Yeah, I was thinking about things like the recent FGLI movement among a lot of selective colleges, and their efforts to provide more support for FGLI students.
But there is still a lot of selectivity involved in all that, meaning they are still being careful about actually which FGLI applicants and such they think are the best bets to thrive if given the proper support.
APs are not in fact the highest level of secondary school mathematics available in the US. APs in general are less rigorous/advanced as compared to A Levels or IB DPs, but some US students have classes at that level (including IB programs).
This is why MIT, say, is not in fact 99% international students, and yet it remains MIT. I don’t know the details of that particular study, but it sounds like it was too broad to capture the sorts of math education some US students are getting in preparation for colleges like MIT.
Can only speak to Brown on the significant investment in FG students. It is- by and large- NOT instructional issues. It’s social capital (who knew that there were more lucrative summer jobs than working in your dad’s dry cleaning store- if you’ve been working there since you were 11?), it’s learning that showing up at office hours isn’t being a nudge- the professor LITERALLY has the door open for you, it’s being encouraged (and helped) to apply for fellowships that you don’t think are looking for kids like you (except they are). The U isn’t digging down into the applicant pool for kids scoring 500 on their verbal SAT’s; it’s aggressively looking for talented and academically oriented kids who are coming out of places which usually don’t send kids to Brown and peer schools.
I’ve interviewed some of these kids. They blow the cover off the ball academically, and have references which say things like “John started going to the public library after school when he was 8 to wait for his mom to pick him up after work. He opened a volume of poetry- out of boredom- and since then, has not stopped reading. Fiction, non-fiction, history, agronomy- there is no subject John hasn’t explored- in depth. Teaching John has been the highlight of my professional career.”
It would be nice to live in a world where a university could find the “non-John’s”-- i.e. the kids with that native intelligence who did NOT grow up in a public library but have the intellectual capability to do university level work if they had a thorough HS education. But it’s easier to provide full financial support to the “John’s”-- when you KNOW they will thrive given the right kind of social support- than to create an infrastructure of true remediation.
I have heard similar things, though not specific to 11th grade. At my childrens’ highly regarded NYC privates, the rumor is also that roughly 1/3 of the class pays for a private neuropsych evaluation, and is ultimately awarded extra time.
It’s ridiculous and completely unfair. For all of the blather these schools constantly propound about “equity”, setting up the system to reward wealthy students with no real learning disability, is about as inequitable as it gets. I know the ADA would probably prohibit identifying students who get accommodations, but I’d be all for that.
Frankly if standardized tests are to be used, students should be required to send all scores (as CMU and Georgetown require), and superscoring should be abolished. To me, superscoring and multiple administrations render these tests meaningless. Also, if you can’t require individual students with accommodations to be identified, I’d be in favor of having colleges requiring high schools to indicate what percentage of their junior and senior class gets extra time. This would put an incentive on the schools to be more parsimonious about approving those requests.
Yes, AP math is a joke. I am not all that familiar with IB, but I have to presume it is not dramatically better.
It is often thought here that you only start serious math study once you get to calculus.
No.
If the kids haven’t been taught math the right way from the get-go, they are pretty much a lost cause by the time they get to high school. They simply haven’t developed the neural circuitry that is required for deep engagement with mathematics - and the train has left the station a long time ago.
Yes, yes, there will be exceptions here and there, but they only serve to prove the rule.
It is not 99% international, but if you include first generation Americans, you will likely find that majority of MIT students have foreign-born parents. And if MIT’s admissions were less holistic, that number would have been even higher (even though it is already higher than probably anywhere else except perhaps Caltech).
And these kids often rely on their home country’s textbooks to get early math instruction to set their heads straight before it’s too late.
So from what I have gathered in conversations about this among colleges and such, the consensus is more of less that the pool of those sorts of FGLI applicants is small enough that the likes of Brown and its peers are using up a really high portion of that pool.
They are trying to expand that pool–there appears to be a consensus as well that some kids like that really don’t know that colleges like Brown could be affordable options for them where they could in fact thrive. So that’s a marketing problem.
But even if that succeeds, to really expand the FGLI population in the way these colleges collectively want (these colleges being much more than just Brown and its peers), they need to be looking at FGLI students who are maybe not quite that outstanding already.
By the way, all this often comes up in the context of discussing the looming “demographic cliff” in college applications, and how to prevent that from being a disaster for enrollment. Usually in those conversations, no one is particularly worried about Brown, or indeed most of the colleges you will hear mentioned frequently in forums like this. But part of the issue is that if colleges like Brown are not experiencing their fair share of the enrollment decline–and again this will likely extend to many colleges that due to high reputation, good location, and/or positioning in their state system–then other colleges will see even more of a drop off.
So trying to get more FGLI students to apply to selective colleges systemwide is part of the conversation about how to maybe at least moderate this demographic cliff issue. But making that work at the colleges which are not like Brown is going to be a bigger challenge.
