UC’s SAT Ban Created a Math Illiteracy Crisis
One in 12 UCSD freshmen can’t do middle school math—and 25% of them had perfect 4.0 GPAs in high school.
Source: x.com
Source: x.com
TL;DR
The UC system’s test-blind admissions have created a math crisis so severe that UCSD had to create remedial classes for remedial classes—while students with perfect GPAs can’t do basic arithmetic.
This is what happens when you abandon objective standards: a “remedial remedial” math course because your remedial course was too hard. It sounds like satire. It’s not.
Still true in 2026, unbelievably UC system may well be the last to roll back the SAT ban Meanwhile the kids can’t do math
A major contributor to this train wreck is that the UCs are test-blind. They don't consider SAT/ACT scores in admissions. Not even when deciding who to award scholarships. twitter.com/justinskycak/status/2007535434126242063
The UC system may be the last holdout clinging to test-blind admissions while the evidence of catastrophic failure piles up around them.
The Numbers Are Damning
The facts from UCSD’s internal report read like a dystopian novel:
- 1 in 12 incoming freshmen don’t know middle school math
- Between 2020 and 2025, students with math skills below high school level increased nearly thirtyfold
- 70% of those underprepared students fall below middle school levels
- 25% of students in the remedial-remedial course had a perfect 4.0 GPA in their high school math courses
Let that sink in: quarter of the students who need to learn elementary school math had straight A’s in high school. The correlation between high school math grades and actual math ability is just 0.25. A coin flip would be nearly as predictive.
The SAT Was the Canary
Here’s the kicker: UCSD’s own Mathematics Department has known for decades that the SAT math score is “the single best predictor for math placement.” The ACT is equally good. But the UC system doesn’t even look at these scores—not for admissions, not for scholarships, not for anything.
So let me get this straight: – 1 in 12 incoming UCSD freshmen don’t know middle school math, – and the remedial math course was too advanced, – so UCSD had to create a remedial remedial math course, – and a quarter of the students placing into it had a perfect 4.0 GPA in their high school math courses. That sounds so ridiculous, like something you’d read in The Onion, but it’s unfortunately real. Here are some direct quotes from the UCSD report: “Between 2020 and 2025, the number of students whose math skills fall below high school level increased nearly thirtyfold; moreover, 70% of those students fall below middle school levels, reaching roughly one in twelve members of the entering cohort.” “While Math 2 was designed in 2016 to remediate missing high school math knowledge, now most students had knowledge gaps that went back much further, to middle and even elementary school. To address the large number of underprepared students, the Mathematics Department redesigned Math 2 for Fall 2024 to focus entirely on elementary and middle school Common Core math subjects (grades 1-8), and introduced a new course, Math 3B, so as to cover missing high-school common core math subjects (Algebra I, Geometry, Algebra II or Math I, II, III; grades 9-11).” “Few, if any, students who place into Math 2 have successfully completed an engineering degree.” “high school math grades are only very weakly linked to students’ actual math preparation.” “The correlation between the average math grade and the placement result is only around 0.25 on a scale of 0 to 1. In 2024, over 25% of the students in Math 2 had a math grade average of 4.0.” “In fact, for more than two decades the Mathematics Department has found that out of all available student data, the single best predictor for math placement has been the SAT (math section) score, with the ACT score being an equally good predictor.”
Why Can’t College Students Do Middle School Math? New @_MathAcademy_ podcast episode with @exojason – posted here and everywhere else (see comment) 0:00 - Introduction 2:11 - Freshmen math collapse: 1 in 12 UCSD freshmen don't know middle school math 6:45 - Remedial remedial math: UCSD created remediation for remedial math 8:40 - Inflated grades: 25% of remedial-remedial students had perfect GPA in HS math 10:06 - Test-optional admissions removed the last objective metric 12:13 - Pandemic inflation: GPAs skyrocketed 14:37 - Removing tests pressures teachers to inflate grades 16:52 - Grade-grubbing: endless negotiating, complaining, accusations 19:01 - Then vs. now: parents, tests, accountability 27:38 - Crisis opportunism: “Never let an emergency go to waste” 29:33 - No tests = no knowledge requirements 33:28 - Elite collapse: Harvard has the same problem 36:31 - No enforcement means no standards 37:40 - LLM cheating is trivially easy 38:25 - Catching a cheater and turning him around 48:46 - Cheating is like taking mob money. Now you’re in, you’re never out. 50:41 - Assessments must be done in person 55:06 - LLM cheating is often obvious yet hard to prove 57:17 - How to prevent cheating on long papers 58:28 - Start hardcore, then lighten up gradually 1:01:37 - Good teachers play bad cop when needed
The report is explicit about the consequences: “Few, if any, students who place into Math 2 have successfully completed an engineering degree.” These students were admitted to a top-tier public university, often with stellar GPAs, and they’re being set up to fail.
Grade Inflation Ate the Standards
When you remove objective tests, you create a pressure cooker for grade inflation. Teachers face parents demanding higher grades. Students grade-grub endlessly. Without the SAT as a reality check, a 4.0 GPA means nothing—it just means a student showed up and complained enough.
The pandemic accelerated this into overdrive. GPAs skyrocketed while actual learning collapsed. And now we’re producing college students who need to be taught the math concepts they should have mastered in elementary school.
The UC Regents need to reverse this disaster. Every other major university system is walking back test-optional policies because they realized what California refuses to admit: you cannot have standards without measurement.
Follow @garrytan for more.
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Related Links
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Garry Tan on UC SAT ban (@garrytan)
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Justin Skycak on UCSD math crisis (@justinskycak)
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UC test-blind admissions policy (@justinskycak)
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