Why would MIT 8.01 or other first semester calculus-based physics course require prerequisites beyond calculus and high school physics? MIT recommends high school physics for applicants: What to do in high school | MIT Admissions
I wanted to throw something in for consideration with regards to GPA. We need to take into account the skill level of the teachers.
My kids attended a very very average high school. The range in teacher proficiency at our school was very wide. Specifically with the AP teachers: some were off-the-charts awesome; some were off-the-charts not-awesome. Some were masters of their subject, but terrible at teaching the subject. And, to top it off, for most AP subjects, there is ONE teacher who teaches it. Bad teacher for AP Bio…tough luck…if you want to stay on the honors science track…gotta jump over that hurdle.
In my experience, the kids with the not-so-great teachers put in double the time (teaching themselves, dealing with teacher disorganization, seeking out feedback on exams) but didn’t walk away with the grades that reflected the situation. Kids with awesome teachers had grades that much more accurately reflected their proficiency.
That’s my problem with relying so heavily on GPA (without another good standardized data point). A few crummy teachers can really tank a GPA.
One more thing, at our school we also have classes where two or more teachers teach the same subject. There are wild swings between easy graders and impossible graders…Yet another situation where the students’ final grades aren’t necessarily accurate indicators of mastery of subject.
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Many aren’t going to be fully prepared for MIT. I have a friend who was shocked by the rigor of MIT and nearly flunked out as a Freshman. That person went on to get a Phd and now teaches at MIT. There are many students for whom AP Physics or classes beyond Calculus just aren’t available in high school. They have to figure out how to get the best education possible. Online makes things easier but not everyone has equal access and not all programs are free.
I think MIT does a good job trying to ferret out who has the most potential and who has demonstrated math aptitude and interest. Is it perfect, no but they can get the data they need. And I also think that kids without rigorous high school programs can be at a disadvantage.
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Since the vast majority of US college students don’t attend an “elite” or “top” college, this debate is really focused on a tiny subset of high achieving students who are competing tooth and nail for the small number of available spots at top 20 schools. People with high testing kids are frustrated by TO not because they are really afraid that these schools will admit kids who can’t do the work (nearly all admits graduate), but because TO has made an already hyper competitive process even more competitive. Now kids aren’t just competing with kids who have fantastic grades/SATs/ECs etc. - they are also competing with kids who were missing just the standardized tests.
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The goal of accommodations is not to give an extra “general” boost to those with a disability. It’s to give them ACCESS to the activity. A recorded text book for the blind doesn’t give them an advantage - it gives them access to the material. A scribe for a person without arms doesn’t give them an advantage to make up for their lack of arms - it gives them access to the test.
The idea of extended time on SAT/ACT was supposed to be that for those students with very slow processing speed, they’d have some extra time to allow them to process and answer questions that they knew the answer to. They could do the work, just not fast.
The problem is that the SAT/ACT relies greatly on processing speed to spread the test takers out along a continuum. Most students cannot finish the entire test with a little time to spare. So giving any students extra time gives them not only access, but a big advantage. If the test were designed to not rely on being able to work with extraordinary speed and accuracy, but just to test knowledge, at a comfortable rate for any student, then giving a student with slow processing speed would give them access, but not an advantage. Then, no parents would seek extra time for bogus diagnoses, since it would not give their child an advantage.
The failure of the test companies to design a test that covered only high school level material, and did not test processing speed, but simply mastery, meant that giving some students extra time has made the test invalid. It’s time that they fixed it, by giving ALL students plenty of time. Meanwhile, the pandemic has simply made the testing companies obsolete.
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AP Physics 1 while called an AP class is like a typical first Physics specific class. (MIT doesn’t actually require AP classes and in some cases, Honors clases are better than AP classes.) It’s concepts, some algebra, some trig, no Calculus: Kinematics, Dynamics, Circular Motion and Gravitation, Energy, Momentum, Simple Harmonic Motion, Torque and Rotation, Electricity and Electric fields, DC circuits, Mechanical Waves and Sounds (primarily oscillations).
