From the article: … … The report is here. They also call for the UC system to return to using standardized testing for admissions. Since that’s not up to UC San Diego, they recommend introducing a...
From the article:
The number of first-year students at the University of California, San Diego, whose math skills fall below a middle school level has increased nearly 30-fold over the past five years, according to a new report from the university’s Senate–Administration Working Group on Admissions. In the 2025 fall cohort, one in eight students placed into math below a middle school level, despite having a solid math GPA.
The number of first-year students in remedial math courses at the university surged to 390 in fall 2022, up from 32 students in fall 2020. The remedial math course was designed in 2016 and only addressed missing high school math knowledge, but instructors quickly realized that many of their students had knowledge gaps that went back to middle or elementary school, the report states. For fall 2024, UC San Diego revamped its remedial math course to address middle school math gaps and introduced an additional remedial course to cover high school math. In fall 2025, 921 students enrolled in one of these two courses—11.8 percent of the incoming class.
“This deterioration coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic and its effects on education, the elimination of standardized testing, grade inflation, and the expansion of admissions from under-resourced high schools,” the report states. “The combination of these factors has produced an incoming class increasingly unprepared for the quantitative and analytical rigor expected at UC San Diego.”
…
Within the UC system, the San Diego campus isn’t alone, but its problem is “significantly worse,” the report states. This is partly because the university has, since 2022, admitted and enrolled more students from low-income schools that saw greater COVID-era learning loss than other UC campuses. Many other UC campuses are seeing similar, though smaller, declines in student preparation. About half of UC campus math chairs responded to a survey saying that the “number of first-year students that are unable to start in college-level precalculus” increased twofold between fall 2020 and fall 2025, and the other half said the number increased threefold.
High school grade inflation is not helping the university evaluate students’ math skills, the report states. In 2024, the average high school math GPA for students in Math 2, the middle school–level remedial math course, was 3.65—an A-minus.
…
The working group put forward a number of recommendations for addressing these shortcomings, including using a “math index” based on historical placement data and transcript-based variables to “predict students’ likelihood of placement into remedial math.” The group also recommended establishing feedback mechanisms with high schools and requiring math placement testing by June 1 for incoming students, among other things.
They also call for the UC system to return to using standardized testing for admissions.
This recommendation follows directly from the findings in the report that high school math grades are only very weakly linked to students’ actual math preparation.
Since that’s not up to UC San Diego, they recommend introducing a “Math Index” that takes into account other factors to predict student preparedness. They say it’s essential to include the high school attended as one input. An implication is that some students would be penalized based on their high school.
Using the SAT to judge individual performance certainly seems fairer.
Standardized testing has its flaws, but to me, math is the one area where it makes complete sense. There can be no ambiguity (assuming properly written questions) in the answers. By definition,...
Standardized testing has its flaws, but to me, math is the one area where it makes complete sense.
There can be no ambiguity (assuming properly written questions) in the answers. By definition, you can't just memorize the answers. You need to memorize the rules. And once you know the rules, you should be able to tackle almost any problem.
They say it’s essential to include the high school attended as one input
I fully agree that this is a bad metric that will almost certainly lead to racial and class biased admissions.
It’s kind of funny that the SAT and ACT were being phased out of admissions because of the inequality in the amount of preparation resources students from different backgrounds can afford. Now...
It’s kind of funny that the SAT and ACT were being phased out of admissions because of the inequality in the amount of preparation resources students from different backgrounds can afford. Now that standardized testing has been phased out, we are rediscovering the reason why standardized testing was created in the first place. A pure skill based assessment is the best way to judge students individually on merit.
We keep trying to find ways to even the playing field between students of different socioeconomic backgrounds in college admissions, but always ignore the obvious source of the problem. We need equity in preK-12 education, then a merit based approach to college admissions will cease to be problematic.
The SAT (and to a lesser extent ACT) have issues where they've virtually monopolized the space and charge rather high prices for the test. And then of course certain students can afford to retake...
The SAT (and to a lesser extent ACT) have issues where they've virtually monopolized the space and charge rather high prices for the test. And then of course certain students can afford to retake it until they get the score they like.
