Yes but I think the discussion was on Brown and schools of that ilk. While these schools technically don’t admit by major, they do have to limit the number of students who are claiming cs as their major due to teaching availability and keeping the lights on in other departments and males are overrepresented in that cs pile. Note that they likely do the same for pre-med because it too is an area where the very top students are gunning for spots though it’s likely more diluted since you can be pre-med from any major. The point is that if women’s interests are more spread out while men are pursuing the fewer majors, even if the stats between the two groups were exactly the same - and yes I know that women have higher GPA’s - you would still end up with an issue. What would be more interesting to see are the stats of the very top males being turned away from these highly selective colleges. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if they would have been accepted if only they weren’t gunning for engineering or cs for example. Note that the engineering acceptance rate for Columbia is lower than the A&S rate and males have the lower acceptance rate in that pool.
I am not trying to knock the humanities or the intellectual rigor needed for these fields. The point is that while there may very well be a good payout to many who pursue these areas, the payout is less assured than a field like electrical engineering or nursing. Males definitely have options outside of college for making a decent living if they’re willing to become a plumber, electrician, lumber jack, truck driver. Women do not seem to pursue these fields at the same rate men do. Without fields like these, what options do women have for a decent paying job without a college degree? I think this explains the dynamic more than anything. I am not arguing that history is a lesser degree than electrical engineering just that a decent salary isn’t as guaranteed like with engineering or a trade.
I can confirm that this is absolutely true, in my experience. I am a tutor working with college bound students (test prep, apps), and this seems accurate in my area, which is affluent with well-funded school districts. It seems to me that each group of kids has poorer reading and writing skills than that last. I am hopeful that next year’s group of students might have escaped the worst of zoom learning, though kids have no idea about vocabulary. It’s really alarming and sad, frankly.
Also, please let’s stay on topic, which is how the college admissions process has changed in the last five years.
I was thinking about this the other day, and I wonder if this is a side effect of test optional policies. I remember learning vocab as part of SAT prep. If you don’t have a SAT to prep for, perhaps you also tend to skip over vocab building.
The whole point is that students should learn vocab from academic reading, not from memorizing flash cards. They don’t read.
I’ve been working with students since 2011, so this decreased ability to read and especially write has been more noticeable in the last five years.
I do wonder if there is a chicken-egg aspect to that, however, although this is based pretty much solely on my own experience. Doing vocab work increased my reading proficiency, rather than vice versa, although clearly there is a some kind of symbiotic relationship. The school I attended stressed vocab building as a specific activity - we had all kinds of vocab workbooks. But that in turn was used to build reading skills. My daughter is a fairly good reader and not afraid of challenging texts, but when she writes, I notice a relatively weak active vocabulary, and I wonder if that is a byproduct of less specific vocab building, something her school didn’t do, and something she didn’t do independently since she didn’t take the SAT which, in turn, is a byproduct of COVID obviating SAT test prep. Maybe I’m wrong - just a theory based on personal experience.
I remember when UCs went test blind, Berkeley admission posted to send AP scores.
I think context is everything. If you have a school where few students take tests, then admissions folks know that. But from our high school, three kids this year who got into UCLA each have at least five exams with fives on them, plus DE. Each of them have offers from top 20 privates as well. All three have 1500+ on SAT (all my kid’s friends). Somehow they are still identifying these kids even without SATs. I think Berkeley admits at our school are slightly different. Two out of three kids who got into UCLA, also got into Berkeley. I don’t know as much about other kids who were also admitted to Berkeley, but on the surface level they were very much community involvement/social justice kids, with an exception of one science kid.
Yes, but we know these kids personally. So I am telling you, the correlation is there.
Not only don’t they shun reading- it has become a point of pride.