AP Physics 2 contain some more difficult concepts than AP Physics 1: Fluids, Thermodynamics, Electricity and Magnetism, Waves and Optics, and Nuclear/Quantum/Atomic Physics.
I didn’t say you have to do coursework that is more than AP Physics 2. You can self-learn a number of things (in fact, every applicant that I’ve had has self-learned something).
Go visit Physics Girl and do her Physics 101 series.
Go to Khan Academy.
Go to YouTube and do a series like The Mechanical Universe.
There are so many resources (and even free ones) that are available these days.
For the record, for 11th grade, I ended up doing two years of high school Physics in that year (still got the highest grade), and that covered more material than AP Physics 1+2.
Here are topics NOT covered in AP Physics 1+2 that I got into in my two years of high school Physics:
Relativity
Planetary motion, Kepler’s Laws, Elliptical orbits, hyperbolic trajectories
Fermi questions
Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle
Doppler Effect
Ballistics/trajectory (e.g., “you’re standing at the free throw line and you can shoot the ball at v velocity … what angle do you need to shoot the basketball?” “your horde of longbowmen shoot arrows at v m/s – what is the maximum range?”)
(For 12th grade, I ended up doing Honors Physics while self-studying 8.01 via The Mechanical University – Caltech’s first year Physics – and I ASE’d out of 8.01 upon arriving at MIT.)
What MIT “recommends” (hehe) vs. what I know, well:
- AP Physics 2 doesn’t nearly go fast enough. AP Physics C (and getting a 5) would be about half the speed of MIT.
- Even if you could take 8 AP Physics C-like classes, that begins to approximate the courseload at MIT.
And I’ll opine:
3) AP Physics 1+2 don’t go over enough topics to at least familiarize someone to Physics.
Do study outside the classroom. Really.
Re: The HS grade inflation worry.
This is why school reports exist as a part of the application evaluation process.
HS GPAs do not exist in a vacuum even absent standardized tests, so no need to freak out about that.
That said, though, HS GPA does predict first-year college success pretty well, no matter the presence or absence of grade inflation. So maybe even that worry isn’t the Very Big Issue it’s often portrayed as on the CC fora, you know?
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Those vary, as well. The school report from my D21’s school is so generic that it’s virtually useless.
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I’m so glad to have read your post. Congratulations on the hard work and subsequently raising your score. It really underscores what I’ve been thinking reading the posts from people who go on about how unfair prepping is and how obsolete test scores are. What about the kids who take time to do the prep, spending hours and hours of their time prepping instead of doing more enjoyable activities? Doesn’t this dedication, determination, and hard work say anything about how they’ll do at these top universities? Yes, I agree, the accessibility to these tests and the prepping was severely hindered due to COVID. Yes, I agree, lower socioeconomic kids has a disadvantage due to limited resources–although I do think these AO are savvy enough to see that factor in someone’s application. What I don’t agree with is getting rid of requiring test scores all together. Why take out an admission factor that would reward a kid who is a hard worker?
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With TO, a student can still submit great test scores. It’s their way of showing they should be able to handle college level material.
TO also allows other students the option of showing something else they feel proves they can handle the material.
Admissions can figure out who they think makes the best case for themselves.
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MIT requires all incoming students to take a diagnostic test, to help decide which freshman physics class is the most appropriate choice. Options include the following. A large portion of highly selective private colleges do something similar, which gives students who had relatively weaker HS preparation a chance to catch up. I doubt any colleges including MIT require students to take AP-level physics during HS, although taking the class may be expected when it offered at a particular student’s HS.
8.0.1L (L stands for “longer”) – Slower class for students with weaker HS backgrounds
8.01 – Standard class
8.012 – More advanced/rigorous class, for students with stronger HS backgrounds
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I do not think I said or implied that??
Anyway, be aware that “slow processing” in isolation, is sometimes rejected as a disability as documentation for a 504, and therefore it can be harder for some students to receive warranted accommodations.
IMO, the purpose of extended time is provide fairness to a test that may not be fair to someone who has a documented disability.
