dajo9 said:

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concordtom said:

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https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/uc-berkeley-math-prof-says-212453187.html

A well known University of California-Berkeley mathematics professor has slammed admissions standards at the top-flight university where she says huge portions of her students are failing to keep up with college calculus and she's forced to teach middle-school algebra and fractions to students.

"Some students are five to eight years behind in mathematics. Office hours that should be spent discussing integrals instead become lessons on fractions and basic algebra you would expect students to learn in middle school," wrote Zvezdelina Stankova, of UC Berkeley, in an op-ed piece on Saturday for the San Francisco Standard.

Here's that link, https://sfstandard.com/opinion/2026/08/15/uc-berkeley-sat-test-blind-admissions-math-scores/

Stankova, who rose through the mathematics world to earn a PhD from Harvard after being born in communist Bulgaria, described the admissions process as "less like careful evaluation and more like chance."

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Calculus is hard. I had to take it twice at Berkeley.

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Teaching Calculus is hard. It's even harder when you have to teach remedial middle school math at the same time.

This is what happens when you have insane grade inflation and then you don't even want to look at SATs/ACTs.

My oldest took AP Calc B-C last year as a high school junior and I guarantee he would be able to do college freshman-sophomore level Math at Cal. Sadly, he will probably have a much-lower-than-50% chance of being admitted, as he will be reporting a "mere" 4.1 GPA instead of the thousands of applicants with 4.3+ (many of whom have lower test scores than he does).

concordtom said:

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https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/uc-berkeley-math-prof-says-212453187.html

A well known University of California-Berkeley mathematics professor has slammed admissions standards at the top-flight university where she says huge portions of her students are failing to keep up with college calculus and she's forced to teach middle-school algebra and fractions to students.

"Some students are five to eight years behind in mathematics. Office hours that should be spent discussing integrals instead become lessons on fractions and basic algebra you would expect students to learn in middle school," wrote Zvezdelina Stankova, of UC Berkeley, in an op-ed piece on Saturday for the San Francisco Standard.

Here's that link, https://sfstandard.com/opinion/2026/08/15/uc-berkeley-sat-test-blind-admissions-math-scores/

Stankova, who rose through the mathematics world to earn a PhD from Harvard after being born in communist Bulgaria, described the admissions process as "less like careful evaluation and more like chance."

---

I don't think that this is specific to UC Berkeley alone. But it's possible that Cal is impacted to a larger degree than many other top universities.

I do a lot of Math tutoring, mainly to HS students. The unfortunate reality is that during the Covid-19 years, very little Math learning took place in California schools.

In K-12 education, Math is unique among all the subjects. Learning each year's material depends on knowing the previous year's material. It's like building a structure; you need to start with a solid foundation, and each structure that's built on top needs to be solid.

Covid-19 just wiped out 3 years of Math education. Gone. Poof. Most students never recovered.

At the HS level, the curriculum shifted. The pace of progress in HS Math courses slowed to a crawl. Topics that were previously covered in Algebra II were put off until PreCalculus -- or just dismissed.

For most of the students I've tutored over the last 6 years, most were deficient in basic arithmetic or basic skills like fractions, factoring, & middle school stuff. Once those gaps were filled, they did great.

I'll agree with Prof. Stankova: Bring back the standardized tests!

Proficiency in Math is extremely important for any field of learning.

tequila4kapp said:

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socaltownie said:

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A few things......

2) UC continues to find, even post Covid, that the number 1 predictor of persistence and success is HS GPA and it has a stronger correlation than SAT performance.

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I struggle to believe this. Essentially everyone who's admitted to the UCs (or at least the upper 3rd UCs) has superb grades. The middle 50% GPA is 3.9-4.0, unweighted (ie, 75% of admitted HS applicants have 3.90 or higher GPAs) and only 'a tiny fraction' of admitted students have GPAs below 3.5 at Cal. And conversely per the UCSD study we know that it is these very students with superior GPAs who are struggling with math.

There is no world where a student that cannot perform middle school math should be admitted to the UCs (or at least upper 3rd UCs). That is what CC and maybe Cal State schools are for.

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Their grades look good but they weren't earned. Grade inflation and just passing kids along runs rampant in public and private high schools.

cbbass1 said:

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Covid-19 just wiped out 3 years of Math education. Gone. Poof. Most students never recovered.

