<p>Calc is only required for admittance to ~20 allopathic med schools (out of ~130). (A bunch do recommend Calc I.) Of those that require Calc, only 1 (or 2) require a full year of Calc. No med school requires Calc III.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>So what? Is it the job of a college to fix K-12? Either a four-year Uni has admission requirements, and enforces them, or it doesn’t. If a rural student is not ready for a four-year Uni, they can take “remedial” classes (repeat High school classes) at a community college and transfer. The students in nearly all cases would be better off educationally. Smaller classes, more committed teachers. Or, if it’s only one class, say Alg II, take over the summer prior to matriculating to the four-year.</p>
<p>And taxpayers would be better off, so the four-year Uni could actually teach more kids. Does it really make sense for California taxpayers to be paying top dollar for a year education at a Cal State when 90% of the matriculating Frosh require remediation?</p>
<p>It’s interesting to compare math requirements for prospective students at the various state flagships. Florida, Texas, Georgia, South Carolina and Florida all require 4 years of high school math. The University of Michigan requires 3-4 years, but recommends 4 years (not wanting to exclude exceptional students from other states who may not have been required to take 4 years of math to fulfill HS graduation requirements.</p>
<p>Most flagships require 3 years of math, but many of them recommend 4 years. Indiana University is unique in requiring 3.5 years of math (no specific recommendation).</p>
<p>As a NYS resident I was interested to see how SUNY schools operate on this question. Geneseo operates like many elite private LACs and universities in that it does not have a specific requirement, but recommends 4 years of math. SUNY Binghamton requires 3 years, but recommends 4 years. SUNY Buffalo has no requirement, but recommends 3 years of high school math. SUNY Albany requires 2 years of math, but recommends 4 years. SUNY Stony Brook requires 3 years of math (4 years for engineering prospects). Some of the SUNY colleges require 2 years of math, but most seem to require 3 years.</p>
<p>Of course, whether the requirement is 2, 3 or 4 years, none that I have looked at carefully specify that taking calc or pre-calc is a requirement. So 4 years of math in HS could consist of Algebra I, Geometry, Trig and Stats (or Business Math, College Algebra, etc.). That NYS publics appear to have among the lowest expectations re: math prep (at least on paper) among state universities might come as a huge surprise to many folks in the Empire State.</p>
<p>That is the point. Some are getting hung up on the world calculus…the issue and point is that kids should be PREPARED to be able to take calculus if they want or if they need when they arrive in college. They should be competent in Alg. I, Alg. II, Geometry and Trig or Stats or Pre-Calc if they are high school students and preparing to attend a selective college or university. I agree with Blue Bayou that it makes zero sense for a selective college…and we’re not talking about CCs, or non selective colleges and universities…we’re talking about selective colleges and universities…to have to “re-teach” high school math concepts to kids that supposedly and most likely are at the very minimum in the top 20% of their graduating classes. If the student never takes another math class after high school because he/she’s a music major or whatever it doesn’t matter, he/she should still be able to “pass” the math placement test for incoming freshman at a selective college and not have to repeat material that is covered in high schools. </p>
<p>Unless the colleges and universities have accelerated their expectations for top shelf high school students then the bar on the ACT is set too low and the high schools are not being rigorous with college bound students. It’s a sad day if kids with high school GPAs of 3.7 or better and ACT scores of 27 or better to get into UofM need a review class on Algebra and Geometry.</p>
<p>What really gets my dander is that so what if the state “only says” you need 3 years of this or that or the college or university says they accept students with 3 years of math and 2 years of this. Since when do kids that are college prep do the bare minimum to get into a selective college. It never crossed my mind to let my kids sign up for less than 4 years of English, Math, Science, Language and so on…if they had time in there schedule after checking the basics then they could take an esoteric class. They are in high school they should be maximizing the offerings not minimizing if they are college bound. I don’t know but I can guarantee you that if you wanted to go to UofM back in the seventies you better not have sent in an application with the bare minimum requirements. I’m getting all upset again.</p>
<p>Am I the only one who thinks state standards should be the minimum required to get Joe Blow out of high school with a basic education? State standards should have NOTHING to do with college prep kids, they should be maximizing their high school’s curriculum and isn’t that what just about every selective colleges says: we will look at the rigor of your curriculum in the context of what your school offers.</p>
<p>At my high school, they spend lots of time and effort working to bring the bottom students up, and also to raise the test scores of the middle-range students. The top students don’t get a lot of attention, and the kids taking calculus are considered the top students.</p>
<p>I realize there are other places where that’s not true. But in average America, my situation is probably not uncommon.</p>
I don’t know if anyone has made this point yet (or how relevant it is), but tenured college math faculty typically hate teaching the remedial courses. Because it’s hard to get the regular faculty to do them, they are often regulated to adjuncts, grad students, and the newest faculty members. (i.e. perhaps the cost to the school is rather less than for the regular curriculum courses)</p>
<p>“Since when do kids that are college prep do the bare minimum to get into a selective college. It never crossed my mind to let my kids sign up for less than 4 years of English, Math, Science, Language and so on…if they had time in there schedule after checking the basics then they could take an esoteric class. They are in high school they should be maximizing the offerings not minimizing if they are college bound.”</p>
