Latest news with #SATs
Los Angeles Times
7 hours ago
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
Trump's claims about remedial math at Harvard don't add up
As the White House moves to revoke Harvard University's certification to enroll foreign students — escalating a battle between the administration and the oldest and wealthiest college in the U.S. — President Trump is falsely claiming that Harvard offers 'remedial mathematics' on topics such as simple addition. He most recently took aim at the school's math offerings during a swearing-in ceremony in the Oval Office on Wednesday for Interim U.S. Atty. for Washington, D.C. Jeanine Pirro, a Fox News host who was formerly a county prosecutor and elected judge, in response to a question from a reporter about how the 'confrontation' with Harvard will end. Here's a closer look at the facts. CLAIM: 'Harvard announced two weeks ago that they're going to teach remedial mathematics, remedial, meaning they're going to teach low grade mathematics like two plus two is four. How did these people get into Harvard? If they can't, if they can't do basic mathematics, how did they do it?' THE FACTS: Harvard does not offer a remedial math class covering basic arithmetic. Asked whether Trump was referring to a specific class, a White House spokesperson provided information about Mathematics MA5, which was introduced in the fall of 2024 as a new format for an existing course that offers extra support in calculus. The original course — Mathematics MA — is still offered. 'Harvard College does not offer any so-called remedial math classes,' said James Chisholm, a spokesperson for the university's Faculty of Arts and Sciences, which encompasses its undergraduate program. He added: 'Math MA5 is a college-level calculus class. It is simply a new format of Math MA, the introductory freshman calculus course that has been taught at Harvard for decades.' Students in Mathematics MA and MA5 have the exact same homework, exams and grading structure, according to Chisholm. The only difference is that the former meets three days a week and the latter five days a week. They are both prerequisites for higher-level math courses. One question on a sample exam Chisholm provided asks students to write a formula for determining the total number of cases during a hypothetical epidemic after a certain amount of days. The Harvard Crimson reported in September that Director of Introductory Math Brendan Kelly said Mathematics MA5 is 'aimed at rectifying a lack of foundational algebra skills among students' created by the COVID-19 pandemic. A course description notes that its 'extra support will target foundational skills in algebra, geometry, and quantitative reasoning.' The median math score for the most recently enrolled undergraduate class at Harvard College was 790 out of 800 on the SATs and 35 out of 36 on the ACTs. The average high school GPA was 4.2. 'There is no university in America that is as difficult to earn admission to as Harvard — no matter your demographics,' said Brian Taylor, managing partner at the college counseling service Ivy Coach. 'President Trump's math in this case simply doesn't add up.' Goldin writes for the Associated Press.
Buzz Feed
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Buzz Feed
6 IQ Quizzes That Can Tell How Smart You Really Are
These quizzes won't give you an exact IQ number, but they will tell you how smart you are by testing your expertise in various subjects. These quizzes are deceptively tricky, so make sure you put your thinking cap on. Good luck! Fair Warning: Only People With A Super IQ Of 135+ Will Know All These Words' Definitions This is a straightforward vocabulary test, so if you've ever taken the SATs, this will feel totally familiar. Take the quiz here. Here Are 25 Commonly Misspelled Words — Only People With A Super IQ Of 140+ Can Correctly Spell Them It's highly unlikely you'll ever need to write something without spell check, but your spelling prowess can still be a point of pride and give you something to brag about. Take the quiz here. Only People With An IQ Over 165 Can Score 8/8 On This Mind-Bending Optical Illusion Quiz Sure, your brain remembers facts and figures. But can it be tricked? Take the quiz here. This 17-Question IQ Test Will Reveal How Smart You Actually Are These questions are based on verbal, logical, and numerical reasoning. A few of them should be pretty easy, but some will pose a challenge to your brain. Take the quiz here. This 20-Question Quiz Will Reveal How High Your Movie IQ Is Movies are pop culture, and pop culture knowledge is important to having a well-rounded brain — it's just a fact. Take the quiz here. You Have A Higher Than Average IQ If You Can Answer These Double Negative Brainteasers This one will require all of your focus. Take the quiz here.
