SAT Harder or Easier Today Than In Your Day?

Marian
Fri, 21 Dec 2012 15:21:41 +0000

They will be penalized at college, should or should not will be irrelevant. They are penalized, period. Their dreams are derailed, many of them are facing this situation right in the first semester of college.



I think this is a bit of an exaggeration.

At a very few colleges, in a very few majors, a student who did not take calculus in high school is at a disadvantage. The solution to this problem is to take calculus in the summer between high school and college.

But for most students, the standard sequence is quite acceptable. In fact, you can even be a little bit behind and do fine.

My son wanted to major in computer science in college and pursue a career in that field. He had taken AP AB Calculus in high school but did not score well enough on the AP test to get credit for it. In addition, he scored so low on the college’s math placement test that he had to spend his first semester taking precalculus over before he was allowed to take first-semester calculus.

Nevertheless, he was able to complete the computer science major, with departmental honors, in the standard eight semesters, at a flagship state university. He was then admitted to a top-20 graduate program in computer science as a Ph.D. candidate. A few years later, he gave up the idea of a Ph.D. and completed his education by earning a master’s degree in computer science from that top-20 graduate school. He now has a very good job as a software engineer, earning a heck of a lot more money than I do.

So here’s a student who was actually one semester behind the standard math sequence and who planned to major in a subject that requires a good deal of math. Yet his dreams were not derailed, and if there was any meaningful penalty, I can’t see what it is.