CalTech To Accept Khan Academy Success As Option For Admission (latimes.com) 35
"Given that too many schools don't teach calculus, chemistry and physics, CalTech is allowing potential undergraduates to demonstrate their ability in these fields by using Khan Academy," writes Slashdot reader Bruce66423. Los Angeles Times reports: One of Caltech's alternative paths is taking Khan Academy's free, online classes and scoring 90% or higher on a certification test. Sal Khan, academy founder, said Caltech's action is a "huge deal" for equitable access to college. While Caltech is small -- only 2,400 students, about 40% of them undergraduates -- Khan said he hoped its prestigious reputation would encourage other institutions to examine their admission barriers and find creative solutions to ease them. The Pasadena-based institute, with a 3% admission rate last year, boasts 46 Nobel laureates and cutting-edge research in such fields as earthquake engineering, behavioral genetics, geochemistry, quantum information and aerospace. "You have one of the most academically rigorous schools on the planet that has arguably one of the highest bars for admission, saying that an alternative pathway that is free and accessible to anyone is now a means to meeting their requirements," said Khan, whose nonprofit offers free courses, test prep and tutoring to more than 152 million users. [...]
The impetus for the policy change began in February, when Pallie, the admissions director, and two Caltech colleagues attended a workshop on equity hosted by the National Assn. for College Admission Counseling. They were particularly struck by one speaker, Melodie Baker of Just Equations, a nonprofit that seeks to widen math opportunities. As Baker pointed out the lack of access to calculus for many students, Pallie and her team began to question Caltech's admission requirement for the course, along with physics and chemistry. Pallie and Jared Leadbetter, a professor of environmental microbiology who heads the faculty admissions committee, began to look into potential course alternatives. Pallie connected with Khan's team, which started a second nonprofit, Schoolhouse.world, during the pandemic in 2020 to offer free tutoring. Peer tutors on the platform certify they are qualified for their jobs by scoring at least 90% on the course exam and videotaping themselves explaining how they solved each problem on it. The video helps ensure that the students actually took the exam themselves and understand the material. That video feature gave Caltech assurances about the integrity of the alternative path.
Under the new process, students would take a calculus, physics or chemistry class offered by Khan Academy and use the Schoolhouse platform to certify their mastery of the content as tutors do with a 90% score or better on the exam and a videotaped explanation of their reasoning. Proof of certification is required within one week of the application deadline, which is in November for early action and January for regular decisions. Pallie and Leadbetter also wanted to test whether the Khan Academy courses are sufficiently rigorous. Several Caltech undergraduates took the courses to assess whether all concepts were covered in enough breadth and depth to pass the campus placement exams in those subjects. Miranda, a rising Caltech junior studying mechanical engineering, took the calculus course and gave it a thumbs-up, although she added that students would probably want to use additional textbooks and other study materials to deepen their preparation for Caltech.
The impetus for the policy change began in February, when Pallie, the admissions director, and two Caltech colleagues attended a workshop on equity hosted by the National Assn. for College Admission Counseling. They were particularly struck by one speaker, Melodie Baker of Just Equations, a nonprofit that seeks to widen math opportunities. As Baker pointed out the lack of access to calculus for many students, Pallie and her team began to question Caltech's admission requirement for the course, along with physics and chemistry. Pallie and Jared Leadbetter, a professor of environmental microbiology who heads the faculty admissions committee, began to look into potential course alternatives. Pallie connected with Khan's team, which started a second nonprofit, Schoolhouse.world, during the pandemic in 2020 to offer free tutoring. Peer tutors on the platform certify they are qualified for their jobs by scoring at least 90% on the course exam and videotaping themselves explaining how they solved each problem on it. The video helps ensure that the students actually took the exam themselves and understand the material. That video feature gave Caltech assurances about the integrity of the alternative path.
Under the new process, students would take a calculus, physics or chemistry class offered by Khan Academy and use the Schoolhouse platform to certify their mastery of the content as tutors do with a 90% score or better on the exam and a videotaped explanation of their reasoning. Proof of certification is required within one week of the application deadline, which is in November for early action and January for regular decisions. Pallie and Leadbetter also wanted to test whether the Khan Academy courses are sufficiently rigorous. Several Caltech undergraduates took the courses to assess whether all concepts were covered in enough breadth and depth to pass the campus placement exams in those subjects. Miranda, a rising Caltech junior studying mechanical engineering, took the calculus course and gave it a thumbs-up, although she added that students would probably want to use additional textbooks and other study materials to deepen their preparation for Caltech.
this shit needs to stop (Score:2, Insightful)
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What the heck is wrong with you? 20% of students get 5 in AP calculus. You better have that applying to Caltech which has a 3% admission rate. They want to see tour other interests so they can be more selective, not less.
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Mmm... this _could_ be used to water down standards, but it's not necessarily so and i think it's overall a good path. Sure a good grade on AP or IB test is a good objective measure, but that's not a hard requirement of admission anyway.
