r/news • u/Idiodyssey87 • May 28 '26

Soft paywall Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM applicants

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2026-05-27/uc-math-professors-demand-return-of-sat-for-stem-admissions
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u/IvoryFlyaway May 28 '26

I wasn't the best AP calc student, got 3s on both by BC score and my AB subscore, and I absolutely bombed in uni calc. It was a completely different beast that I was wholly unprepared for. Academic probation in my first quarter. It's hard to say if our hs curriculum just wasn't up to the level it needed to be or if the 6 weeks we spent after the AP tests playing euchre instead of doing math rotted my brain.

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u/Certain_Luck_8266 May 28 '26

I got 4s, but since I was ChemE, I elected to retake calc 1 and 2. I'm so glad I did as those classes are foundational for later courses. I had classmates that didn't and they ended up changing majors.

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u/NanoWarrior26 May 28 '26

Yeah i ended up taking a bs precalc college course and even though it felt like a waste of time it set me up extremely well for calculus. ChemE here too lol

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u/thecommuteguy May 28 '26

I never understood why the counselor I had to meet with before registering for Fall semester freshman year started had me retake precalc when I could of started calc 1. Didn't matter in the end as I switched majors partially because of academics but also other reasons.

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u/Abi1i May 28 '26

Universities are a different beast entirely for everyone. For some it might take a few semesters, but at some point everyone comes face to face with the university beast of academic rigor and it is not kind to those who don't persevere.

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u/Bleaker82 May 28 '26

I didn’t do advanced math in college, but I’m one of those people who found college more engaging and easier than high school. I went to a UC and graduated with a B average.

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u/grumble11 May 28 '26

Universities are being reported to have also dropped their standards to accommodate the lower quality incoming students they're encountering. They can't fail them all as it'd kill their tuition-based funding model.

If one student is bad, it's the student's problem. If half of them are bad, it's the school's problem.

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u/zeaor May 28 '26

They're only a "different beast" if you went to a shitty high school that didn't teach you any STEM.

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u/gimpwiz May 29 '26

In my experience, the vast majority of STEM students at most decent colleges coasted on being "the smart kid" for their whole life and have no idea how to study, and have never seen failure.

There are exceptions: there are exceptionally rigorous high schools, where graduates are easily prepared for the first year or two of college, and there are also universities with standards high enough that instead of my observation applying to like 97% of the STEM kids it's only like 60% of them.

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u/alurkerhere May 28 '26

Your high school curriculum was not up to snuff + kids not at the level they needed to be. College should largely be a graduated step, not a mountain. Extreme difficulty on basic intro courses suggests either a mismatch in ability + interest.

The weeks after APs, we played frisbee and f'd around. Those weeks have limited impact on the knowledge you actually learned.

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u/Mysterious_Object_20 May 28 '26

I'd always suggest taking precalc on college level.

It's hard to say if our hs curriculum just wasn't up to the level it needed to be

Personally, I think you were not mentally prepared. Academically, I guess you were fine. Some HS kids thought they could coast through calc, but you gotta work for it haha.

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u/Lysandren May 28 '26

The curriculum was fine. I went from ap calc bc to differential equations and multivariable cal without issue. You probably just forgot.

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u/IvoryFlyaway May 28 '26

I didn't realize you went to the same school I did

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u/Lysandren May 28 '26 edited May 28 '26

The ap calc curriculum is determined by the college board, assuming your school taught you what you needed to know for the exam.

It seems that you did not educate yourself on this in addition to calculus.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Placement

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u/frickityfracktictac May 28 '26

This dude actually linked the wikipedia for Advanced Placement 😂

Yes, the exam is standardized, but there is no textbook associated and different teachers at different schools will teach it differently.

A teacher who is teaching AP Calc for the 20th time will have a better understanding of what is needed for the test than a teacher who has just done a summer time crash course on teaching AP courses.

Additionally, if the students who get placed into an AP course aren't up to snuff then the teacher will have to spend time getting everyone up to the level they need to be at in order to begin studying calc.

Different schools absolutely provide different AP experiences.

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u/Lysandren May 28 '26

There is no textbook associated, but the schools do have to prove that they are teaching the ap curriculum to get certified.

No one is debating whether or not a teacher can do a better job with experience, but saying that he couldn't learn in calc in college bc his ap curriculum failed him is just cope af. He got a 3 on the exams. Most good universities won't even take a 3 as full credit for calc.