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I donât think so - you would expect performance to increase over time as COVID goes further and further into the past and kids have had more and more time to shore up gaps and recover. Rather I think it ties into the ânew normalâ of COVID-era empathetic policies becoming permanent and a year of easy cheating setting a habit that carried on through high school, especially in an easy to cheat subject like math.
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I guess we will find out over time. I would not necessarily expect more time to make it better as opposed to, you donât learn the fundamentals and it is harder to ever get it for kids without significant supports/resources. But perhaps it is some of both. And your âyear of easy cheatingâ comment leans toward my theory that it is at least in part transitory. 5-7 years from now, there will be zero students who were in school for that year of easy cheating you refer to.
I think easy cheating continues to be a problem. Many students are routinely using AI tools for homework and even at school (my daughter says sheâs seen other students using these even during tests when the teacher isnât paying close attention).
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Well that is depressing. Maybe you all are right then, that the problem is only going to continue to get worse, even at top schools like UCSD. If that becomes true, our future looks even worse than I thought.
So far the problem only seems to be this bad at test blind schools - I havenât heard of any peer schools (in terms of undergrad prestige) with the same issue.
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One of D26âs favorites is a test blind private (Pitzer), hope this issue isnât bad there. Maybe small LAC without the same volume of applications can vet them better? Something for me to look into.
How do you know that? Which schools are you aware of that publicly publish stats about percentage of students who do not meet middle school math standards, and how that portion has changed over the past 5 years? Among that sample, how does the rate compare for test blind, test optional, and test required schools? Hardly any colleges publish such stats publicly, particularly when the stats do not make the college look favorable.
It also doesnât appear to be a simple relationship that test blind = students donât meet math requirements, as the portion of students requiring remedial math has been in a steady increase each year, rater than increasing in the year that UCSD went test blind, then remained fairly flat. Specific percentages are below for Math 2 + Math 3B. This implies there are other important factors beyond just going test blind.
Fall 2019 Class â 1%
Fall 2021 Class â 2.5%
Fall 2022 Class â 6%
Current â 12%
The report explores some of these other possible contributing factors, which include things that may be unique to UCSD and not other UC campuses or other test blind colleges. For example, the majority of Math 2/3B kids attended low SES LCFF high schools. UCSD doubled the portion of matriculating students from LCFF high schools during this period, while the combination of the other 8 UCs had no significant change in portion from LCFF high schools . UCSD seems to be doing something different that has resulted in a larger portion of students from low SES LCFF high schools than all other UCs except UC Merced. However, Merced had a notable decrease in LCFF kids during this period, while UCSD had an increase, so UCM is also doing something different from UCSD.
Itâs also not as simple an explanation as UCSD admitted more LCFF kids, so they had more kids who were not well prepared. Something happened between fall 2023 and fall 2024 such that the matriculating LCFF kids at UCSD were nearly twice as likely to be placed in to Math 2/3B. This trend continued in to fall 2025. This could relate to a change in admission system that occurred in 2024 or it could relate to a change in the placement test. Both may be specific to UCSD.
Of course COVID is also a critical factor. The trend of increasing math 2/3B placement began immediately following COVID, and report lists COVID as their first explaining factor. This might partially explain why the trend is increasing with each year. Kids who were taking algebra or middle school math during COVID are probably more likely to be impacted in algebra or middle school math ability than kids that were taking calculus during COVID. However, the graphed met or exceed 11th grade standards in the report does not support this theory, as that % has been increasing since 2022. Current year (2025) is higher than a decade ago.
Yes, being test blind is also an important factor, but itâs a complex and multifaceted problem with many contributing factors rather than simply being caused by going test blind. As such I would not assume it is only occurs at other test blind colleges, or being test blind is the primary cause.
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I can tell itâs virtually zero due to the lack of any new similar level remedial math courses at many peer schools to UCSD during the same time period. Also, the report itself recommends reinstating testing requirements:
The majority of the workgroup recommends that our representative on the Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools (BOARS) should advocate for a systemwide reexamination of the possible return to standardized testing, following the lead of some other institutions that have recently reinstated such measures. This recommendation follows directly from the findings in this report that high school math grades are only very weakly linked to studentsâ actual math preparation. In fact, for more than two decades the Mathematics Department has found that out of all available student data, the single best predictor for math placement has been the SAT (math section) score, with the ACT score being an equally good predictor. The Math department still uses these scores as the best predictor for math placement if the student provides this data after they are admitted.Although many other universities also dropped their standardized testing requirement at about the same time as UC, with the onset of the COVID pandemic, several peer universities have now reinstituted the use of standardized tests for admissions. These universities have found that high school GPA on its own is inadequate for admissions.
If the working group believes going test-required would help, as common sense dictates it would (a student without a basic understanding of algebra can not do well on the math section), then I am inclined to agree with them.
My claim isnât so much that TO has caused this as it is that a lack of test data has left UCSD admissions with no reliable way to filter out students with high GPAs and no math skills from those will similarly high GPAs as well as the math skills those GPAs would typically indidicate.
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The overwhelming portion of large colleges offer a remedial math class, and have offered such a class well before COVID, including UCSD which began offering Math 2 in 2016. What is unique about UCSD is offering a class that focuses on pre high-school math, rather than algebra. The report notes that no other UC campus has a comparable course pre-algebra remedial math course, in spite of the other UCs also being blind. The course seems to be specific to UCSD, not specific to test blind.
UCSD is far from the only college that has noted a decline in math ability among admits during this period and/or has modified their remedial math class in recent years. For example, last fall Harvard modified their remedial math class track to have a version that meets 5 days a week to âtarget foundational skills in algebra, geometry, and quantitative reasoning.â Enrollment in Harvard MA5 increased this year, in spite of switching to test required. Again it does not appear to simply follow test blind.
And the report offers numerous other contributing factors to the decline besides being test blind as listed in my earlier post, and offers numerous other recommendations to improve the situation besides testing requirements. It does not suggest the issue only occurs at test blind colleges, or that test blind is the primary contributing factor.
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I doubt it - a large part of the issue is UCSDâs dramatic expansion
I believe the reason why UCSD more than other UCs has had this issue is because UCSD, unlike the others, has expanded a lot recently and thus has had to reach deeper into the pool of applicants to offer admissions.
Iâm not completely sure what the much milder decline (Harvardâs remedial math would be called âcalculus with supportâ or âcalculus with integrated reviewâ at many schools) of math prep of incoming test-optional applicants at Harvard that at least in part led to it becoming test required has to do with this.
Once again I never suggested going test blind was what caused the decline in test abilities, and the other main solution proposed is a âmath indexâ which is a fine approach to the current GPA-only situation, but not sufficient, hence the call to reconsider the UC testing policy.
Given how often it seems that these forums have students in the chance-me section who seemingly have difficulty calculating their unweighted (or weighted-for-a-specific-college) GPA, perhaps this is a much wider problem, including students who claim to have done well on the SAT or ACT.
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The SF Chronicle publishes a graph of UC admits by high school. Only high schools with >100 applicants are included. I was always curious about UCSDâs graph becaue the shape is different from other UCs. Data is from 2022-24. https://www.sfchronicle.com/projects/2025/uc-admissions-acceptance-rates/
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This is WSJâs editorial on the issue. The more interesting part is in the comments.
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Before looking, I guessed what the comments would be like. I was not surprised.
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