CSHPE PhD candidate BK Byun shares insights from a new study on the role of calculus in engineering school admissions with Inside Higher Education
The study shows that admissions officers were 16.4 percentage points less likely to recommend a student for admission who hadn’t taken calculus than one who had.
A research team with the Michigan Admissions Collaboratory led by CSHPE PhD candidate BK Byun along with Professor Michael Bastedo and Assistant Professor Jeremy Wright-Kim has highlighted the inequity in college admissions to engineering schools when it comes to whether or not a high school student has taken calculus.
Their study of 292 admissions officers found the officers were less likely to recommend a prospective engineering student for admission if they hadn’t taken calculus—even if their high school didn’t offer the class, reports Inside Higher Education.
“Our research team thought this was an interesting issue because, in principle, institutions that say they practice holistic review should address these disparities by ensuring admission officers evaluate student achievement in context of the opportunities that have been available at their high school,” Byun tells Inside Higher Education. “But surveys and interviews with admissions officers across the country [have shown] that even if institutions did not require calculus as a formal admissions requirement, admissions officers would evaluate the lack of calculus in different ways. So, we wanted to more empirically examine what was going on in admissions offices to examine this equity issue in a little more detail.”
Their working paper, titled Is Calculus a Gatekeeper in Selective Engineering Admissions? Insights from a Lab-in-the-Field Experiment with Admissions Officers, is posted on the Annenberg Institute site EdWorkingPapers, and is forthcoming in the journal Education Researcher.
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