\u201cOver the past five years, we have seen a widening divergence in mathematical preparation levels within the same classroom. This trend indicates that current admissions practices do not provide a sufficiently reliable check on mathematical readiness for STEM majors,\u201d faculty wrote in the letter.<\/p>\n
The open letter, crafted by Stankova and four other UC Berkeley professors, laid bare faculty\u2019s simmering tensions over students\u2019 math preparedness at one of the world\u2019s leading STEM universities, where prime parking spots are reserved for Nobel laureates.<\/p>\n
The timing of the letter\u2019s release comes as UC\u2019s Academic Senate is considering whether to recommend that the system bring back standardized testing as an admissions requirement. The full Senate will meet Thursday<\/a> and is expected to hear from the chair of the Senate\u2019s Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools, which has been deliberating the issue.<\/p>\n UC\u2019s Board of Regents would also need to eventually approve the change and reverse its own 2020 decision to get rid of the SAT and ACT as a freshman admission requirement.<\/a> Some UC campuses initially planned to make the exams optional, but in 2021 the system agreed to stop using the exams altogether as part of a settlement.<\/a><\/p>\n Support for reinstating the exams is far from unanimous. Some math faculty believe it won\u2019t fix the underlying issue and say it\u2019s up to high schools to better prepare students.<\/p>\n Additionally, critics of standardized tests say faculty are overstating the problem and argue that the exams are biased in favor of affluent students.<\/p>\n \u201cIs UC\u2019s mission only to admit the best-prepared students or is it to serve the broad diversity of California? There\u2019s a tension there, but our public universities have an obligation to residents from across the state, not just those with access to SAT prep programs or high-performing schools,\u201d said Pamela Burdman, executive director of Just Equations, a policy institute that examines the role of math in education equity.<\/p>\n If math faculty are successful in their push to reinstate the SAT, the fall 2028 admission cycle is the earliest it would take effect.<\/p>\n Other top universities have already reinstated the SAT and ACT as admissions requirements, reversing prior policies that made the exams optional. That includes Caltech, Stanford and several Ivy League universities.<\/p>\n \u2018No objective measure\u2019<\/p>\n On a Saturday in April, most of the UC system\u2019s math department chairs and vice chairs convened at UC Davis to discuss the math preparation dilemma.<\/p>\n For months, they and other faculty had been debating a report from a UC San Diego committee that found \u201ca steep decline in the academic preparation\u201d<\/a> of first-year students, especially in math. The report revealed that, in fall 2025, about 1 in 8 incoming UC San Diego freshmen scored below a high school level on the math placement exam administered by the campus.<\/p>\n That Saturday in Davis, the faculty had a spirited discussion about standardized exams, Bruno Nachtergaele, chair of the UC Davis math department, said. A majority agreed they wanted tests reinstated as an admissions requirement. That view was not unanimous, Nachtergaele said, so they held off taking action.<\/p>\n Several weeks later, the group of five UC Berkeley professors took it upon themselves to write the open letter calling for the return of a test requirement for freshman STEM applicants. As of Monday, 1,427 faculty had signed the letter, including seven of UC\u2019s nine math department chairs.<\/p>\n Faculty argue that other key admissions criteria don\u2019t provide enough information about students\u2019 preparedness. Grade inflation makes it more difficult to put stock in a student\u2019s grade point average, and the proliferation of artificial intelligence means they can\u2019t trust that applicants are writing their own essays.<\/p>\n \u201cSo with that, there is no objective measure for math readiness,\u201d Stankova said.<\/p>\n \u2018Trying to create a narrative\u2019<\/p>\n Others are not sure standardized testing is the solution.<\/p>\n Test opponents point to a fall 2025 report authored by Saul Geiser, a senior researcher at UC Berkeley\u2019s Center for Studies in Higher Education. The report<\/a> found that grades were a stronger predictor than test scores of first-year success at Ivy League and other elite colleges, and that ranking applicants by SAT scores disadvantages Black, Latino, low-income and first-generation students.<\/p>\n Geiser\u2019s report also noted that UC has enrolled more Black, Latino and low-income students since the system stopped requiring the exams.<\/p>\n \u201cAll it will do is keep students out of mathematics, and it may push some students, especially underrepresented students, out of the UC system,\u201d said Bjorn Birnir, a math professor and chair of the math department at UC Santa Barbara.<\/p>\n Birnir was one of two UC math department chairs who opted not to sign the open letter. He discussed the issue with his department\u2019s undergraduate committee. A majority of faculty on the committee opposed signing the letter.<\/p>\n \u201cWe think the problem needs to be addressed in high schools, and they need to make a real effort to make sure their students learn at least some mathematics,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Some critics also question whether math preparation is as bad as the UC San Diego report claims.<\/p>\n The report pointed out that, in 2024, the number of students placed in one of UC San Diego\u2019s lowest math courses \u2014 Math 2 and Math 3B \u2014 increased from 490 to 916 students. But that same year, the campus stopped allowing students to use calculators for their placement exams. Also that year, the campus changed the criteria for placing students into a higher level of math, meaning that \u201cmany of the students who previously would have been placed into Math 3C were instead placed into Math 3B,\u201d according to UC San Diego\u2019s math department<\/a>.<\/p>\n Additionally, freshmen at the campus are still doing well enough that they aren\u2019t dropping out. UC San Diego\u2019s first-year retention rate for STEM majors was just over 95% last year, the same level as it was prior to elimination of the SAT.<\/p>\n \u201cIt strikes me as being a little bit of a campaign here. I think they\u2019re trying to create a narrative,\u201d said Harry Feder, executive director of FairTest, an organization that opposes high-stakes standardized exams.<\/p>\n Addressing math unpreparedness<\/p>\n Even if the San Diego report overstated the problem, most educators and advocates agree that preparedness has declined in recent years, especially since the Covid-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n At Berkeley, a study found that, as of 2023, nearly one-third of first-semester calculus students displayed \u201csevere preparation deficits.\u201d At UC Davis, the number of students needing to start in a precalculus class has quadrupled over the past five years, Nachtergaele estimated. And at UC Santa Barbara, about 10% of incoming STEM majors are unprepared for calculus, Birnir said.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s been an issue for a long time, but it\u2019s definitely getting worse,\u201d Birnir added.<\/p>\n When admitted STEM majors at UC Santa Barbara aren\u2019t ready for calculus, staff encourage them to take a precalculus course at Santa Barbara City College during the summer before their first term on campus.<\/p>\n For most students, that solves the problem, Birnir said.<\/p>\n UC Davis, meanwhile, is making changes to its own precalculus offerings.<\/p>\n Davis, which operates on the quarter system with 10-week terms, currently offers a single 10-week precalculus class for students who aren\u2019t ready for calculus. Starting next year, the campus plans to add a second quarter of precalculus for students who need more time to learn the material, according to Nachtergaele.<\/p>\n But for some students, Nachtergaele expects that an extra quarter of precalculus still won\u2019t be enough. That\u2019s why he is in favor of bringing standardized tests back to admissions.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are certainly issues with it, like with anything in education,\u201d he said. \u201cBut I think a reasonable way to alleviate the situation is to reinstate the tests.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/1781033111_420_pixel.png\"){kind=tracking}
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