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This. Of course, Democrats want to move on, the past is the past.

dajo9 said:

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concordtom said:

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https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/uc-berkeley-math-prof-says-212453187.html

A well known University of California-Berkeley mathematics professor has slammed admissions standards at the top-flight university where she says huge portions of her students are failing to keep up with college calculus and she's forced to teach middle-school algebra and fractions to students.

"Some students are five to eight years behind in mathematics. Office hours that should be spent discussing integrals instead become lessons on fractions and basic algebra you would expect students to learn in middle school," wrote Zvezdelina Stankova, of UC Berkeley, in an op-ed piece on Saturday for the San Francisco Standard.

Here's that link, https://sfstandard.com/opinion/2026/08/15/uc-berkeley-sat-test-blind-admissions-math-scores/

Stankova, who rose through the mathematics world to earn a PhD from Harvard after being born in communist Bulgaria, described the admissions process as "less like careful evaluation and more like chance."

---

Calculus is hard. I had to take it twice at Berkeley.

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Calculus is easy. Or can be, depending on how good your teacher is, and when in your life you begin to study it.

There was some research done back in the 1960s, I believe, where the researches who were teachers taught the same identical beginning introductory calculus course to three classes of elementary school students, first graders, 3rd graders, and 7th graders. The results were not as one might have expected. The students who grasped and mastered the material the best, and who performed the best in examinations, were the first graders. The second best performers were the 3rd graders, and the 3rd best or lowest performing students were the 7th graders.

If you did not get a chance to take calculus until after you arrived at Cal, that might have been the reason you felt it was hard.

My experience before Cal was ideal for the times. I don't know how good it is now. I went to Lowell high school in SF. We had an extraordinary teacher in Ivan Barker, who taught there from the 1930s through 1966. He was a quiet man, wore a 3-piece suit, and he evaluated all the students, inviting the best math students to jump ahead in math and take more advanced courses in their early years at Lowell. Two students in my class, Gary Cooper and Jon Kuhn, were way ahead of all of us from the get go. They were both placed in a class of two, (them), and got individual assignments and tests from Barker. I don't know what became of Cooper, but Kuhn went to Cal and got bored. He paid his way through college by winning at poker games with his fraternity brothers, but he had a weakness for the girls and booze, and was flunking out. He transferred to UC Davis, where he got his PhD in Genetics. He took a position at the Technion University in Israel, and became a successful Geneticist. Sorry to digress.

So I learned enough at Lowell to skip the first year of calculus at Cal. That was not common in those days, so I had to go to the professor and ask to take the first year of Calculus at Cal by test. He gave me the final exam and I passed it. The second year of calculus was interesting, especially when they got into teaching about deriving the formulas for 3-dimensional objects or shapes. I had already learned some of that from looking through one of my father's old textbooks from when he went to Lowell, a textbook called, "Analytical Geometry". I was fascinated by it, and I used the book in studying the 2nd year of calculus at Cal.

One big problem at Cal was that professors did not teach some of my classes. Usually it was a TA, who was not much older than I was. For Math 4B, I had a TA who came from China, and spoke very poor English. He put this rudimentary formula on the blackboard, "y = f(x)" . He then said to the class in broken English, "I don't want you to think of this as y equals function of x. Think of this as y equals FATHER of x" I decided at that point that this guy could not teach his way out of a paper bag. Point I am making, is what makes some courses hard at Cal, is you don't always get trained or competent teachers, in spite of our reputation. At Cal for some subjects it is up to you and your time studying that will give you the most benefit, not always the classroom time.

PAC-10-BEAR said:

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cbbass1 said:

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Covid-19 just wiped out 3 years of Math education. Gone. Poof. Most students never recovered.

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This. Of course, Democrats want to move on, the past is the past.

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It was significantly less than 3 years lost, by my count...

25% of the 2019-2020 year, when the pandemic first hit.

60% of the 2020-2021 year, until the kids got back into the classroom in February. (my kids did the last 40% of that year "hybrid"... in school about 10-15 hours/week). Of course, it varied, depending on the district.

Moreover, during the missing classroom time, the kids were learning "remotely" (online), with regular sessions with their teacher, online and paper-packet assignments and access to other online sources of help. Granted, some students did better than others during this time. And when the students came back to the classroom, there was an adjustment period which often manifested itself in lack of attention and even apathy.

