so few still get all 5s! Both my sons scored 5s on every exam with no outside study/prep.

That's what's so embarrassing about this. It's easy to get 5s on all the exams. This is why international students smoke all the domestic students in college.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yeah, the math thing is crazy these days. My kid is at an Ivy and was given a math placement test at the beginning of freshman year. He took Calculus AB in high school and was placed into Calculus 2. However it turns out that almost all his classmates took BC in high school. Except most did not actually learn the BC because they are now getting Cs and Ds in this course (the average on the exams has been in the 60s).
My kid has had two 99% so far and he is a humanities kid. He attended a grade-deflating, private high school which rarely accelerated kids in math.

How are these kids getting 60% on material that they already took in high school? And yet of course they got high As in high school as they got into an Ivy.

The state of high school math education is worrisome.

Those kids probably also got 5s on the AP test. My humanities kid at a UC is very scared of taking math next quarter. He placed into UC’s last Calculus level which is supposedly after BC not sure if that maps to II or III . He had As in high school, 5 on the AP exam and 780 on SAT math but he’s hearing from so many kids with similar stats who are getting Cs and Ds and who are engineering kids that like math.

Is the problem these kids are not learning the material or are they not retaining the material? If they are indeed earning 5s on an AP exam then I would argue the latter... How do you fix that? I don't know.

The College Board has been explicitly making AP tests easier, because they found that they were losing kids to lightweight dual enrollment classes. I will give you three guesses as to the likely response by the providers of those dual enrollment classes, and the first two don't count.

And yet still so few still get all 5s! Both my sons scored 5s on every exam with no outside study/prep.

Your comment is nothing but a humble bragg, and likely a lie at that run along.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yeah, the math thing is crazy these days. My kid is at an Ivy and was given a math placement test at the beginning of freshman year. He took Calculus AB in high school and was placed into Calculus 2. However it turns out that almost all his classmates took BC in high school. Except most did not actually learn the BC because they are now getting Cs and Ds in this course (the average on the exams has been in the 60s).
My kid has had two 99% so far and he is a humanities kid. He attended a grade-deflating, private high school which rarely accelerated kids in math.

How are these kids getting 60% on material that they already took in high school? And yet of course they got high As in high school as they got into an Ivy.

The state of high school math education is worrisome.

Those kids probably also got 5s on the AP test. My humanities kid at a UC is very scared of taking math next quarter. He placed into UC’s last Calculus level which is supposedly after BC not sure if that maps to II or III . He had As in high school, 5 on the AP exam and 780 on SAT math but he’s hearing from so many kids with similar stats who are getting Cs and Ds and who are engineering kids that like math.

Is the problem these kids are not learning the material or are they not retaining the material? If they are indeed earning 5s on an AP exam then I would argue the latter... How do you fix that? I don't know.

The College Board has been explicitly making AP tests easier, because they found that they were losing kids to lightweight dual enrollment classes. I will give you three guesses as to the likely response by the providers of those dual enrollment classes, and the first two don't count.

And yet still so few still get all 5s! Both my sons scored 5s on every exam with no outside study/prep.

That's what's so embarrassing about this. It's easy to get 5s on all the exams. This is why international students smoke all the domestic students in college.

+1. My kid started taking multiple AP exams in 8th grade, and scored 5s with no outside study and prep. While that is good for my kid's transcript, how on earth can an 8th grader be getting 5s so easily, if he's taking exams against high school seniors??

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yeah, the math thing is crazy these days. My kid is at an Ivy and was given a math placement test at the beginning of freshman year. He took Calculus AB in high school and was placed into Calculus 2. However it turns out that almost all his classmates took BC in high school. Except most did not actually learn the BC because they are now getting Cs and Ds in this course (the average on the exams has been in the 60s).
My kid has had two 99% so far and he is a humanities kid. He attended a grade-deflating, private high school which rarely accelerated kids in math.

How are these kids getting 60% on material that they already took in high school? And yet of course they got high As in high school as they got into an Ivy.

The state of high school math education is worrisome.

