They also need to make the math placement based more on the student’s proficiency at math than on the parent’s SES level or knowledge of how to work or game the system, as well as allow some flexibility between tracks because some students become better or worse at math than predicted by middle or elementary school math placement.
But also, recognize that +1 is fairly common, but +2 and higher are likely uncommon in most situations (i.e. not a math-focused specialty school or one with similar demographics) if determined solely by student proficiency in math, rather than parental pushing and lobbying.
It was a private HS so attendance, participation, and general behavior were all taken into consideration. That said, I don’t remember any student meeting the grade cut off and not being moved on.
The district that we lived in had advanced students do compacted 5/6th grade math in 5th grade and then 7/8 grade in 6th. Those kids took an algebra placement test called the Orleans Hanna at the end of 6th grade. Depending on their class performance and test scores, they were sorted into prealgebra, 8th grade advanced, or Honors Algebra 1 for hs credit in 7th grade.
My daughter’s senior year only 13 kids took Calc BC. I think they had 5 or 6 sections of Calc AB her junior year. Many kids opted for AP stats instead.
As a teacher, I do not think kids should be rushed into abstract thinking they are not ready or prepared for. This is what makes people think they can’t do math.
I feel like people are talking about me while I am in the room! Thanks @ucbalumnus because I had good intentions since the OP looked near-flawless at quick glance.
Very specifically, I clarified a student’s math situation because “potentially” applying to Wharton. She got a couple of B’s in algebra and was maxing out in calc AB. She no longer felt Wharton-level to me. Some disagreed because unfair given she was just following the track the school placed her in while a middleschooler… and here we are!
My daughter did not struggle in 8th grade algebra (received As in every quarter) but she didn’t feel she knew it. We moved to another state and she decided to retake it as Honors Algebra. Best decision ever. She thought that math teacher was the best she ever had.
This meant she never took Calc in college and that was fine too. She took Calc I as a freshman and more than half the class had taken Calc in hs, but she got the A. It was an engineering school, so almost every student was taking Calc.
She probably did eliminate MIT by making that decision to repeat algebra when she was 13 and not being able to take Calc. I don’t think MIT was ever a possibility but if it had been, she could have gone to summer school or taken a gap year or taken 2 math classes in one year.
I think the good foundation helped her more than finishing more levels of math would have, but we’ll never know. Only know she did just fine in college math (graduated cum laude).
We are in a middle/low income SES public (Title 1) CA high school, about 500 kids per class 70 percent go to college after graduation. Our high school has little to no math Arms Race, the vast majority of the school is only in the +0 track, with pre-calc (not AP) or AP Stats in senior year.
They have a way for a small portion of students to get to Calculus by senior year, mostly AB with maybe a combo class for some BC. I would say about 5% of the class has access to a +1 track.
Here is the thing though — many more than 5% get admitted and attend the top UCs and Cal States every year (UCLA, UCB, UCI, UCSD, Cal Poly SLO, etc). We are definitely a feeder school for the UCs and CSUs and while every year we have a handful of students at Stanford, Pomona College, or Harvey Mudd (plus another handful T20 schools via Questbridge for example) most of our class goes on to the in-state publics. One of our seniors this year was a Regents scholarship awardee at UCB and this student was only +0 on math. So, it has to be that being a +1, much less a +2, +3 or +4, it is NOT a pre-requisite for at least the top UCs/CSUs. I could be persuaded that the private elite colleges would maybe only pull from the +1 track (the 30 or so kids that that entails each year) but that is not the case obviously for the other hundred plus kids who get into the UCs every year.
So, I suppose where this take us, is back to the key point that colleges are asking kids to take what is the highest available at their school. And so the schools that officially have a +2/3/4 track are doing their students a huge disservice IMO and forcing the Math Arms Race with the corresponding disadvantages that that brings (every top kid feeling they have to push beyond their top student math into “math genius” track, and the stress, low self esteem and parental desperation when they get a B or C as a 9th grader in Calculus, and now having a bad grade that one has to explain)
CPSLO is sort-of an exception, if it uses bonus points similarly to how it did pre-COVID-19. It gives bonus points for extra course work in various categories beyond the CSU minimum. They assign math the largest bonus points, where the CSU minimum is 6 semesters (algebra 1, geometry, algebra 2 or integrated math 1-3) while they give bonus points for 1 to 4 extra semesters (i.e. up to 10 semesters; including high school level math taken while in middle school). What it means is that students on the +1 track who take calculus in 12th grade will get all of those bonus points, while students on the +0 track would have to double up (perhaps precalculus and statistics in 12th grade?). However, +2 math track students who take something beyond calculus would not gain additional bonus points at CPSLO compared to +1 math track students.
