<p>Hello, I'm international.</p>
<p>What are the typical ages of first year College/university students?</p>
<p>18 or 19</p>
<p>hmm…that’s normal.</p>
<p>I wonder why the maths standard is very low.</p>
<p>Is the maths section in the SAT the actual level of maths you have? Don’t you do calculus an stuff?</p>
<p>Some students take calculus in high school and some don’t.</p>
<p>Don’t get me started on math education in the US. Sigh.</p>
<p>Well…don’t see why life would be worth living without studying calculus.</p>
<p>Students in the US take calculus.<br>
You are more than welcome to go on living your life outside of the US if your opinion of the standards of US students is so low and arrogant.</p>
<p>Most freshmen I know are 18, or just about to turn 18. Most college bound kids have to have taken at least Pre-Calculus before college. Many take first year Calculus (I did). Many take higher levels, as well. I know several students from my high school class that were two, three, or four years ahead of the rest of us, one even competed and placed very well (gold, twice) in the International Math Olympiad. In fact, this year the US team took second place in this competition. So even though the average students is not a math wiz, I wouldn’t say that we are significantly inferior to other countries in the area of mathematics. It’s just that students are able to pursue subjects which they like and in which they can excel. If someone writes well, or draws well, there is very little need to pursue higher levels of math. And there’s a whole lot more to life than calculus. <em>rolls eyes.</em> But I am glad that you have found I subject that you find interesting and fulfilling.</p>
<p>^^well-said^^^ runner. </p>
<p>The SAT is a nationally-normed test that tests math knowledge up until Calculus. Traditionally, most students who take calculus in the US system take it their senior year, while the SAT test is taken either junior or first semester of senior year. Because of the US traditional course sequence and the SAT being nationally normed resulting consistently in a Bell Curve (normal distribution) fit with a mean of ~500 and a standard deviation of ~115 (<a href=“http://media.collegeboard.com/digitalServices/pdf/research/SAT-Percentile-Ranks-2012.pdf”>http://media.collegeboard.com/digitalServices/pdf/research/SAT-Percentile-Ranks-2012.pdf</a>), the most elite students find they score very well on the Math section of the SAT. It is claimed by some schools that they use the SAT simply to normalize grading schemes across disparate schools, so it simply serves a a rough guide as to how inflated or realistic the submitted grades are. The SAT is taken by a broad swath of college-bound students, including not only non-math majors, but also low-threshold institutions, and is not considered an elite test, nor one that differentiates abilities of those who are more competent/advanced in their math abilities.</p>