But my point is, saying 3 years were lost is a vast overstatement, IMO. Just as an example, right before the pandemic hit, my son was given a "not highly recommended" to begin an accelerated Math pathway when he started middle school. So he didn't take that path. But then he got back on it in high school and last spring got a 4 on the Calc B-C Advanced Placement exam... as a junior. And he is no Math whiz, just a fairly bright kid who usually does the work.

I have read that the more introverted kids often did pretty well with the "remote learning", whereas the more extroverted kids had a tendency to go nuts. Obviously, a lot of it was how much support the kids were able to get, at home.

Big C said:

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PAC-10-BEAR said:

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cbbass1 said:

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Covid-19 just wiped out 3 years of Math education. Gone. Poof. Most students never recovered.

---

This. Of course, Democrats want to move on, the past is the past.

---

It was significantly less than 3 years lost, by my count...

25% of the 2019-2020 year, when the pandemic first hit.

60% of the 2020-2021 year, until the kids got back into the classroom in February. (my kids did the last 40% of that year "hybrid"... in school about 10-15 hours/week). Of course, it varied, depending on the district.

Moreover, during the missing classroom time, the kids were learning "remotely" (online), with regular sessions with their teacher, online and paper-packet assignments and access to other online sources of help. Granted, some students did better than others during this time. And when the students came back to the classroom, there was an adjustment period which often manifested itself in lack of attention and even apathy.

But my point is, saying 3 years were lost is a vast overstatement, IMO. Just as an example, right before the pandemic hit, my son was given a "not highly recommended" to begin an accelerated Math pathway when he started middle school. So he didn't take that path. But then he got back on it in high school and last spring got a 4 on the Calc B-C Advanced Placement exam... as a junior. And he is no Math whiz, just a fairly bright kid who usually does the work.

I have read that the more introverted kids often did pretty well with the "remote learning", whereas the more extroverted kids had a tendency to go nuts. Obviously, a lot of it was how much support the kids were able to get, at home.

---

I whole heartedly disagree with you but respect your opinion on it. Introverted kids became more introverted and the accountability of all students fell to the way side. I'm glad your children had an okay experience with it, many many many students did not.

BearlySane88 said:

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Big C said:

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PAC-10-BEAR said:

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cbbass1 said:

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Covid-19 just wiped out 3 years of Math education. Gone. Poof. Most students never recovered.

---

This. Of course, Democrats want to move on, the past is the past.

---

It was significantly less than 3 years lost, by my count...

25% of the 2019-2020 year, when the pandemic first hit.

60% of the 2020-2021 year, until the kids got back into the classroom in February. (my kids did the last 40% of that year "hybrid"... in school about 10-15 hours/week). Of course, it varied, depending on the district.

Moreover, during the missing classroom time, the kids were learning "remotely" (online), with regular sessions with their teacher, online and paper-packet assignments and access to other online sources of help. Granted, some students did better than others during this time. And when the students came back to the classroom, there was an adjustment period which often manifested itself in lack of attention and even apathy.

But my point is, saying 3 years were lost is a vast overstatement, IMO. Just as an example, right before the pandemic hit, my son was given a "not highly recommended" to begin an accelerated Math pathway when he started middle school. So he didn't take that path. But then he got back on it in high school and last spring got a 4 on the Calc B-C Advanced Placement exam... as a junior. And he is no Math whiz, just a fairly bright kid who usually does the work.

I have read that the more introverted kids often did pretty well with the "remote learning", whereas the more extroverted kids had a tendency to go nuts. Obviously, a lot of it was how much support the kids were able to get, at home.

---

I whole heartedly disagree with you but respect your opinion on it. Introverted kids became more introverted and the accountability of all students fell to the way side. I'm glad your children had an okay experience with it, many many many students did not.

---

You were "in the classroom", so I will defer to your first-hand observations. What I read was that introverted kids were able to do the online work better than the extroverted kids who prefer to learn with others..

And, indeed, my extroverted daughter went a little crazy, whereas my introverted son functioned somewhat better than the average kid, academically, though yes, he seemed to become even more introverted. Certainly, a lot was lost during this period, both academically and socially-emotionally.

My main point was that it was more like a year to a year-and-a-half lost, not three. And even that time lost wasn't completely lost (but it varied on the kid, their family support.. and the school they were in).

