I guess this plays into the maomao’s hands, but requiring mastery of high math is a pretty good proxy for IQ, and a means of separating the wheat from the chaff.
Admittedly, people exist who succeed in language-based fields, or in fine arts, yet lack “math sense”. It would be ridiculous for Schools of Art, Music, etc., to require calculus. For any university program involving science, medicine, engineering, etc., admitting students who can’t handle mathematics is basically cruel; they will not succeed.
If high schools “serving” mostly “minority” students do not offer, or properly teach, higher math, that is something the school boards and superintendents should answer for. If a school has only a handful of aspiring math students, set them up with a dvd or online course. Oh no, problem solved without dumbing down.
Or sweet talk a teacher into offering it to a small class.
Probably won’t be able to do that these days, but it doesn’t hurt to try.
“requiring mastery of high math is a pretty good proxy for IQ”
For quantitative aptitude, not necessarily verbal, analytical, or performance.
There are all kinds off smarts. Math was easy for me so I went into engineering, But after living overseas for over a decade and failing to master fluently either German or Italian, I have concluded I have no gift for languages (of course, the language at work was English, but that's a lame excuse).