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Biographer claims it's Trump who didn't get into Harvard
Trump biographer Michael Wolff has suggested that the president has turned his ire on Harvard because he didn't get into the school. The Daily Beast reported earlier this week that there's a running joke in the White House that Donald Trump has set his sights on the Ivy League institution because his son Barron couldn't get in. But Wolff has suggested that it's Trump himself who failed to attend. Barron's mom, First Lady Melania Trump, said her son never applied to Harvard and was not the reason for the president's apparent vendetta against the university. Barron attends New York University. Wolff presented his theory about the president Thursday on The Daily Beast Podcast to host Joanna Coles. 'It's also odd because so many of the people around Donald Trump went to Ivy League universities. Several of them went to Harvard Business School,' Coles pointed out. 'Obviously, JD Vance proudly went to Yale. So it does seem particularly odd, but perhaps he's also trying to stuff it to them.' 'It's important not to lend too much calculation and planning to anything he does,' Wolff responded. 'But the other thing is that, by the way, he didn't get into Harvard. So one of the Trump things is always holding a grudge against the Ivy Leagues.' Trump attended the University of Pennsylvania. A spokesperson for the White House, Taylor Rogers, blasted the author and the outlet in a statement to The Daily Beast. 'The Daily Beast and Michael Wolff have lots in common — they both peddle fake news for clickbait in a hopeless attempt to amount to something more than lying losers,' she said. 'The President didn't need to apply to an overrated, corrupt institution like Harvard to become a successful businessman and the most transformative President in history.' The White House has previously referred to Wolff as a 'lying sack of s***.' It's uncertain whether Trump ever applied to Harvard. No published biographies have claimed that he did. Trump enrolled at Fordham University in 1964 after attending the New York Military Academy. After two years at the school, Trump transferred to the Wharton School of Finance and Commerce at the University of Pennsylvania. Trump's niece, Mary Trump, recorded conversations in 2018 and 2019, reported byThe Washington Post in 2020, with her aunt, the late federal judge Maryanne Trump Barry, who said on tape that she did Trump's homework for him. Trump Barry also said a friend took his college entrance exam for him. Similarly, Mary Trump wrote in her book published in 2020 that the president paid someone to take his SATs. 'I drove him around New York City to try to get him into college,' Trump Barry said at the time. She added that Trump 'went to Fordham for one year and then he got into the University of Pennsylvania because he had somebody take the exams.' Trump actually attended Fordham for two years. A White House spokesperson at the time said it was 'false' that someone took the SATs for the president. Responding to The Post's report about the recordings at the time, Trump said: 'Who cares?' Last month, the White House announced the removal of most of Harvard's federal funding after the school refused to adhere to the president's orders to shut down diversity programs at the university. Trump has claimed that the basis for his fight with Harvard has to do with antisemitism on campus. Subsequently, on May 25, the president demanded the 'names and countries' of all international students at the school. Trump said he would find out 'how many radicalized lunatics, troublemakers all, should not be let back into our Country.' Wolff said on the podcast that Trump 'needs an enemy. That's what makes the 'show' great, the Trump show. He picks fantastic enemies, actually. And Harvard, for all it represents, fits right into the Trump show.' He has 'done what he set out to do – dominate the headlines,' Wolff added. 'What do you do? You go after Harvard, and you go after Harvard in a way that is draconian, dramatic, and existential. It's threatening Harvard on that level.' So Harvard 'will oppose this and therefore the courts will stop this from happening. But at the same time, that becomes another aspect to the Trump show,' he argued. 'He forces them to play their part, which is to oppose him.'