My local community college offered free standardized math placement exams for students without an ACT score, I'd hope to see something like that instituted. You'd still have inequity in preparation associated with socioeconomic backgrounds, but that's way out of scope for what a college admissions board can do.
While community college already tends to select for certain socioeconomic backgrounds, the main issue I found in tutoring students placed by that standardized exam was that English language learners were at a substantial disadvantage -- they knew the math, they just didn't get what the test was asking. So my tutoring for them ended up being more of a "language in maths and science". It was mostly a waste of their time and money since they could've entered calc and we could've cleared up language as it came up.
It seems like spending some extra time on math-specific language learning would be pretty worthwhile for better understanding what's going on in math class. Maybe tutoring isn't the best way, though?
It seems like spending some extra time on math-specific language learning would be pretty worthwhile for better understanding what's going on in math class. Maybe tutoring isn't the best way, though?
It sounds like the issue is that the placement tests can't detect that it's a language issue, so it only becomes apparent after the students are placed in remedial classes. So by the time it...
It sounds like the issue is that the placement tests can't detect that it's a language issue, so it only becomes apparent after the students are placed in remedial classes. So by the time it becomes obvious, it might be too late in the semester to transfer.
Pardon, I'm not sure if you mean spending extra time in-class from teachers, out of class additional studying, or before heading to college. Each is their own can of worms. The difficulty began...
Pardon, I'm not sure if you mean spending extra time in-class from teachers, out of class additional studying, or before heading to college. Each is their own can of worms. The difficulty began before math class though, with needing to pass the standardized test.
To clarify, I was a tutor hired directly by the college in a center where folks were able to come in at any time for free tutoring. It worked pretty well for those students since each teacher says stuff and does stuff differently, they could come back to me immediately after class and I could "translate" it back to the base we built up over semesters (though this applied to all my repeat students to some extent). Sometimes just a brief, <5min review after class before leaving campus. I feel that style of tutoring was well-suited for bridging that language barrier, traditional private tutoring maybe not so efficient.
I was confused by what you meant by "It was mostly a waste of their time and money." It sounds like you meant the remedial math class, not the tutoring.
I was confused by what you meant by "It was mostly a waste of their time and money." It sounds like you meant the remedial math class, not the tutoring.
I'm very confused about this because the SAT/ACT scoress for pretty much all UC's were pretty high. I reember having a 750 in math (out of 800) and that was pretty much "average" for any decent...
I'm very confused about this because the SAT/ACT scoress for pretty much all UC's were pretty high. I reember having a 750 in math (out of 800) and that was pretty much "average" for any decent engineering program. Even outside of that we were talking mid 600's average. Looking up the 2025 results suggest as much.
Is this a case of the SAT getting easier, or that lower 25% really cratering and struggling?
this is a bad metric that will almost certainly lead to racial and class biased admissions.
That is a dreadful process. It'd be better at that point to simply re-indtroduce IQ tests. You have some agency towards testing. You have almost no agency in what school you get to attend.
Given that its 1 in 8 students at UCSD requiring remedial courses, this is possibly the answer. Also worth noting though that when you apply to the UCs submitting your SAT scores is optional, and...
Is this a case of the SAT getting easier, or that lower 25% really cratering and struggling?
Given that its 1 in 8 students at UCSD requiring remedial courses, this is possibly the answer.
Also worth noting though that when you apply to the UCs submitting your SAT scores is optional, and I'd imagine if you got low scores you'd be less inclined to submit them, even though they don't impact admission.
Oh hey that's my university (and @ducc's as well I believe). This report isn't too common knowledge so far, unless you're active on the UCSD subreddit. For people who do know about it though, the...
Oh hey that's my university (and @ducc's as well I believe). This report isn't too common knowledge so far, unless you're active on the UCSD subreddit. For people who do know about it though, the response is largely a mix of disappointment in the damage to the school's reputation, and calls for the UC system to start requiring SAT scores for applications again.
From the article:
…
…
The report is here.
They also call for the UC system to return to using standardized testing for admissions.
