I was contacted this year to tutor a 5th grader for the placement test so she can place in to pre-algebra in sixth grade. That’s the reality in our district. 10 year olds being prepped to place in to the accelerated track because their parents are worried about college admissions if they are not on the most advanced track.
Do high school counselors refuse to give the “most demanding” curriculum indication on the counselor recommendation for highly selective private colleges (not relevant to UCs/CSUs which do not use counselor recommendations) if the student is not in the top math track determined by elementary/middle school placement? Or do parents believe that to be true even if it is not?
@ucbalumnus I am not sure these parents even know about that check box (which I agree is not applicable for UC). They just see the children of friends who get in to LA/Berkeley and see that those kids were by and large, on that track.
Even if the GCs give the most demanding curriculum for taking Calc AB/BC, these parents, wouldn’t believe that anyway. At the risk of generalizing, these parents are mainly Asian, if not all Asian, and they think only one subject is important for admissions - math! So they get bent out of shape if their kids are not getting homework in second grade. They make their kids accelerate in middle school, have them take the class in the summer if they’re behind (meaning not on track for BC as a junior). and place out of that class. Some high schools don’t allow this, so that’s progress.
Do you notice there are no threads on "I’m worried my kid is taking APUSH as a jr, will that hurt his/her admissions? It’s all about Calculus. That being said, there are some kids who can handle the math and want to accelerate, where the parents are not forcing the issue.
Yes, these parents are Asian-American and at our high school, which is ~20% Asian-American there might be one or two non-Asians in BC as juniors, but only one or 2. The 5 sophomores are all Asian-American.
@theloniusmonk I specifically said in “my” district. Students are judged in the local context. That is the context in my district. I am perfectly aware that is not the case everywhere else.
Our high school, my daughter’s year: 3 students in Calc BC as 9th graders, all European-Americans. One Asian-American in Calc AB in 9th grade. A few years later, one Asian American 8th grader in Calc BC, but that did not go so well.
I think an issue that has not been discussed in connection with the “race to calculus,” is “What is the alternative, for a student who really understands math?” There may be few schools that have implemented the AoPS suggestion of better pre-calculus math. It is certainly possible, in principle. But it requires teachers who understand math pretty deeply, to be able to handle it.
My daughter was fortunate to have a really good 7th grade math teacher, who truly understood math. But he was rather atypical for the school system, even though it is a good school system (relative to our state).
Two of the 9th graders in Calc BC took AP Statistics the next year, rather than more advanced math at the university. They understood topics that the AP Statistics teacher really did not (chi-squared test, anyone?), and one of them wound up serving as a sort of “auxiliary AP Statistics teacher.”
My daughter took the university probability and statistics course that had multi-variable calculus as a pre-requisite, instead of AP Statistics, though she also took the AP Statistics test. If you look at some of the material that the College Board has posted on the free-response questions for AP Statistics, you will probably be able to see why my spouse refers to it as “Behavioral Compliance Math.” For example, suppose that you want to apply the chi-squared test to a set of data in “boxes.” You have to state that the data fit the requirements for applicability of the chi-squared test, or you are docked points on the free response. So far, okay. But apparently you have to note explicitly an inequality about the numbers in the boxes. If 7 is the smallest, in this example case, your answer has to include 7 > 5, to receive full credit. Really? (I am drawing on a memory of the CB posted, graded free-response questions from about a decade ago, so the details may not be quite correct, but the need for the trivial inequality is certainly correct.)
Now, imagine this situation, which has been set up by quite well-educated teachers of statistics, but translated into a typical high school classroom at a good-ish high school. It would drive a good young mathematician bonkers!
I am reporting what I see in my district. My kid is attending one of the two high schools on the trimester system where you can only take 3 trimesters of math a year at most. Right now, my kid is planning two trimesters of math per year to AP Calc AB or Stats. The families who want extra acceleration can transfer to one of three schools on the quarter system. The typical family that seeks extra acceleration has engineer parents from elite overseas universities, their students are involved in science Olympiad, robotics, cyber security, math competition, etc. extracurricular activities.
What was the point of bringing up Asian-Americans? Is there a problem with trying to get kids to get to their utmost potential? This type of talk reeks more of resentment and jealousy more than anything.
Asian-Americans have had the reputation of being quiet and demure when it comes to social issues. Is this what it is about? We should keep quiet and accept “norms”?
I think the answer is “It depends.”
Depending on which of the colleges my son chose, he could have started in either DiffEq or Calc 1. I think at CMU SCS, he would have been essentially done with the math requirements. (Elsewhere he was a physics major.)
He’s attending Caltech, which doesn’t give any AP or college course credit, and he likes it. He doesn’t feel like all the AP courses and college courses he took in HS were a waste, because he learned things and is now learning lots more. But, I suppose from the outside, it looks like he is “repeating” Calc1+2, Linear Alg, and Multivariable.
A math or physics major who hadn’t taken some multivariable calc in HS would be at a disadvantage at Caltech. This is because MVC math is covered spring of frosh year, while it is used in winter of frosh year in the physics “analytic” track. But there is a bootcamp course in winter that teaches the basics of MVC for those students. And, about 1/2 the students take the “practical” physics track, which covers the MVC part of E&M during spring.
He did push to take Calc BC in 10th. It wasn’t a race to get to higher math, just him trying to be in a class that fit him. I put barriers in the way for him to skip Precalc (AoPS Precalc course and Math 2 subject test), but he did those. (We are not Asian, if that matters to anyone.)