Those kids probably also got 5s on the AP test. My humanities kid at a UC is very scared of taking math next quarter. He placed into UC’s last Calculus level which is supposedly after BC not sure if that maps to II or III . He had As in high school, 5 on the AP exam and 780 on SAT math but he’s hearing from so many kids with similar stats who are getting Cs and Ds and who are engineering kids that like math.

Is the problem these kids are not learning the material or are they not retaining the material? If they are indeed earning 5s on an AP exam then I would argue the latter... How do you fix that? I don't know.

The College Board has been explicitly making AP tests easier, because they found that they were losing kids to lightweight dual enrollment classes. I will give you three guesses as to the likely response by the providers of those dual enrollment classes, and the first two don't count.

And yet still so few still get all 5s! Both my sons scored 5s on every exam with no outside study/prep.

In most subjects, 65-70% on the exam is a 5. My sophomore scored a 5 in Physics C Mechanics but I discovered a ton of gaps in his knowledge a week or so before the exam.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yeah, the math thing is crazy these days. My kid is at an Ivy and was given a math placement test at the beginning of freshman year. He took Calculus AB in high school and was placed into Calculus 2. However it turns out that almost all his classmates took BC in high school. Except most did not actually learn the BC because they are now getting Cs and Ds in this course (the average on the exams has been in the 60s).
My kid has had two 99% so far and he is a humanities kid. He attended a grade-deflating, private high school which rarely accelerated kids in math.

How are these kids getting 60% on material that they already took in high school? And yet of course they got high As in high school as they got into an Ivy.

The state of high school math education is worrisome.

Those kids probably also got 5s on the AP test. My humanities kid at a UC is very scared of taking math next quarter. He placed into UC’s last Calculus level which is supposedly after BC not sure if that maps to II or III . He had As in high school, 5 on the AP exam and 780 on SAT math but he’s hearing from so many kids with similar stats who are getting Cs and Ds and who are engineering kids that like math.

Is the problem these kids are not learning the material or are they not retaining the material? If they are indeed earning 5s on an AP exam then I would argue the latter... How do you fix that? I don't know.

The College Board has been explicitly making AP tests easier, because they found that they were losing kids to lightweight dual enrollment classes. I will give you three guesses as to the likely response by the providers of those dual enrollment classes, and the first two don't count.

And yet still so few still get all 5s! Both my sons scored 5s on every exam with no outside study/prep.

That's what's so embarrassing about this. It's easy to get 5s on all the exams. This is why international students smoke all the domestic students in college.

+1. My kid started taking multiple AP exams in 8th grade, and scored 5s with no outside study and prep. While that is good for my kid's transcript, how on earth can an 8th grader be getting 5s so easily, if he's taking exams against high school seniors??

Which courses?

Not all AP courses are sequential capstones.

[Anonymous]

The low performers at UC San Diego are URM's, English-learners.

It is a function of how UC San Diego selected their student body. They selected more applicants from poorer, English-learning schools.

I'm not sure how to correct it, but it seems to be common sense that putting students in an environment where they are destined to fail does no one any good.

Either UC San Diego just hands out degrees like candy and the institution's reputation suffers or they give up on admitting students with elementary school-level abilitites.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am California native and I support the UC's approach. Citizen/taxpayers of CA pay for the UCs and its mission is to educate the best and brightest Californians. They use "local context" to identify the top 9% from every Ca high school, including private schools, and guarantee admission to all of them, though don't guarantee which campus (Merced is the auto admit default). Yes that means that the top 9% from under resourced public schools too, so some of those kids have learning gaps and the UC's have support to help them.
Testing would not change this as they would still admit the top 9% by school including from those high schools that most on this board don't care about . . . .

Unfortunately, the best and the brightest can not be assumed to be evenly distributed throughout the state. It makes sense that kids in affluent and well educated communities end up better prepared by the end of K-12. Due to some
combination of heritable characteristics from educated/affluent parents (IQ is approx 50% heritable) and greater access over many years to better resources to develop that academic potential. Trying to make up for it at the college level is too late. This remediation work needs to be carried out starting from early elementary. At a certain age, the students’ absolute preparation level is more important than one’s undeveloped “potential” from a college success/job readiness standpoint.