Are you saying neuropsych physicians are fabricating test results and/or the students don’t have a disability that qualifies them for extended time on tests (or whatever accommodation we are talking about)?
If so, that’s a different issue than the pervasive access issue…we all know that access issues prevent students from families with relatively lower incomes from getting full neuropsych workups. And results from a full neuropsych workup is typically what’s necessary to qualify for accommodations at many high schools, as well as at the CollegeBoard and ACT. The hurdles are many to qualify for accommodations.
But what is the “right way”?
We are probably veering off-topic at this point, but, briefly: depth, not breadth.
The best thing you can do in the US is have your child self-study AoPS series starting in elementary and all the way through the middle school.
All other American school math textbooks are a waste of paper.
At our affluent HS, the hurdles for accommodations are close to nothing.
Ex #1: My child’s best friend got accommodations junior yr bc she has a medical condition that results in migraines. These migraines have NEVER occurred during a test or in any way affected her schoolwork. This is not supposition. I know this from her mother. When the guidance counselor learned of the condition she jumped at the opportunity to avoid a neuropsych exam and immediately approved her for extra time. Same for College Board. The medical condition was essentially a “hook.”
Ex #2-5: I know of multiple kids who get extra time for “anxiety.” No idea what documentation they needed, but these are kids who get stressed before timed tests.
There is no downside for our school to approve these requests and I’ve never heard of a kid approved by the school for extra time and not the by the College Board. I’ve read online that it happens, but I personally know of zero.
The number of kids getting extra time on SATs and ACTs is very very large at our high-achieving school.
For NYC privates, it’s the former. For te country at large, the latter.
That’s a reference to the International Baccalaureate system, developed in Switzerland, that is today used as one of the advanced system options in many other countries. So that is one of the international systems implicitly better than the median US system when people are doing comparisons of the kind you are referencing. But, some US secondary schools have the IB program available (by count, in fact, the US has the most IB schools, but that is deceptive because of the sheer number of schools we have)
So according to MIT, 4127/4657 undergraduates were US citizens or permanent residents. I’d be interested to see if you had any verification of your claim most of those people had foreign-born parents.
So among the MIT-bound kids I know about from our HS, that does not seem to have been their path. Usually they are taking advanced math classes early. Our school’s Math department offers a variety of post-Calc BC electives, so they can actually do two years of those if they like. They may also take university courses.
Same at my kids’ similar HS, around 20% -25%. Our school is fairly strict on required medical support for accommodations. I do know CB has not approved many requests for accommodations, but that’s primarily from my experiences having been a college counselor, and hearing from other counselors. I’m not denying some people have probably gamed the system.
I just am not comfortable saying that we know these kids (who can afford neuropsych workups) don’t qualify for accommodations. Many probably do, and some/many? from limited income families are likely under diagnosed because of access issues.
I have never heard of a doctor fabricating test results to show a disability when there isn’t one. Of course I expect in the history of time that’s happened, but are people really saying doctors faking results is a pervasive problem?
I’ve never heard of docs fabricating results. Rather, parents hand around names of neuropsychs who always always find a learning disability. Not saying the doctors are dishonest — just that everyone who goes to them comes out with a diagnosis.
I mean, it would just be extraordinarily stupid for an admissions staff to not realize that scores would naturally ratchet up with test optional, and to keep advising students to submit only if they are above this ever increasing median.
I have long had my doubts about how college admissions is done in the USA (and hence my belief that it’s a game with intentionally vague rules), but this would be way below expectations.
Yeah, but color me skeptical that the IB math class you can take in Smalltown, Indiana is the same IB class you can take in Switzerland.
At any rate, it’s not Switzerland America needs to look out for.
Yes, they would all be citizens or, if their parents moved here recently, permanent residents.
Empirically, most high-performing kids with an Asian or Eastern-European last name will have recent immigrant parents. And MIT is over 40% Asian (not counting foreign students).
The best way to quickly gauge the nationwide composition of top college-level math talent is to look at the Putnam Top 500 lists:
Very few Smiths there.
But there is, of course, Luke Robitaille. The One and Only. The proverbial exception that proves the rule - but what an exception! 
I get it. But, if a student has a full neuropsych workup and comes out with a diagnosis requiring accommodations, then they should receive those accommodations…how could any of us say that shouldn’t be the case for a given student?
Unfortunately, a high proportion of students can’t get full neuropsych workups, and that’s the problem. This is just another reason that test optional is here to stay at the majority of four year schools.
The pervasive strategy passed around among kids who need a higher score is: get extra time and then take the ACT. Not saying all of these kids are gaming the system! But there are an awful lot of 34 ACT kids at our school that are not exactly amazing students. It’s not even a secret at our school.
Not “probably.” Let’s return to topic
Same at our school. I have softened my feelings about this over time. To take one example, I know a kid I thought the same…not an amazing student, extra time on tests, a 34, recruited athlete at a highly rejective LAC. Now an IB analyst at Goldman. Clearly I was wrong. It made me realize I should be a cheerleader for all these kids, rather than cast side eye.