<p>I guess part of the answer depends on what you mean by selective college. All of the SUNY schools are selective to one degree or another, yet they have set requirements that vary significantly from one school to another. While I doubt many high school students peruse common data sets, they do learn from their older siblings and classmates what it’s necessary to do, and what can be avoided, in prepping for college. It has not been uncommon among my daughters classmates to take the easiest path they can to the SUNY of their choice in order to keep up the GPA and class rank.</p>
<p>FWIW, we never gave our daughters much choice either about HS course selection. 4 years of math, science, English, social studies and foreign language were expected at a bare minimum regardless of NYS expectations. But I would say we were in a distinct minority among parents in our community.</p>
<p>don’t know if this has been posted already; as an alternative you can take intro Calc at your local CC the summer before going to your choice university. If it is a one-off requirement at your college and they recognize the local CC course for credit through reciprocity (i.e., it is approved for transfer credit)–you could be done w/Calc forever. Even if they do not accept it, it may be worth taking to get prepatory background for the course first semester in your college of choice. Or you could simply take and online calc course for free over the summer through M.I.T.'s Open Course work or even Stanford as I recall just to get warmed up and practice.</p>
<p>I don’t believe that Stanford has open courseware calculus.</p>
<p>MIT’s OCW entry is for single variable calculus which appears to cover Calc I and Calc II in one semester. It might not be the best approach for someone looking to go over Calc I material before taking the course.</p>
<p>I am surprised by the number of kids that have taken calculus I & II in high school and got 4 or 5 on AP test but repeat calculus I in college. This makes it harder to get a good grade because all these kids knew the subject matter already and set the curve.</p>
<p>Probably because the proficiency exams put them in Calculus 1. Passing the proficiency test at Michigan puts kids in a position to sign up for Calculus without having to take the catch up class. The proficiency test should only test to see if kids are “ready” for college level math. It’s a threshold type test although they call it a placement test.</p>
<p>Our school offers only “college prep” (CP) classes or honors classes (including AP and IB). The CP classes are usually jokes, they’re so easy. I don’t think those classes DO prep kids for college! The honors classes are typically very demanding. I wish there was a middle ground, because my second son needs something in-between CP and honors.</p>
<p>S says that nearly all the engineering students who took the math placement test with him had taken AP calculus, where they had done well & then retook calculus in their 1st semester in engineering. Any kid who hadn’t had calculus would have a tough time with all of them in the class. It took effort to challenge the U to advance out of calculus, so most of the kids just took the calculus course.</p>
<p>Some of us are not so strict. I let my son drop out of Spanish after Level 3 (which he took as a 9th grader) because he wanted to take more computer-related courses, and this gave him room in his schedule to do so. (He planned to major, and did major, in computer science in college.) I let my daughter take no math and no Spanish in 12th grade because she had completed AP BC Calculus and AP Spanish and wanted to take other subjects (social studies electives) instead of the beyond-AP advanced courses in these subjects. </p>
<p>The sky did not fall in on either of them.</p>
<p>I did insist that both of them take physics, even though it was not required. I really think that high school studies should be exposed to all three of the principal sciences – biology, chemistry, and physics. But that’s just me.</p>
<p>Older son took AP BC calculus in HS with a 5 but still did take calculus as 1st year in engineering because he was advised by his advisor in summer orientation to strongly consider doing so. Not sure he really needed to do this but seems pretty common. Younger son currently in engineering never had calculus in high school but placed into it as 1st semester freshman. Is currently a junior and has gotten A’s so far in the calculus classes he’s taken (multivariable,etc). So, there are many paths to calculus and you do not need to have necessarily taken it in high school to do well in college.</p>
<p>Repeating a 5 makes no sense to me unless one takes an honors-level or theory course, even though it seems to be very common to repeat in a regular-level course. A 4 or (especially) 3, on the other hand, might not indicate as strong a mastery of calculus as one would hope. Checking the university’s old final exams for calculus courses may be worthwhile for a new freshman who has AP credit choosing a first math course.</p>
<p>On the other hand, this is beyond what the point of the thread is, since students who completed calculus in high school were presumably calculus-ready before they took calculus in high school. But a student who has not taken calculus in high school can be calculus-ready if his/her knowledge of algebra, geometry, and trigonometry is good.</p>
<p>some engineering, business school and pre-med kids take the intro calc to boost their GPA prior to a demanding course schedule; others simply feel they need to take it as a refresher. either way they do indeed kill the curve for your typical liberal arts kid that is forced to take at least one semester of calc. Most of the latter are quite happy to escape w/a solid C and never look back.</p>
<p>The former remain on track in cut throat programs (business, med and engineering) for much of their undergrad careers, some lacking either a liberal arts education or the ability to write well upon graduation.</p>
<p>Which school was this? I am aware of only a few schools which do not allow advancing past first freshman calculus based on AP/IB/etc. credit, and these are super-elite STEM schools whose freshman calculus courses are accelerated honors courses compared to most other schools’ freshman calculus courses.</p>
<p>Repeating courses that one already knows is a waste of time and tuition. It also makes the grading curve harder for those taking the course for the first time.</p>
<p>pleaseadvise, these seem like pretty big generalizations.My engineering grad son can certainly write well and is doing very well in consulting right now. My younger son never took calculus in high school (took AP Statistics instead) but was not disadvantaged with a curve by being in calculus with kids who had taken it before.</p>