Since that’s not up to UC San Diego, they recommend introducing a “Math Index” that takes into account other factors to predict student preparedness. They say it’s essential to include the high school attended as one input. An implication is that some students would be penalized based on their high school.
Using the SAT to judge individual performance certainly seems fairer.
Standardized testing has its flaws, but to me, math is the one area where it makes complete sense.
There can be no ambiguity (assuming properly written questions) in the answers. By definition, you can't just memorize the answers. You need to memorize the rules. And once you know the rules, you should be able to tackle almost any problem.
I fully agree that this is a bad metric that will almost certainly lead to racial and class biased admissions.
It’s kind of funny that the SAT and ACT were being phased out of admissions because of the inequality in the amount of preparation resources students from different backgrounds can afford. Now that standardized testing has been phased out, we are rediscovering the reason why standardized testing was created in the first place. A pure skill based assessment is the best way to judge students individually on merit.
We keep trying to find ways to even the playing field between students of different socioeconomic backgrounds in college admissions, but always ignore the obvious source of the problem. We need equity in preK-12 education, then a merit based approach to college admissions will cease to be problematic.
The SAT (and to a lesser extent ACT) have issues where they've virtually monopolized the space and charge rather high prices for the test. And then of course certain students can afford to retake it until they get the score they like.
My local community college offered free standardized math placement exams for students without an ACT score, I'd hope to see something like that instituted. You'd still have inequity in preparation associated with socioeconomic backgrounds, but that's way out of scope for what a college admissions board can do.
While community college already tends to select for certain socioeconomic backgrounds, the main issue I found in tutoring students placed by that standardized exam was that English language learners were at a substantial disadvantage -- they knew the math, they just didn't get what the test was asking. So my tutoring for them ended up being more of a "language in maths and science". It was mostly a waste of their time and money since they could've entered calc and we could've cleared up language as it came up.
It seems like spending some extra time on math-specific language learning would be pretty worthwhile for better understanding what's going on in math class. Maybe tutoring isn't the best way, though?
It sounds like the issue is that the placement tests can't detect that it's a language issue, so it only becomes apparent after the students are placed in remedial classes. So by the time it becomes obvious, it might be too late in the semester to transfer.
Unfortunately once they were placed they were required to continue on that track, so they couldn't even transfer!
Pardon, I'm not sure if you mean spending extra time in-class from teachers, out of class additional studying, or before heading to college. Each is their own can of worms. The difficulty began before math class though, with needing to pass the standardized test.
To clarify, I was a tutor hired directly by the college in a center where folks were able to come in at any time for free tutoring. It worked pretty well for those students since each teacher says stuff and does stuff differently, they could come back to me immediately after class and I could "translate" it back to the base we built up over semesters (though this applied to all my repeat students to some extent). Sometimes just a brief, <5min review after class before leaving campus. I feel that style of tutoring was well-suited for bridging that language barrier, traditional private tutoring maybe not so efficient.
I was confused by what you meant by "It was mostly a waste of their time and money." It sounds like you meant the remedial math class, not the tutoring.
OH I meant the classes since they'd be stuck in a remedial track for sometimes over a year, thanks for prompting me to clarify.
I'm very confused about this because the SAT/ACT scoress for pretty much all UC's were pretty high. I reember having a 750 in math (out of 800) and that was pretty much "average" for any decent engineering program. Even outside of that we were talking mid 600's average. Looking up the 2025 results suggest as much.
Is this a case of the SAT getting easier, or that lower 25% really cratering and struggling?
That is a dreadful process. It'd be better at that point to simply re-indtroduce IQ tests. You have some agency towards testing. You have almost no agency in what school you get to attend.
Given that its 1 in 8 students at UCSD requiring remedial courses, this is possibly the answer.
Also worth noting though that when you apply to the UCs submitting your SAT scores is optional, and I'd imagine if you got low scores you'd be less inclined to submit them, even though they don't impact admission.
Oh hey that's my university (and @ducc's as well I believe). This report isn't too common knowledge so far, unless you're active on the UCSD subreddit. For people who do know about it though, the response is largely a mix of disappointment in the damage to the school's reputation, and calls for the UC system to start requiring SAT scores for applications again.