Graduating in the top 9 percent of an awful, crime-ridden public school gets you serious grit and character points. And in life, grit and character matters a lot. I think California has it right. Sure, some of these kids from low performing schools with all the problems never got a chance to take Multivariable Calculus. But they would be absolute academic rock stars if only they grew up in a different neighborhood with better options. I think the UCs are fulfilling their mission just fine taking the best students from all the public schools, even the bad ones.

Honestly, you sound like a person who is so privileged that you have no idea what you are talking about. Grit and character? Sure. People who live in serious danger and traumatic situations develop grit and character, but those aren't always in positive ways. Many learn awful coping mechanisms, terrible perspectives on life, etc., because they did what they had to.

Spoiled rich kids learn awful coping mechanisms, terrible perspectives on life, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:That’s why I’ve been saying that UCs are not worth it OOS. There are other reasons too.

They don't need OOS anyway. Just addicted to that supplemental tuition instead of taxing billionaires.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:“ 4.0 in Calculus can't pass Algebra” is not supported by what you demonstrated. You can have a 4.0 in mathematics and have never taken calculus.

Only about 30% of high school students take calculus.

People here are obsessed with math but there are many degrees that don’t require calculus. Different skills for different majors.

Yeah, but passing Alg II is generally a high school requirement for graduation. So why can’t kids accepted to college do basic algebra?

What they need is to take the top 9% who ALSO meet minimum test score requirements. Which they will never do.

UT Austin takes top 5% from every high school in Texas ... but I would argue there needs to be a minimum SAT requirement (maybe the average SAT score?). Some sort of baseline that shows a modicum of college readiness. Top 5% that don't meet the minimum could get automatically CAPPED (the jr college to UT pathway). Otherwise you are just setting these students up for failure.
As it stands now you have Texas kids with 1500+ on the SAT and 3.7 GPAs (including tons of AP and honors) from highly rigorous high schools that aren't getting in to UT Austin, plus loads of others that are highly qualified but because they come from top/competitive high schools have zero chance of getting in to UT.

[Anonymous]

Failure to use the SAT in admissions is making the University of California system look like a clown-car.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The low performers at UC San Diego are URM's, English-learners.

It is a function of how UC San Diego selected their student body. They selected more applicants from poorer, English-learning schools.

I'm not sure how to correct it, but it seems to be common sense that putting students in an environment where they are destined to fail does no one any good.

Either UC San Diego just hands out degrees like candy and the institution's reputation suffers or they give up on admitting students with elementary school-level abilitites.

You seem to think they did this to help people? It’s just high-level virtue signaling.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:ironically, the students who major in sociology, ethnic studies and other soft subjects end up being the ones working in education administration and setting admissions policy, where they proceed to favor other students like them in the admissions process. part of the problem is that administrators and not actual faculty have taken control of the admissions process and student evaluation methods.

+1 dumb and dumber. in past years, actual faculty had more say in universities.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Failure to use the SAT in admissions is making the University of California system look like a clown-car.

Except it isn’t. UC is the best public higher education system in the country. 5 of its schools - UCLA, Cal, SD, Davis and Irvine are in the top 10 national public schools in the country.

UC approaches admissions strategically as a business. The politics of California and methodologies of US News require that a percentage of seats go to unqualified kids. UC schools are very large so they can afford to give up a % of seats to unqualified kids without diluting their grand. There are enough tippy top students in the Bay Area, parts of LA and parts of San Diego to keep the rigor up, continue to produce and attract world class researchers and scholars etc.

UC schools also have always had a weeder strategy. For many majors, there are difficult weeder classes that are curved to only allow the top desired % to remain in the major. There’s a joke at Cal that the business school is filled with kids who couldn’t hack engineering. There are also a bunch of majors at all UCs with easier requirements and courses, sociology, ethnic studies, agricultural business etc. The unqualified kids get shuffled into those and don’t detract from the brand.