High GPAs And Test Optional Mask Poor Math Skills At College

A new report from UC San Diego’s Academic Senate highlights something incredibly concerning about the state of higher education: the share of incoming freshmen who test below middle-school math standards has increased nearly thirtyfold in five years. The document (PDF File) describes an admissions system strained by policy shifts, pandemic education losses, grade inflation, and a widening gap between transcripts and actual skills.

The findings are not coming from critics outside the institution. They are the university’s own.

And they point to a glaring problem at the heart of California’s public higher education system: more students are paying university-level tuition for instruction that veers closer to elementary school material. At the same time, academically stronger applicants (many of whom could have enrolled ready for college-level work) were likely turned away during a year of record demand.

The net result is that hundreds (or even thousands) of students may drop out because they can’t cut it – leaving them potentially in debt, and frustrated at a system that didn’t prepare them and likely mislead them.

College Freshman Need Remedial Math Courses

Between 2020 and 2025, UCSD saw the number of freshmen whose math placement test scores fell below the college level cut-off jump from less than 1% to nearly 12%. According to the report, these students passed with solid marks in high school. Nearly all completed the UC’s required sequence (PDF File) of math courses, many took classes beyond it, and a substantial share earned strong grades – on paper.

Yet once they arrived at UCSD to actually test into which required math course they needed to take, they struggled.

Math 2, the university’s longstanding remedial course, was originally designed to address gaps from Algebra I, Geometry, and Algebra II – content California high schools must provide. But instructors during the 2023-24 academic year reported something new: many students could not perform skills typically taught in elementary and early middle school.

In response, faculty redesigned Math 2 in 2024 to cover material aligned with grades 1 through 8 (yes, elementary and middle school level) and created an additional course, Math 3B, to catch-up missing high school topics.

More than 900 freshmen this year placed into Math 2 or Math 3B, roughly 12% of the class. Before 2021, the figure rarely exceeded 1%.

For students, this raises serious financial implications. A freshman paying UC tuition may now spend an entire quarter (and in many cases multiple quarters) catching up on material they should have mastered years earlier. The university warns that these students have high rates of failure in subsequent courses and often take longer to graduate – or never do.

This means more money, more student loan debt, and more chances of never seeing the potential ROI of college.

The Grade Inflation Problem And Test-Optional Problem

One of the most striking data points in the report is the mismatch between high school grades and actual readiness. In 2024, more than a quarter of students placed into Math 2 earned a perfect 4.0 in their high-school math courses.

The correlation between math GPA and placement results is only about 0.25, according to the analysis. Students who appear strong on transcripts often arrive underprepared, while some who lack advanced coursework perform better on placement exams.

The conclusion: grade inflation is real and high-school grades can no longer be treated as a reliable measure of math ability. This is especially true after COVID-era grading changes and policy shifts such as AB 104, which allowed broad leniency in grading.

The elimination of the SAT and ACT only amplified this problem. Without standardized test scores, UCSD leaned more heavily on inflated transcripts and self-reported course titles, which offered little insight into whether students could handle college-level quantitative work. This is one of the big reasons many elite schools have already ended their test-optional policies.

Non-Academic Criteria And Direct Admissions

Last year, UCSD received 160,150 applicants – meaning their decision to admit unprepared students wasn’t due to low applicant numbers. It’s guaranteed that inside that applicant pool were plenty of prepared students.

So, how are these students getting admitted? It comes from a push to admit more students from under-resourced high schools, a longstanding systemwide priority (which coincidently has coincided with a dramatic rise in academic gaps).

UCSD now enrolls more students from schools classified as “LCFF+” (those with 75% of the schools’ enrollment composed of low-income, English-learner, or foster youth students) than any other UC campus. Nearly a third of its California freshmen come from such schools.

Faculty note that the aim of expanding access is important, but the capacity to catch them up to college standards is limited. And as the working group puts it, admitting students far below readiness “risks harming those students and straining limited instructional resources.”

“[These admission practices] risk harming those students and straining limited instructional resources.”

Impact On Students Who Are Ready For College-Level Math

The rising number of underprepared freshmen doesn’t just impact those who are unprepared, it also creates downstream effects for students who do arrive prepared.

Faculty must devote more time to teaching remedial courses, limiting their bandwidth for higher-level instruction. Departments that depend on calculus (biology, psychology, engineering) report higher rates of students repeating prerequisite courses, adding pressure on scheduling and advising.

And for those who were denied admission, the report’s findings may raise unavoidable questions: if the university admitted hundreds or thousands of students needing elementary-level math remediation, were better prepared applicants crowded out?

This concern is heightened by the fact that UCSD received a record number of applications. Families reasonably expect a selective university to enroll students ready for college-level work, not those whose transcripts suggest readiness but whose skills do not match.

What This Means For Students And Families

For families, the findings underscore an increasingly important reality: a high GPA is no guarantee that a student is prepared for college-level math.

Students considering math-heavy majors may need (or want) independent verification of readiness – by taking standardized tests that can give them a fair baseline.

Parents may also want greater clarity from high schools about the standards behind their grades. A transcript that looks strong may not align with actual skill levels, especially after years of learning disruptions and grade inflation.

The university, for its part, faces pressure to reconcile access goals with academic expectations. As the report bluntly states, expanding opportunity without protecting standards can undermine the very mission of a public university.

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