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Emails shed new light on Trump rally shooter Thomas Crooks
Thomas Matthew Crooks had a lot on his mind in January 2024. The 20-year-old who, six months later, would open fire at President Trump at a Pennsylvania campaign rally — striking his ear and killing an audience member — was busy polishing his applications to transfer from community college to a four-year engineering program. Crooks was gathering transcripts and asking friends to review his personal statement. He was also designing a bomb. He ordered more than two gallons of nitromethane from an online speciality fuel retailer using an encrypted email account, documents obtained by CBS News show. Twelve days later Crooks' purchase hadn't shipped and he wanted to know why. "Hello, my name is Thomas. I placed an order on your website on January 19. I have not received any updates of the order shipping out yet and I was wondering if you still have it and when I can expect it to come," Crooks emailed the retailer, Hyperfuels, at 7:44 a.m. on Jan. 31, 2024. Crooks used his community college email account to inquire about shipping, one of the few operational missteps that has allowed for a rare look into the dark side of this ambitious young student. Two weeks after the nitromethane email, on Feb. 13, 2024, Crooks' focus returned to his academic future, planning a video call he labeled, "Proofread my Pitt personal essay with friends prior to class." A student who went "above and beyond" Very little is known about how or why Thomas Crooks set out to shoot then-presidential candidate Donald Trump. Now, emails, essays and other documents reviewed by CBS News are offering a fresh glimpse into the mind of a young man who was simultaneously planning two irreconcilable futures. In one, Crooks continues his engineering studies, for which he was lauded by professors for his work ethic, progress and class contributions. In the other, he hurtles toward an act that he must have known would end in either prison or — as it did on July 13, 2024 — his death. He was a meticulous and motivated student, attending community college after scoring 1530 on the SATs, records show. He told an adviser he was starting at the school to save money before transferring. In the hundreds of college emails obtained by CBS News, Crooks rarely veers into personal territory, with a few exceptions. When an upcoming assignment required the presence of five adults, he asked the professor if it would be OK if he only brought two or three. Crooks said that other than his sister and parents, he did "not have access to any other adults." Crooks wrote a passage for school on why his favorite season is fall on Jan. 30, the day before he contacted Hyperfuels. The passage, penned in various colors, mused on his love for football and his two favorite holidays, Halloween and Thanksgiving. He waxed poetic about the fall weather and asked, "who doesn't love the changing color of the leaves?" Crooks took his classwork seriously, routinely contacting professors to protest if he wasn't satisfied with his grades. After taking a math exam in which he errantly mislabeled a variable, Crooks asked if he could get the point back. The teacher agreed to give him 75% credit for the question. "Sounds good," Crooks replied. "That should be enough to get me an A." Crooks did A-level work in most of his courses, according to his transcript. Emails show professors were often impressed by his dedication. "Thanks again for your contribution to the class this term — wouldn't've been the same without you!" wrote an English professor in December 2022. One project in particular wowed professors in the engineering department. Crooks, whose mother is visually impaired, designed and 3D-printed a unique chessboard. The prototype included Braille labeling along the rows and columns, and alternating "raised squares with peg-holes to prevent the pieces from being knocked over," as Crooks described it. Former engineering professor Todd Landree recalls the small department's staff marveling at the project. "It was above and beyond what anybody expected," Landree said. Patricia Thompson, who taught the class, said she still thinks about Crooks' project. She also described it as "above and beyond" expectations. "It's sad that he had so much promise and he chose to do this. It's just very difficult to understand where it came from," Thompson said. A skeptic of government's "lofty promises" Crooks was focused on engineering and computing while at the community college, but a handful of written assignments show hints of a deep skepticism of the federal government and corporations. A prompt asking students to consider whether engineers involved in NASA's 1986 Challenger disaster acted ethically yielded a dubious reply. Crooks blamed NASA's administrators, who in pushing for the ill-fated launch "were trying to live up to the lofty promises they made to Congress