The hard requirement was that applicants had taken a courses in calc, chemistry and physics. But there's no standardization for those courses and grade inflation is rampant in some high schools. So "got an A in calc at Random High" isn't a very strong endorsement at f
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The test fee for an AP exam is enough to prevent some people from taking the test. $90 might not be a lot to us, but for a lot of kids that's totally out of reach.
Khan Academy is pretty good (Score:5, Insightful)
I used Khan Academy a lot when I returned to college after ~2 decades and was tossed straight into calculus. It featured heavily in my successfully passing Calculus 1-2 and differential the first time through. When I struggled with understanding between the book and teacher, Khan often came to the rescue in making stuff actually make sense.
So it being used for admission credit? I can easily see it, especially with the additional requirement to test at 90%. That's probably a lot higher than necessary to pass, for example, a CLEP exam for college credit.
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Re:Khan Academy is pretty good (Score:4, Insightful)
Wouldn't that become obvious once you've been admitted?
Lots of countries with excellent universities have no admission tests, you just pay the $800 tuition fee. In Belgium you only need your high school diploma. The only exceptions are for medical school and civil engineering.
It's about time this test silliness was put a stop to. It has little value and just discriminates against people who are not good at tests. Tests also make education itself worse because teachers will teach to the test rather than teaching students.
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Wouldn't that become obvious once you've been admitted?
That's too late. It's disruptive and negative for all these groups:
1. the unprepared person who will struggle and then flunk out after having wasted a year (or at least a term) and a bunch of money
2. classmates who are robbed of having a capable classmate to work with
3. profs, TAs and other services spent on someone who fails out (and who always had a low chance of making it )
4. the person who WOULD have been admitted n the place of the mismatch and now has gone to an inferior place (or at least one they
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1. Tough. It's called making life choices. You can't protect idiots from themselves. I had a guy in my engineering degree who failed high school mathematics. Guess what, he flunked out. It happens. The system isn't there to protect him from himself.
2. Why would the classmates be robbed? What kind of poor system have you set up where the success of one person depends on the quality of another student? Yes I have done projects with morons. No we didn't get equal grades for the assignments and he didn't drag u
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There are schools in the US that roughly are like what you describe, primarily state universities (other than some top ones like some of the UC campuses. Admission is usually not too competitive (like 50+% admission rates) and there's a range of students both in terms of intelligence and preparedness. Why this matters is that teaching and grading is at least somewhat relative to the people taking the classes. Most profs and schools aren't going to run a lot of classes where half the class fails..
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It is not an admissions exam. It is not a "cheat your way thru this test and you are in" kind of a thing. It is one of many checkboxes on the pre-admission process. You still have a long way to go to be admitted.
The concern over a person cheating on one-of-many steps in admissions is not a valid concern. There are enough hurdles to pass that the statistical value of the potential impact is low.
Re: Khan Academy is pretty good (Score:2)
If you fail to pass exams you no longer get subsidised education and you're on your own. Works fine!
Re: Khan Academy is pretty good (Score:2)
No. I'm talking about not needing admission tests. A parent said that you would have too many students without some kind of admission protocol.
I'm saying it sorts itself out because students aren't allowed to keep going to university without showing results. At some point the government stops subsidising your education and you end up paying for everything yourself, ie at US tuition levels.
Re: Khan Academy is pretty good (Score:2)
I imagine that there are 10 times the applicants wanting to get into a prestigious school that has 2400 slots. Whatâ(TM)s the filter?
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Huh. TIL.
Given the way they're advertised, I had guessed otherwise.
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I'd call it legit, but it's not a traditional educational institution. But it's free online lectures, demonstrations, and practice systems.
IE you can learn the legit skills and knowledge from it, but you don't get a piece of paper at the end saying you've earned a degree.
Maybe it's changed some in the years since I used it. Remember, I used it basically as a tutoring system for calculus (the only courses I needed it),
It's Caltech (Score:3)
Caltech. Not CalTech.
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As as side note, have the slashdot editors ever fixed a typo in a posted article? Are they that overwhelmed that they can't be bothered to do it?
Re: It's Caltech (Score:5, Funny)
Sure. The dup post a few days later usually has the typos fixed.
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( TIMTOWDI! :-)
I'm a fan of alternate methods (Score:4, Interesting)
Traditional teaching has many shortcomings. I am optimistic that teaching in the future will improve. Khan Academy isn't the perfect answer, but it's a good step in the right direction
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+1 agree. Given how ubiquitously I see it used in brick and mortar schools, it seems inevitable it will eventually be considered a "School" and allowed to bestow credit.
Why not? (Score:3)
James T Kirk (Score:2)
WTF??? (Score:2)
My inner city high school (Collinwood), one of the poorest in one of the poorest major cities (Cleveland) in the supposedly developed part of the world (USA), taught calculus, chemistry, and physics. And at least 2 of those 3 very well, as I took those classes in my senior year.
In 1984 (the literal year, not the book).
We had plenty of problems including racial tensions, drugs, and crime inside the schools, bad enough that they had to station a half dozen armed police officers there at the time.
Yet, we were