Parent of a current HS senior-- “Timmy is so brilliant, he slept through AP Euro History and is still getting an A in the class”. Back in the day (i.e. 6 years ago) AP Euro was considered the single hardest class at the local HS. Harder than BC Calc, more work than AP Physics, less generous grading than AP Chem. Why? The reading. SO MUCH READING. Primary sources. Secondary sources. And no shortcuts either- the research papers and short essays required for the class really didn’t foster the sense that skimming Wikapedia on “Who were the Bolsheviks” was going to allow you to answer a nuanced question like “Compare the transition to Communism in the Soviet Union to that of China” or “which events in the aftermath of WWI allowed the eruption of WWII and can explain the varying responses of the Allied governments”.
I wanted to check this since I had always heard Physics I was the hardest AP. According to Google the AP European History Rate in 2019 had a pass rate of 58.1%:
AP European History (2019)
- Passing Rate: 58.1%
- Score Distribution:
- 5: 11.7%
- 4: 20.5%
- 3: 25.9%
- 2: 29.2%
- 1: 12.5%
Meanwhile in 2019, Physics 1 had a pass rate of 45.1%:
5: 6.7%
4: 17.8%
3: 20.6%
2: 29.3%
1: 25.9%
Hard yes but does not seem to be at the Physics 1 level. It could be that there’s more class work but the test scores also seem higher.
I was referring to my local HS ONLY. A legendary teacher for AP Euro who did not believe in extra credit, extensions except for a medical emergency, etc.
Now-- apparently- you can sleep through the class and still pull an A. Big change.
Right - if only all teachers were this dedicated. I heard of a bio teacher in a school I’m familiar with who basically guaranteed everyone got a pass on the AP Bio exam if they put in effort in the class (and it was a lot of effort) but the class had double or more the rate of 5’s vs the College Board rate.
Upthread there was discussion about students writing about mental health topics, but I don’t recall anyone talking about how students and families are thinking more about mental health in terms of the resources available at a college and what type of institution might lead to improved (or worsened) mental health for a particular student and how that would impact where to apply or accept an offer of admission.
Including extra credit for the few who somehow fell behind! That drives the teachers who won’t issue those “little projects” nuts!
Good question. I know of some students who didn’t want to go for the bigger name institutions because of the stress and culture of always competing and anecdotally this seems to be growing ie. they want to prioritize their mental health. It was less of a concern pre-2015 but seems to haves increased quite a bit since covid. Yet, the application numbers for these schools suggests that this is not a general trend and that while in some pockets there may be less focus on pursuing the T20’s there must be other pockets where interest is increasing. It would be interesting to see if there is a trend geographically of less interest/more interest.
Correlation is not causation. Obviously, it stands to reason that if they are doing so well in other aspects they will have good standardized scores as well. The same way sales of ice cream don’t cause sales of bikinis, but they both go up in hot weather.
Urban Northeast. Trend seems to be “go big or go home”, i.e. shoot for the mega competitives, but if that doesn’t work (they are mega generous as well so for many families it’s both the best deal admissions wise AND financially) they end up at either one of the state colleges (flagship or regional) or a nearby state’s publics.
I’m seeing less casting a wide net geographically; fewer kids coming up with “hidden gems”, fewer parents encouraging colleges which require two flights and a long bus ride to get there.
Also not seeing an emphasis on mental health, unless that’s already baked in to the process (i.e. a kid who is staying local may be doing so for many reasons- but wanting to be in a less pressured environment is only one of many of those reaons).
That was presumably why old SAT verbal sections were mostly vocabulary. But the growth of test prep probably resulted in gaming the test by learning the “SAT words” rather than reading more and more advanced stuff. Revisions of the SAT have reduced the vocabulary aspect somewhat
Perhaps the underrated academic skill here is reading quickly with good comprehension and understanding of what is read. Slow readers will struggle when high volume reading is necessary, and those who have poor comprehension and understanding will struggle with any reading.
Score distribution does not necessarily result only from the difficulty of the AP test. It also results from the self selection of students taking the test. For clear examples of that, compare the score distribution of calculus AB versus BC.