They now do have a remedial kind of class, "Math 1d", which is to be taken concurrently with Math 1a. I was placed into it after not trying very hard on my placement test, but they let me drop it when I told them I didn't need it.

> They now do have a remedial kind of class

Sad to hear that. It suggests their admissions process has succumbed. When I attended, it was very rare for the admissions people to admit someone who couldn't do the work. I only knew one who couldn't.

Yeah, heaven forbid 17 year olds decide they want to take on a career in STEM later in High School. They must be real dummies. REAL engineers decide to be engineers as HS Freshmen and never waver from, struggle on, or doubt the One True Path.

Colleges should only admit those who pledge themselves to the Guild of Software Engineering at 13, so we can keep the noble profession of building CRUD apps in JavaScript free of riffraff.

Grandparent was talking specifically about Caltech. I don’t see how anyone can go to Caltech without knowing calculus, possibly even linear algebra. This school has tougher admission standards than MIT.

I was rejected by MIT, Hahvahd, and Stanford :-)

The calculus requirement was not listed as an admissions requirement. The other students were astonished that I didn't simply assume it was required.

Fortunately, physics prof Ricardo Gomez invited me to his office for some impromptu calculus tutoring, which saved my bacon. I owe him.

Frankly, a major thing that Caltech admissions looked for is a very strong interest in engineering and science. It's gotta be in your bones, or you ain't going to thrive there. With their limited resources (it's small) it's just not pragmatic to accept those with a more casual interest. And really, why would you want to go there if you weren't? After all, 9 out of 10 classes were 90% math, math, more math, and math.

There should exist places designed to provide maximum learning opportunity to those who come in already knowing a fair bit. It is a loss to society if such places start disappearing, or perhaps a sign of such loss if the reason is less demand.

This does not in any way imply that those should be the only kind of places to exist.

This does not in any way imply that there's anything wrong with people who started to recently to have relevant background.

I could have put this comment nearly anywhere in this thread. As a German I'm really surprised by this. Calculus was part of regular math school education and just expected knowledge for the mandatory math classes during my CS undergraduate studies. I did graduate at one of the universities that do use the first years to weed out students though and dunno if less competitive ones are more lenient.

We also do split students as early as after the 4th year (end of elementary school) in three different school systems with about 50% of students attending the highest university track tier. The other two tiers might not have calculus or only in a limited form, but also don't qualify for university without further education. Thus setting students on different paths based on ability/performance early on seems very natural to me. Students always can up/downgrade schools based on performance at any year later on.