Big C said:

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BearlySane88 said:

---

Big C said:

---

PAC-10-BEAR said:

---

cbbass1 said:

---

Covid-19 just wiped out 3 years of Math education. Gone. Poof. Most students never recovered.

---

This. Of course, Democrats want to move on, the past is the past.

---

It was significantly less than 3 years lost, by my count...

25% of the 2019-2020 year, when the pandemic first hit.

60% of the 2020-2021 year, until the kids got back into the classroom in February. (my kids did the last 40% of that year "hybrid"... in school about 10-15 hours/week). Of course, it varied, depending on the district.

Moreover, during the missing classroom time, the kids were learning "remotely" (online), with regular sessions with their teacher, online and paper-packet assignments and access to other online sources of help. Granted, some students did better than others during this time. And when the students came back to the classroom, there was an adjustment period which often manifested itself in lack of attention and even apathy.

But my point is, saying 3 years were lost is a vast overstatement, IMO. Just as an example, right before the pandemic hit, my son was given a "not highly recommended" to begin an accelerated Math pathway when he started middle school. So he didn't take that path. But then he got back on it in high school and last spring got a 4 on the Calc B-C Advanced Placement exam... as a junior. And he is no Math whiz, just a fairly bright kid who usually does the work.

I have read that the more introverted kids often did pretty well with the "remote learning", whereas the more extroverted kids had a tendency to go nuts. Obviously, a lot of it was how much support the kids were able to get, at home.

---

I whole heartedly disagree with you but respect your opinion on it. Introverted kids became more introverted and the accountability of all students fell to the way side. I'm glad your children had an okay experience with it, many many many students did not.

---

You were "in the classroom", so I will defer to your first-hand observations. What I read was that introverted kids were able to do the online work better than the extroverted kids who prefer to learn with others..

And, indeed, my extroverted daughter went a little crazy, whereas my introverted son functioned somewhat better than the average kid, academically, though yes, he seemed to become even more introverted. Certainly, a lot was lost during this period, both academically and socially-emotionally.

My main point was that it was more like a year to a year-and-a-half lost, not three. And even that time lost wasn't completely lost (but it varied on the kid, their family support.. and the school they were in).

---

Valid points for sure. I think the 3 years accounts for the time physically lost in school and then the time it took to try and make that up once returning to school.

I don't know how you untangle the impact of the covid years vs. the impact of cell phones and social media and video games. For my kids, the latter have been far more destructive than anything from the covid years.

dajo9 said:

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I don't know how you untangle the impact of the covid years vs. the impact of cell phones and social media and video games. For my kids, the latter have been far more destructive than anything from the covid years.

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The combo was absolutely brutal but I do agree that phones and social media have done very little positive for our youth. Video games to a lesser extent because the only part of that I think makes a serious negative impact is the online portion.

concordtom said:

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https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/uc-berkeley-math-prof-says-212453187.html

A well known University of California-Berkeley mathematics professor has slammed admissions standards at the top-flight university where she says huge portions of her students are failing to keep up with college calculus and she's forced to teach middle-school algebra and fractions to students.

"Some students are five to eight years behind in mathematics. Office hours that should be spent discussing integrals instead become lessons on fractions and basic algebra you would expect students to learn in middle school," wrote Zvezdelina Stankova, of UC Berkeley, in an op-ed piece on Saturday for the San Francisco Standard.

Here's that link, https://sfstandard.com/opinion/2026/08/15/uc-berkeley-sat-test-blind-admissions-math-scores/

Stankova, who rose through the mathematics world to earn a PhD from Harvard after being born in communist Bulgaria, described the admissions process as "less like careful evaluation and more like chance."

---

Congratulations to all the liberal, DEI supporters who have degraded and ruined our university. It started w getting rid of SAT requirements and continued w "holistic recruitment"

this was always their intent though: to make all the UC schools equal.

SFCityBear said:

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dajo9 said:

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concordtom said:

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https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/uc-berkeley-math-prof-says-212453187.html

A well known University of California-Berkeley mathematics professor has slammed admissions standards at the top-flight university where she says huge portions of her students are failing to keep up with college calculus and she's forced to teach middle-school algebra and fractions to students.