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If the disability makes them unable to work accurately at lightning speed, and the test is designed to require just that, then extra time gives them an advantage.
The solution is to make the test NOT based upon being able to work accurately at lightning speed. The test is supposed to measure what one has learned thus far, and the SAT was supposed to measure one’s “aptitude” - supposed to predict one’s ability to do more challenging work in college.
Giving an advantage like extra time on a test that measures the ability to work accurately at lightning speed doesn’t make the test “fair”. Should students be handicapped, like in golf, and those who have a lower IQ get extra points to make the test “fair”?
It is very reasonable to argue that the ability to work accurately at lightning speed should not be a significant component to the competitive college application process. SAT and ACT’s failure to address this issue, with a redesign that would not measure speed, combined with the masking of whether or not the student received extra time, has made their tests worthless. A lot of schools were going test optional, some even test-blind, before the pandemic, and now the pandemic has given the schools an entire two years at least with students applying “test-optional”. It’s going to give them some valuable data as to whether the SAT/ACT was worth anything when it came to predicting a student’s ability to achieve in college.
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My question is do I want my kid spending all those hours learning how to take the test better? Sure it shows determination and work ethic. But so do many other more worthwhile endeavors. Students don’t acquire any real new knowledge since the test prep consists of learning how to take the test, strategies to buy more time.
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Standardized testing is one way to keep HS’s honest, imo. If the middle 50% at a top tier private school is 1400-1550, and the GPAs are very high overall across the board, the scores and grades are aligned and may not imply grade inflation, but rather a very talented student body. On the other hand, if the middle 50% is 1050-1300, but the GPAs are a 3.8 average, the college might be right to question the level of rigor or grade inflation. If test scores aren’t in the mix, what’s to keep high schools from grade inflation to get better placements?
For the record, I’m not arguing that colleges could require SAT/ACT scores this year. But it’s clear from reading the board that many students did take the tests (in some cases more than once) and aren’t submitting scores. This is fine and within the TO policy, but I can understand how a student who had every reason to expect that test scores would be important (as they have been for decades) and worked hard to earn a high score is feeling a bit disappointed and cheated by the sharp (albeit unavoidable) turn of events in which his or her score isn’t important.
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My kid feels as though you do what you can and that’s all you can do. Kind of a “Put your best foot forward attitude”. I feel the same. Though I do have a tiny little feeling that everyone is in favor of their little edge some of which are given by birth ( legacy, URM, 1st gen) and yet want to take away anything that gives someone else an edge.
The silver lining of the Covid nightmare has been that the world looks very different and small things often don’t matter much in the scheme of things.
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The nature of applying to hypercompetitive colleges is that there will be much more disappointment than not.
I very honestly don’t see why this sort of disappointment should be thought of as a bigger deal than any of the other disappointments inherent in the process.
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I do not have a dog in the fight, but I do have a particular expertise in what you are trying to discuss. Message me if you want. Truly do not understand your point and why it is being directed at me.
The vast majority of selective colleges are test optional this year, not test blind. Students can submit test scores if they choose to. If submitted, the score will be considered and will influence the decision. I am assuming students with “high scores” on the SAT/ACT were able to take the SAT/ACT.
For the disappointed, peeved, and aggravated- maybe a way to frame is to think of tests this year as the Covid equivalent of an arts supplement.
There are some schools that welcome the supplement- so if you’re anywhere from a competent violinist to near concert level- you are welcome to submit it. It may or may not hurt, and it may or may not help. But for kids who don’t play an instrument- and have NO supplement to send in- it would be ludicrous for them to be peeved at kids who do submit, right? And I’m sure there are talented kids all over the country who could submit the supplement but decide not to. Either because their teacher knows that in the grand scheme of things their artistic ability is average, or because the wanna be biostatistician decides to emphasize other things in his or her application.
You can’t get peeved either way. Submit, don’t submit.
If a high scoring kid got to take the SAT’s this year- fantastic. Send them in. High scores won’t get you in, but they aren’t likely to hurt you either.
But a pet peeve?
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