Reading this with interest as a homeschool parent of some kids that are good at math. It seems crazy that a college would expect all the ‘academic’ kids in the same school to take the same level math, since you’re bound to do a huge disservice to either the regular-good-at-math or the extreme-math-brain kids depending whether you push people forward or hold them back.
My regular-good-at-math kid will get to Calc BC in 12th grade, and I guess is technically +2 by age since she skipped a grade in when she was in public school. But she’s always done math in a pretty normal fashion, working through regular math curricula, needing to explicitly learn all the different concepts. She could possibly have been pushed further, but it probably wouldn’t have been a good idea.
My extreme-math-brain kid is something different entirely. Mostly just intuited/knew all lower level math from playing around with it (including some textbooks and books of fun problems, but never any curriculum done in order or with any teaching), insisted on trying calculus in 6th grade, and only circled back to learn Alg 2 and precalc after getting stuck halfway through calc. So she did finish Calc BC in 9th grade, and went on to do multivariable and diffeq in 10th, calc-based probability and stats in 11th, and is perfectly capable of teaching herself math from MIT open courseware materials when no other source is available (often).
The first type of kid can never be the second type, but is just as smart, and if I were a traditional school, I guess her college admissions chances would be worse? The second type of kid likewise shouldn’t be made to suffer through regular pace math any more than we’d make them read elementary school books for high school English.
Our DD was recommended for accelerated math staring in 8th grade. We were the first (and so far only) Parents who graciously declined. DH (an engineer) felt that a strong foundation in math was far more important than being pushed ahead.
Our DD’s highest math in HS was honors precalculus.
She was a bioengineering major in undergrad and took calculus in college. And took plenty plenty of higher level math courses as part of her degree program.
She graduated undergrad in 2010 from Santa Clara University…but I’m quite sure we would make the same decision today.
I absolutely DO believe that accelerated math is right for some kids, but I also think accelerated math has taken on a life of its own. And it’s not right or necessary for many.
I think “retain possible admission to a highly selective college” is strong language. Plenty of people are admitted to highly selective colleges with “only” calculus AB. I expect a good portion of them attended a HS where higher level math is available, as most HSs that offer AB also offer BC. Even at a college as selective as Harvard, more than 1/4 of class takes calc AB. At many highly selective colleges, I expect the majority of matriculating students took calc AB or lower.
I expect that the >35% of class taking calc AB or lower at Harvard are not only hooked students or students whose HS does not offer math above AB. I expect it also includes a good portion of students who plan to pursue a field that does not emphasize high level math. Holistic admission systems generally consider course rigor/level in context of planned major, rather than making a hard rule if you want to be admitted, you need to take calc BC if it is offered. It’s relevant to consider that the person in the chance me thread was a prospective History/Spanish major, not a prospective Engineering/Math major.
Back when I applied to colleges, I was extremely unbalanced – strong in math/science, not strong in English/language. For example, my highest foreign language was Spanish 3 if I remember correctly, which was well below average for my students in my basic, public HS. Many students took as high as Spanish 6 (or equivalent in their foreign language). It was similar for English. I did not take AP English, which was uncommon among honors type students at my HS. Instead I took extremely advanced classes that were well aligned with my prospective engineering major and the types of advanced classes I would be taking in college. MIT, Stanford, Ivies, and other colleges I applied to all did not seem to have a problem with this and I expect instead focused on course levels and grades in classes that were most relevant to the classes I would be taking in college.
I think it’s really important to do what’s right for the kid – premature acceleration in math is to no one’s advantage and not worth it. Yes, part of the risk is getting stuck in a track that might not always be appropriate, but jumping the track is not great either. Both of my kids started in an accelerated track in middle school – for them, that meant starting with Math 7 in 6th grade (had they been more advanced in math, their initial placement would have been higher). So it meant Algebra 1 in 8th grade, which was fine. Fast forward to HS, they ended up on the Precalc (11th grade)/AP Stats (12th grade) track. Neither has taken Calc, and neither plans to. Their HS does offer BC and (I’m pretty sure) beyond. So they definitely did not take the most challenging math courses available. For the record, neither kid took physics, either.
But guess what? They both got into highly selective LACs. Their applications focused mostly (D23) or entirely (S26) on non-STEM achievements – they both were accomplished in student journalism, and my S26 has another spike in music. They’re both outstanding writers (if I may brag). My D did have more of a STEM side to her application, but it was in ecology (both mentored research and nature education), not math or the hard sciences. In college, one of her majors is environmental science, but her other is classics. She has never felt at a disadvantage for not having calculus. S26, I suspect, will stick mostly to humanities and social sciences, though you never know. If he continues to pursue his interests in political science, he might need to take more stats, but I can’t foresee a situation in which he would need to take calculus.
Not every kid is a STEM kid. It’s possible to distinguish yourself and even get admitted to highly selective colleges (if that’s your goal) if your strengths lie elsewhere. There are many paths to success, and of course admission to selective colleges is not the only measure of success.