I agree that for many non-STEM HS students, statistics is a much more valuable course than calculus or even precalculus.
However, Caltech’s math courses are theory/proof based, so that regular college math courses or AP courses do not cover the material in the same depth. Caltech expects entering frosh to have taken regular calculus while in high school before starting there (and regular multivariable calculus while in high school would also be a bonus before taking the Caltech theory/proof based version).
I.e. the Caltech math situation is quite a bit different from that of a student with an 5 on AP calculus BC who repeats a regular calculus course at a college that allows that AP score to give advanced placement.
I would love to see the data on how success rates in engineering and hard science majors are impacted when students pass some of the four most relevant AP exams: AP Calc BC, AP Physics C, AP Chem, and AP Lang and Comp.
I think that data would suggest the degree to which getting students prepared for those exams is valuable. I am sure that admissions offices know this, but I have never seen it published.
Yes, at any of the UCs where he was admitted, he would have likely taken the credits for his math courses during HS.
In fact, I’m not actually sure he would have had a choice, since all those math courses were on transcripts he would have had to submit from a couple community colleges and UCSB. And, the assist.org website is pretty clear about how those courses should transfer, whereas one might have more choice about whether to take AP credits.
Which is why I say, “It depends.”
@ProfessorPlum168 it’s just a fact of life in our school. The school is 20% Asian and 28 out of 30 kids in Calc BC are Asian American. Kids and parents are going to notice such a huge discrepancy.
But if you look beyond racial appearance, you may find that the actual correlate to academic achievement is to parental educational attainment. Remember that immigration patterns tend to select Indian and Chinese immigrants to be high educational attainment (PhD students and skilled workers).
Unfortunately, most people do not look beyond racial appearance, so that may result in social problems like racism (e.g. non-Asian students being racist against their own race, or resentment against Asian students).
My daughter was told repeatedly by other students on the math and Science Olympiad teams that she was smart for a white girl. My credentials to coach Science Olympiad were challenged by both parents and students. I have an MS in Chemistry and am ABD from a UC in Physical Chemistry but by virtue of being either a woman or a white person I was thought to possibly not have the ability to teach 8th graders “Crave the Wave” a very basic physics event. She ended up quitting all competitive academic teams after 8th grade, despite going to state, which in California is pretty darn hard. It is an odd cultural phenomenon and may be very localized.
^^ But how does being Asian be related to “** racing ** to calculus in high school ** so that** you can repeat it in college?”
@ProfessorPlum168
you’re missing the point - this isn’t about potential and certainly not about being demure.
However, many parents from specific Asian countries where high-pressure entrance tests are mandatory for success and math often defines who is academically apt (where the parents themselve proved “apt”), “push” their kids past what’s developmentally appropriate - there’s a difference between responding to a child’s needs and pushing the kid. This isn’t uniquely Asian: Nigerians do the same, it’s very common among Korean, Chinese, Indian families, but isn’t very common among Filipino, Hmong, or Bangladeshi parents. So, the point of bringing up Asian Americans is that many Asian American families, especially in California, have an intense focus on math. It’s just a fact if you look at the classes, who pushes and who doesn’t, etc. It has nothing to do with resentment or jealousy. (For example, I took Prealgebra in 6th grade and Algebra in 7th, and quite happily took IB Math Studies, now “Math Applications SL”).
@ucbalumnus : it’s not just PHD attainment. It’s coming from a culture where a specific track and a specific test, where math matters a lot, lead to specific outcomes in life. Math is like predetermination - so of course parents want to equip their kid. It’s led to a race to nowhere because the US values non conformity within a certain framework over outranking other students in math. Applying for Philosophy, French, or Anthropology is more likely to help a kid stand out to UCB than MVC or even higher math.
“utmost potential” shouldn’t be defined as “reaching calculus before anyone else” which is just a form of keeping up with the Jones, using math instead of materialism. Helping gifted kids is a good thing, but all these kids taking calculus in 10th or even 9th grade can’t be gifted, this isn’t Lake Woebegon. In addition to being too much for most kids, it’s counterproductive for college admissions and not necessarily what’s best for non STEM majors who really should discover other forms of quantitative and logical reasoning, especially statistics, forms of CS, forms of philosophy and logic…
Re: #95
Looks like racism against white people. Seems like white people in your school are being viewed similar to how black people are in other situations are (i.e. as a lower performing race in school). Not good, since stereotype threat probably reduces academic performance and can affect math placement recommendations and decisions.
Disclaimer- It seems early for me to ask, but I want D21 to be on the right track, so schedule selection this early matters. Right now she is on track for Calc as a junior.
Calc AB is all we have. However, there is a directional U and a CC both a few minutes away from HS. Many juniors and seniors get early release or late start to take a college class. D was planning on taking at least second semester calc and maybe third if there is a class offered at the right time, probably from the directional U.
She is probably premed, with quite possibly math or statistics as a major. Definitely STEM. I am guessing if she ends up at an Ivy or NESCAC or similar school, her directional state calc is not going to measure up for what she is expected to know in higher level math classes. I am guessing it is much closer to the AP model, or maybe somewhere in-between.
Will she be allowed to repeat at most schools if she already has college credit for calc and not just AP credit?
Also, for premed will this look weird/bad that she essentially has the same calc class (or even classes) at the Directional U and then is repeating them at her more challenging college? Her older siblings were not interested in the medical school route, so 90% of what I know is from here and she is just going into soph year of HS so I don’t know much. I apologize if this is a dumb question on the med school part.