Citing ‘severe’ math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM applicants
Summary
UC faculty are demanding a return to SAT tests for STEM applicants due to 'severe' math deficits among incoming freshmen, with a report showing a thirty-fold increase in students below high school math levels since 2020.
Similar Articles
Failing grades soar as professors see greater AI usage, dwindling math skills in UC Berkeley computer science classes
A report from UC Berkeley shows that failing grades in computer science courses have surged due to increased AI use and weaker math skills among students. Instructors attribute the trend to academic dishonesty and lack of preparation, with failure rates far exceeding typical department guidelines.
Job application asked for my SAT scores
The author recounts encountering a job application that requested SAT scores, and discusses the history and validity of hiring assessments, questioning the use of decades-old test scores as a proxy for cognitive ability.
@NirZicherman: Standardized testing is back? What a fascinating timeline: 1. Long history of people pushing back on SATs and ACTs 2. B…
Nir Zicherman discusses the return of standardized testing, noting how AI has reduced the value of GPA, making standardized tests more relevant again.
Sharing a love for calculus
MIT has launched the MIT4America Calculus Project to provide remote calculus tutoring to students in underresourced US high schools, addressing the lack of calculus access in nearly half of American high schools.
RealMath-Eval: Why SOTA Judges Struggle with Real Human Reasoning
RealMath-Eval is a benchmark of 224 real-world high school math exam responses that reveals a significant 'Evaluation Gap': state-of-the-art LLM judges perform poorly on authentic human reasoning (MSE ~2.96) compared to synthetic LLM-generated solutions (MSE ~1.17), due to higher diversity and surprisal in human error patterns.