My point is that colleges wouldn’t be offering the first class in the calc sequence if the ONLY kids taking it were kids that had already taken it in HS. Clearly, they are admitting kids who have not taken Calc before. Princeton and MIT are not known for offering robust remedial education….
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Not necessarily. I’ve got the perspective here of a humanities person, not a STEM person, but I can say that the AP English and history classes (and probably other social science classes, too) absolutely do not replicate the college experience or expectations in comparable intro classes. They really don’t come close. If that’s also the case for STEM classes, then it makes sense for students to start at the intro level (or wherever they left off in HS) to build a stronger foundation before moving on to more advanced material. (It might not be the case in STEM classes – I really don’t know, and I suspect that many of these classes have more standard curricula and objectives than humanities and social science classes do. But I’ve heard that it’s often recommended that students with AP credit in STEM repeat courses they’ve ostensibly covered.)
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If the student loves math and would be bored and frustrated without acceleration, then it seems a good idea. For others, I think it is wise to consider the best use of time and energy, pursuing genuine interests, as well as opportunities for down time.
It is helpful to remember that top colleges are assembling a class, with a mix of talents and interests. I don’t think that an entire class of kids with 4.0’s, 800’s and advanced math accomplishments is the goal of admissions.
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I agree with everything you just stated and having been a Bay Area resident for nearly 30 years I vehemently dislike the cult like worship of the STEM/tech ruling class and the push for kids to only pursue those majors, but I want to clarify my comment. My comment was in response to Mwfan1921 post and this particular line, “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.” Colleges should be upfront with students about this.
I have been a teacher for decades and am in no way a proponent of kid A who took the most advanced math class should be offered admission over kid B who did not. I value holistic admissions especially when it works for a kid who did not have advantages in high school and life.
BUT colleges should still be more transparent in their marketing pitches. The onus of this process is always put on the applicant and I think the fact that these kids are still young gets lost a lot in the conversation about how to make this process less stressful for teenagers. Even on this site when students are asking questions the responses can be extremely condescending often along the lines of, ‘Well why did you not look at the CDS data before you applied (because most people do not know what that is!), why didn’t you run the NPC before you applied, etc.” The blame for not having the full picture is often placed on the applicant when the colleges could actually provide more data on the front page of the admissions websites to help these kids out. And I am not talking about the students from well resourced families but all the others whose parents do not know how the process works.
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Agree that we can all do a better job with the kids from homes where the parents are NOT focused on college admissions 24/7!
Questions for discussion:
Do the large majority of students show themselves to be analytical/math strong in middle school?
Do nearly all schools emphasize Math and English as the two most critical subjects? Do we really believe math doesn’t matter for everyone?
Are people surpised that engineers and business people need to be better than average in math?
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Calc AB and BC do a good job covering through what in college are sometimes known as Calc 1 and Calc 2. I am skeptical repeating those after a good score is often justifiable.
Physics C and CSA are largely in the same category for me. The curriculum for the relevant college courses is usually sufficiently standardized.
Bio and Chem are more interesting to me, because sometimes the focus, content, and so on can vary, particularly in the intro sequences for majors (which may be styled as honors versions).
I note there are sometimes Honors versions of the intro Calc-based Physics sequence, but I think usually it would still be hard to justify actually repeating. MAYBE with E&M though.
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I think sometimes kids with strong latent potential for math don’t do well in middle school math, including because they might be seriously bored.
Math through algebra is fairly considered a baseline expectation for most professionals and managers. Calculus, though, simply isn’t really broadly necessary.
I think sciences and business fields have varying relationships to advanced math. Physicists generally need to be strong in math, but with Biologists, say, I think some can basically be college-level average. If you want to go into Quantitative Finance you probably should be strong in math, but there are MANY successful business managers who again might be no better than average at math.
My husband’s department only awards AP Bio credit as the non-major/gen ed Biology course and the major level Biology is required to be taken by all Bio majors. Plus, the major level Biology is a pre-req course for a lot of other courses that other STEM majors take. So effectively that AP Bio credit is only useful to non-STEM kids to count as a gen ed and STEM kids usually decline accepting the credit because it just ends up as elective credit that they want to leave free on their schedules for financial aid purposes.
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When a friend’s D was struggling in math in her early elementary years, the teacher said, “maybe she’s just not a math kid.” I’ve heard this before. Her dad, who works in a tech field, was livid. Would that teacher have dismissed a reading issue as lightly? As in “maybe she’s just not going to be much of a reader”.
It does feel that our culture, while valuing STEM skills, treats them differently from skills like reading. There are, no doubt, parents who see no point in acceleration in math. These are the same ones who can (and do!) list things they learned in high school and college that they never used again.
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But then they must be stronger at math pertaining to their work - business math. Alternatively, they are so senior that they can hire people with complementary skills. Hard to be respected if you can’t dig into numbers from my experience.
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Once again, back to topic please
Just thought of something… is this because they can’t easily get teachers at the highest math levels?
This is absolutely true. My daughter has two good friends who got into UCSB with weighted GPAs of around 3.5. They are dancers pursing BFAs! The same is true of UCI. They didn’t take calc and not very many APs.
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Most business major undergraduate programs require only calculus for business majors, which is typically less rigorous than regular college calculus or AP calculus. So the idea that business applicants need to have AP calculus BC or higher in high school seems a little off. It may be a byproduct of the business major at the college, or the college itself, being generally highly competitive for admission, so that maximum rigor and advancement in everything is favored (or believed to be favored).
But even in the latter case, it does not make much sense for business major admission to require or favor high school math beyond the math requirements for graduating with a business major.
Agree with calculus (though I usually recommend that students try the college’s old final exams to make a more informed placement decision on whether to skip).
But physics is somewhat less standardized, and college physics may use more math than AP physics C (particularly in E&M where multivariable calculus is at least a corequisite). Frosh/soph CS is also somewhat less standardized. But in these cases, the college will not list AP scores as being allowed to substitute for the courses.
Biology and chemistry also have lots of premeds. Medical schools tend to frown on AP credit for premed courses, and many GPA-focused premeds prefer to grade-grub by repeating AP credit rather than take more advanced courses to substitute.
Two master’s degrees in finance, partner at fancy consulting firms, never used the calculus after school.
It’s overrated. Just another artificial hurdle to keep folks out. Comfortable with algebra and spreadsheets? You’re good. And no, you don’t have to be a math genius. In fact, I suspect with the tools available now, its much easier (less math analytical-y) to be an Associate than in the Pleistocene when I was.
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The majors or areas where math beyond single variable calculus (which a 12th grade student on the +2 or higher math track might take) are often required for college graduation in the major are relatively few:
- Math, applied math, statistics, and related (operations research, actuarial science, etc.)
- Computer science (not IT/MIS/CIS)
- Engineering majors
- Physics and chemistry
- Economics for pre-PhD (not most economics majors)
- Quantitative finance (not most business majors)
If an applicant to @Mwfan1921 's college (perhaps someone asking @heavyweightcollege for college admission advice) was on the +2 math track but opted out of more advanced math in 12th grade after completing calculus in 11th grade, and is obviously not interested in any of the above majors in college, would the admission traders at that college view it as a demerit for that applicant?
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Will you please say this more simply? From a college admissions perspective, I think you are using the word “required” in your posts to have too much weight. From my experience, required is more of an entry point for eligibility, but rarely the optimal.
“Required” in my previous post was for graduation in the major, not admission. (Edited previous post for clarity.)
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