“More stats” (at a more advanced level than AP statistics) may have calculus as a prerequisite, although bachelor’s degree programs in non-economics social sciences are unlikely to require that.
It’s possible. I took college-level stats without having had more math than HS pre-calc and did fine (of course, that was back in the dark ages, so perhaps expectations have changed). I don’t think he would want to major in econ, which is definitely a quant-heavy major at his future college, so any stats he takes would be linked to a different major, I’m guessing.
It is certainly possible to get into a top school without being in the top track for math. In fact, I know someone who took no calculus at all, only stats, and got into Harvard. It really depends on what else you are doing with your time.
The key isn’t just the level of the class, but how that class fits into the student’s overall narrative of rigor and interest. If a student is ‘pulled’ by a love of math, acceleration is great; if they are ‘pushed,’ it often backfires. Understanding the broader landscape of institutional requirements can help de-escalate some of this stress. Seeing how colleges across different regions categorize their entry requirements, such as the data found at here, helps put local school board policies into perspective. It’s a reminder that there are multiple pathways to elite higher education, and ‘maximum’ acceleration isn’t the only one.
Wharton explicitly says they are typically looking for “strong preparation in mathematics, including exposure to calculus in high school.” Whether they can be satisfied with AB when BC is available is not literally answered by this statement, but it seems intriguing to me this is now different from what they say for their School of Engineering and Applied Science, which is, “a strong preparation in physics and mathematics, particularly calculus.” Wharton only recently inserted the “exposure to” language, which sounds to me like they are suggesting it doesn’t need to be a lot of calculus in HS, just some.
Carnegie Mellon also breaks this down by school. For the College of Engineering, they require four year of math, and add this note:
*Four years of mathematics should include at least algebra, geometry, trigonometry, analytic geometry, elementary functions (pre-calculus) and preferably calculus. Advanced mathematics courses are strongly encouraged, especially a course in calculus.
Again this is not necessarily literally answering the question, but I think most of us agree when an undergrad program “strongly encourages” something, and it is available at your high school, then choosing not to do it could be suboptimal.
Finally, I agree this doesn’t mean kids should accelerate when that doesn’t actually make sense for them. If the premise of the hypothetical is a kid and/or parent has decided in middle school to target something like Wharton or the College of Engineering at CMU, I would suggest they are getting ahead of themselves. They should focus for now on what makes sense for that kid in terms of their continuing development, and then figure out what colleges make sense for that kid much later.
I understand this is not what some kids or parents want to hear, but if you are asking me what they SHOULD do, that’s what I think.
I’ll keep my comments to the intent of this thread as stated in the OP.
Since we are once again talking about highly selective colleges…of course it can be a disadvantage in admissions if the student hasn’t taken the highest level of math offered at their HS, especially if they are pursuing engineering or business.
It doesn’t matter if we all know examples where a student without the highest math was in fact admitted to [insert highly rejective school.]
Every year admissions get more competitive. Admissions today at these set of schools is nothing like it was a decade ago, let alone longer than that.
I personally read 3,000 apps this cycle. A large proportion of applicants took the highest math at their HS, and many took beyond that (via DE, non-DE via online HS or college offerings, or self study.)
Plenty of students who didn’t take the highest level of math offered directly addressed why in their apps (many cited middle/jr high placement policies.) Sometimes counselors addressed that in their LoR too. I find that context helpful and encourage students/counselors to address it because the school where I work really values math preparation.
Did some applicants without the highest math offered get accepted? Of course.
Were more of those applicants waitlisted or denied? Also yes.
Was the waitlist or denial sometimes directly tied to the student’s senior year math choice (e.g. taking AB instead of BC, AP stats instead of taking AP Calc, or NO senior math)? Again yes.
In the big picture, of course parents should prioritize what is best for their kid, and not fret about selective college admission in 6th grade, but we all know real life gets messy in that way.
No. Not necessarily the case. I think the concern is kids who don’t get to calc at all or whose school progression stops them at AB when BC is offered.
Our private school (9-12) realized that some kids were coming in from middle schools which had not gotten them far enough along to get to calc by senior year, so in the interest of equity, set up the math curriculum so that they could accelerate and get there without summer school if they wanted and were capable. No idea how many do this.
Ultimately, my advice to parents seeking scheduling advice is “do what you can to preserve your options.” Acceleration would be that route so long as it doesn’t decrease the student’s understanding and mastery. If the credential gets you into xyz school but you can’t do the work in a meaningful way, that’s not an option!
The purpose of this thread is not to chance a hypothetical (or real) applicant to Wharton. There is already a thread for that which resulted in this thread being split off.
And while I could have moved the 6 off-topic posts, I opted to delete since there is zero reason to continue the debate here, or elsewhere.