Caltech’s new admissions: No calculus, chemistry, physics requirements for some | Hacker News Reader

Caltech’s new admissions: No calculus, chemistry, physics requirements for some

latimes.com

4 pointsnerdo8 comments

At first blush this sounds like a pretty obviously correct thing to do. But please note, for anybody who hasn't read TFA yet, the headline is slightly misleading. They are removing the requirement to have had a high school course in Calculus, Physics, or Chemistry, specifically for students who don't have access to those courses (eg, their high school doesn't offer them) AND maybe more to the point, these students still have to learn the material and demonstrate mastery. They are just given a different route to do so. Specifically, they can learn using Khan Academy, and then take a certification test. Or, CalTech will accept AP placement tests or IB tests, with a sufficient score.

So it's not like they are "watering down" anything and not requiring incoming students to know these subjects. They're just trying to accomodate the (suprisingly large to me) number of students who had no viable route to getting those classes in high-school.

Caltech now refuses to look at SAT/ACT scores -- see https://www.admissions.caltech.edu/apply/first-year-applican... . That suggests to me that it is devaluing academic measures in admissions to get the racial mix it wants.

Or some other mix - geographic, for example. Caltech could easily fill its quite small freshman class from Los Angeles high schools, but it tries to get students from all over the country.

I am from Washington state. I was admitted to Caltech in 1968. In those days, we all had to take the SAT. The Dean of Students told me my math SAT score was lower than they liked to see, but they admitted me anyway. In my class there were two students from Washington state. I recall there were also two students from Washington state in the classes preceding and following mine.

I graduated from Caletch in 1972 with good grades, went on to graduate school and a rewarding career in science and engineering.

[edit] I just reread Bostonian's comment above. I should emphasize that I didn't get the impression from the Dean that Caltech felt it was "devaluing academic measures" by admitting me. There are lots of academic measures besides the SAT. The Caltech faculty and administration understood this 55 years ago.

Caltech is a very selective school, and I'd bet that the majority of applicants have taken the SAT or ACT. Lots of research has shown that standardized test scores, in addition to high school grades, predict college success better than high school GPA alone. It's strange to throw out relevant data when making an important decision, and that's why I think Caltech and other schools that are doing so are trying smuggle racial preferences (banned by a recent Supreme Court decision) into the admissions process.

Or, maybe the admissions committee understands the significance of SAT scores better than you do. From long experience with many students like me, they may have concluded that within their applicant pool, the variations among SAT scores do not predict success at Caltech. They might have found that applicant X having a SAT score delta points higher than applicant Y is just noise and has no predictive power about which will succeed. In my class, about a third of the students who were admitted did not graduate. Many of those who did not finish must have had SAT scores higher than mine.

It's too late to edit, but I would like to omit the snarky first sentence "Or, maybe ..." and just begin this comment with the second sentence: "Or, maybe from long experience ..."

I usually don't comment on social/political issues, but in this case I had a specific personal experience that was pertinent.

This situation can sometimes be commonplace for homeschooled students and those in independent study programs where they don’t have access to the laboratories needed to do lab sciences such as chemistry and physics. This can also happen in schools where they offer courses that fulfill the minimum state requirements for a high school diploma but do not fulfill the requirements to enter a university. For example, some California high schools offer three tracks: (1) a basic track, (2) a college-prep track, and (3) a honors/Advanced Placement/International Baccalaureate track that is geared toward preparing students for admissions to top universities. For example, for biology, track #1 would be called “life science,” track #2 would be called “biology,” and track #3 would be Honors/AP/IB Biology. However, there are many high schools that only offer track #1 courses.

For example, for high school roughly 20 years ago in Sacramento, California I went to an independent study charter school where I met with a teacher roughly once a week and did my assignments primarily from home. My parents sent me to this school as an alternative to the low-performing, rather violent high school that I was assigned to attend. At the time I was a student there, there was no chemistry course offered (though biology was offered, and during my senior year physics was offered), but most of the universities I was interested in required a year of chemistry. I had two options: (1) take chemistry at another high school or (2) take an equivalent chemistry course at a community college. I opted for option #2; while this course was more basic than AP Chemistry and thus was not equivalent to that course, it was equivalent to high school chemistry, and because I took it at a community college I earned both high school and college credit.

I ended up taking seven community college courses in Spanish (my high school Spanish teacher left in the middle of the school year and it was unclear whether she’d be replaced, and so I took three semesters of Spanish at community college, which credit-wise was equivalent to four years of high school Spanish), chemistry, and computer science while I was in high school. This helped me get into Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, where I earned my bachelor’s degree in computer science.

I think it’s a good thing when colleges recognize that not everybody goes to competitive high schools with a wide array of college-prep courses. Students in these situations have to do the best they can with the resources they have, such as taking community college courses or taking AP tests.

Cal Tech just said to the world races other than Whites and Asians are too stupid as a whole to meet their elite academic standards so they must lower the institution standards so more of those races they deem not smart enough can get into their school! Good job Cal Tech for being blatantly racist.

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