This has probably been discussed before but a quick search didn’t bring it up. Our school district has drastically changed our math pathway for middle school and high school due to Common Core, and it’s gotten much harder to get to Calc in high school. Parents are pushing back on the school district. One complaint is specifically around likelihood of getting into an engineering program at a decent University if you don’t have Calc on your transcript. Does anyone have any statistics on that? I’d be especially interested in schools like San Jose State as I think our school board could relate better to kids being left out there than at Stanford.
No California public university requires engineering majors to complete calculus in high school, although entering frosh are expected to be ready for calculus 1.
The schedule templates they list all start in calculus 1. Here are some mechanical engineering examples for some California public universities and Stanford:
A few schools do expect calculus in high school, either generally, or for engineering majors. Caltech, Harvey Mudd, and WUStL are examples. But the number of such schools is very small, and they all appear to be private schools much more selective than SJSU.
It can be advantageous for a student intending engineering to have calculus in high school, if the course is of good quality (meaning that A students who take the AP test afterward typically earn scores of 5). It can also be disadvantageous if a student is on the accelerated math track and has the opportunity to take calculus in high school, but chooses not to (as opposed to not being able to due to school curriculum structure and middle school math placement).
Thanks for the info. I guess I’m wondering, though, how not having Calc in hs impacts admissions? If you have 2 students with pretty similar stats, and one has gotten further ahead in math at a high school where some but not all students are able to take AP Calc, wouldn’t that more prepared student generally be more likely to get into the program? There are probably figures for some of these schools that say something like 50% of our freshman class took math as far as Calculus AB, and another 25% took math through Calculus BC in high school.
SJSU (and other CSUs except CPSLO): No, admits by CSU eligibility index calculated from GPA and SAT or ACT score.
CPSLO: Yes, significant bonus points for up to 4 semesters of math beyond algebra 2 (meaning 2 semesters of precalculus and 2 semesters of calculus to get the maximum bonus points for math beyond the minimum requirements).
UCB (and other UCs), Stanford: Hard to tell due to holistic admission reading. For the student without calculus in high school, it likely depends on whether it was not available to him/her (due to middle school math placement into a sequence leading to precalculus in 12th grade), or s/he chose not to take it even when it was available to him/her (even though s/he completed precalculus in 11th grade).
My DD has this problem because she transferred schools in high school. During her junior year she asked the admission counselor at Georgia Tech (her #1 choice) if not having calculus due to not fault of her own would hurt her for admissions. The rep told her that Georgia Tech would not consider her application without calculus since 97% of the accepted students had calculus. The summer before senior year she took it online through BYU and was accepted to Georgia Tech.
The next year one of my students really wanted to go to Boston College. We noticed that calculus was a requirement for even potential business majors. My student wrote the BC admission rep to inquire if not having calculus (again due to the high schools scheduling issues) would hurt her chances for admission. The BC rep wrote that my student “would be at a significant disadvantage in the admission pool without calculus and that she should do everything in her power to take calculus.” This student decided not to take calculus over summer, she applied to BC and was rejected.
@intparent I may be wrong, but I would bet that incoming freshmen at Mudd who have ONLY taken Calc I (AB) are already one step behind most of their classmates.
Perhaps consider rephrasing the argument as “students better prepared for engineering from taking Calc in high school” rather than a requirement for X many schools? Lots of students start in Calc 1 in college, but it is advantageous to have Calc 1 and even 2 out of the way - clears the way for other classes.
a. Many do poorly on the placement exams (e.g. AP exam), so they do not get advanced placement, or their knowledge is shaky enough that going to the next level course is not a good idea.
b. Some students think that repeating calculus 1 after a 5 on the AP exam makes for an “easy A”. But such students may slack off too much and find that they wasted a course and did not even get an A.
c. At a small number of schools (Caltech and Harvey Mudd), the “calculus” course is very proof and theory heavy, so that a normal high school or college calculus course is not equivalent or accepted for advanced placement (but is an expected prerequisite).
My usual suggestion is that a student who finds that his/her AP or IB exam score allows for subject credit and advanced placement in math try the college’s old final exams of the course(s) that can be skipped, so that s/he can check his/her knowledge by the college’s standards. (Of course, if the student is not planning to take any more advanced courses that depend on calculus as a prerequisite, s/he can just take the credit and use the schedule space for something else.)
@STEM2017, my kid only had AB. She did self study BC with her Cakc teacher, but the teacher got sick and missed three months of school, so she didn’t really get much of it. Also no AP sciences offered at her school. Yes, the first year at Mudd was wicked difficult for her.
@ucbalumnus thanks for response. I have a son who is a freshman who is interested in studying engineering. He took Honors Alg1 this year and is acing it.He is going to double up and take Honors Geometry and Honors Alg 2 next year, so that by senior year he will be able to take Calculus. Hadn’t really given much thought to AP calc, vs honors Calc. Is it critical to take AP Calc?
I know very little about the process needed to become an engineer, just learning now.
A student interested in a math-heavy college major like engineering should choose the most rigorous math courses available to him/her while in high school. I.e. if non-AP calculus in your high school is a less rigorous option than AP calculus courses, it would be the less desirable course.
My daughter did not take calc in high school. She is in engineering. She took calc 1 and said about half the class had had calc in high school. She got an A, many of the others who had already taken it did not.