"Some students are five to eight years behind in mathematics. Office hours that should be spent discussing integrals instead become lessons on fractions and basic algebra you would expect students to learn in middle school," wrote Zvezdelina Stankova, of UC Berkeley, in an op-ed piece on Saturday for the San Francisco Standard.

Here's that link, https://sfstandard.com/opinion/2026/08/15/uc-berkeley-sat-test-blind-admissions-math-scores/

Stankova, who rose through the mathematics world to earn a PhD from Harvard after being born in communist Bulgaria, described the admissions process as "less like careful evaluation and more like chance."

---

Calculus is hard. I had to take it twice at Berkeley.

---

Calculus is easy. Or can be, depending on how good your teacher is, and when in your life you begin to study it.

There was some research done back in the 1960s, I believe, where the researches who were teachers taught the same identical beginning introductory calculus course to three classes of elementary school students, first graders, 3rd graders, and 7th graders. The results were not as one might have expected. The students who grasped and mastered the material the best, and who performed the best in examinations, were the first graders. The second best performers were the 3rd graders, and the 3rd best or lowest performing students were the 7th graders.

If you did not get a chance to take calculus until after you arrived at Cal, that might have been the reason you felt it was hard.

My experience before Cal was ideal for the times. I don't know how good it is now. I went to Lowell high school in SF. We had an extraordinary teacher in Ivan Barker, who taught there from the 1930s through 1966. He was a quiet man, wore a 3-piece suit, and he evaluated all the students, inviting the best math students to jump ahead in math and take more advanced courses in their early years at Lowell. Two students in my class, Gary Cooper and Jon Kuhn, were way ahead of all of us from the get go. They were both placed in a class of two, (them), and got individual assignments and tests from Barker. I don't know what became of Cooper, but Kuhn went to Cal and got bored. He paid his way through college by winning at poker games with his fraternity brothers, but he had a weakness for the girls and booze, and was flunking out. He transferred to UC Davis, where he got his PhD in Genetics. He took a position at the Technion University in Israel, and became a successful Geneticist. Sorry to digress.

So I learned enough at Lowell to skip the first year of calculus at Cal. That was not common in those days, so I had to go to the professor and ask to take the first year of Calculus at Cal by test. He gave me the final exam and I passed it. The second year of calculus was interesting, especially when they got into teaching about deriving the formulas for 3-dimensional objects or shapes. I had already learned some of that from looking through one of my father's old textbooks from when he went to Lowell, a textbook called, "Analytical Geometry". I was fascinated by it, and I used the book in studying the 2nd year of calculus at Cal.

One big problem at Cal was that professors did not teach some of my classes. Usually it was a TA, who was not much older than I was. For Math 4B, I had a TA who came from China, and spoke very poor English. He put this rudimentary formula on the blackboard, "y = f(x)" . He then said to the class in broken English, "I don't want you to think of this as y equals function of x. Think of this as y equals FATHER of x" I decided at that point that this guy could not teach his way out of a paper bag. Point I am making, is what makes some courses hard at Cal, is you don't always get trained or competent teachers, in spite of our reputation. At Cal for some subjects it is up to you and your time studying that will give you the most benefit, not always the classroom time.

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After graduating from Cal with BSME, I worked for a couple years as a software engineer. One of my engineering colleagues used to say, when talking about the difficulty of an engineering task:

Quote:

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"It's like water skiing -- it's easy once you know how."

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This op-ed can’t be real:

“Students on University of California campuses may struggle with basic math, but they are graduating at record rates.”

“What has made the University of California exceptional is its commitment to increase access without sacrificing excellence.” pic.twitter.com/lfhgPtPirI

— Steve McGuire (@sfmcguire79) September 16, 2026

"Students on University of California campuses may struggle with basic math, but they are graduating at record rates."

Covid and eliminating the SAT led to this.

hanky1 said:

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concordtom said:

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Stankova, who rose through the mathematics world to earn a PhD from Harvard after being born in communist Bulgaria, described the admissions process as "less like careful evaluation and more like chance."

---

Congratulations to all the liberal, DEI supporters who have degraded and ruined our university. It started w getting rid of SAT requirements and continued w "holistic recruitment"

this was always their intent though: to make all the UC schools equal.

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Math is racist because 2+2 might not be 4, it might be 5.pic.twitter.com/npldT1gVyB

— Thomas Sowell Quotes (@ThomasSowell) December 25, 2025

Math is racist..