which they were never going to be able to fulfill," he wrote. For a 2022 English assignment, Crooks wrote about George Orwell's essay, "Shooting an Elephant." Crooks called the essay "a powerful allegory warning against adopting imperialistic policies." "The writing maintains its significance as the themes in it apply to every form of tyrannical government many of which still exist today, and continue to send young men, much like Orwell, to carry out the 'dirty work of Empire,'" Crooks wrote. Crooks wrote about Mr. Trump at least once. The essay was called "Why Nuclear Energy is the Key to a Cleaner Future," and Crooks briefly touched on the proliferation of nuclear weapons, criticizing a decision Mr. Trump made during his first term. "To prevent hostile nations from acquiring nuclear technology, America and its allies can stop sales of the technology to those nations and can enter into mutually beneficial agreements like the Iran deal, which effectively halted that nations (sic) nuclear program until President Trump withdrew from it," Crooks wrote. His writing also, at least once, focused in part on then-President Biden. Crooks reviewed a 2021 opinion column that ran in The Washington Post, concluding that it persuasively argued against Mr. Biden's support for tuition-free community college. "Liberals also tend to be in favor of free community college and, in fact, free college in general," Crooks wrote. "So it is very interesting to see an author try to convince the other side using their pre-exisiting (sic) political concerns rather than trying to impress their own on to them" While Crooks showed an advanced ability to reason and persuade, he often struggled with spelling and grammar errors. Several essays and work assignments were returned to him asking him to make corrections to his work. A grand jury with a dead suspect The nitromethane purchase invoice lists a separate email account from a Belgium-based service that offers end-to-end encryption. FBI Pittsburgh Special Agent in Charge Kevin Rojek told reporters in August that Crooks had researched "nitromethane, and other materials consistent with the manufacturing of explosive devices." Rojek indicated agents accessed multiple overseas-based encrypted email accounts used by Crooks, who did not use explosives during his attack. A Hyperfuels employee, asked about Crooks' purchase last year, said the company was "aware of the whole situation." The company's president did not respond to phone or text messages. Crooks' transcript and certain other academic records were first made public by America First Legal, a nonprofit founded by Stephen Miller, a longtime aide to Mr. Trump who is now White House deputy chief of staff. Pennsylvania lawyer Wally Zimolong pursued the records on America First Legal's behalf, winning an open records fight that paved the way for their release last year. Among his discoveries was the little-known federal grand jury that subpoenaed the community college and received Crooks' emails and essays. Zimolong provided CBS News with records related to the grand jury's subpoena and Crooks' transcripts. A letter from a Justice Department official to the college on July 24, 2024, confirmed the subpoena related to "an active FBI criminal investigation." Federal grand juries are typically empaneled to determine probable cause to indict a person for a crime, but Crooks — the only known suspect — had been dead for 11 days at that point. "I think it raises a lot of important questions. Were they investigating anyone else? Are they still investigating?" Zimolong asked. He said it adds to the mystery surrounding the young man who seemed determined to continue with college until the day he climbed onto the roof of a building in Butler, Pennsylvania, and began firing. "A year later we still don't know enough," Zimolong said. Here's how much Qatar's plane gifted to Trump administration will cost to retrofit Biggest takeaways from RFK Jr.'s MAHA report Loved ones remember Israeli Embassy employees killed in Washington D.C.
Daily Record
23-05-2025
- General
- Daily Record
Can you ace this 15-question quiz meant for primary school children?
Are YOU smarter than a 10-year-old? Take this test and find out. Exam season has arrived and students across the country are hard at work revising for and sitting these crucial tests. In Scotland, when it comes to exams, it's mostly for older pupils. As teenagers, Scots schoolkids will take on their National Qualifications and potentially Highers and Advanced Highers as they move up the years. These crucial exams can help young adults shape their university or college education, or their working careers. It is important to note that exams are not the be all and end all, but performing well in them can stand you in good stead. And while we don't have official exams at a younger age in Scotland, down south pupils get tested at primary school age. In Year 6, the equivalent of Primary 6, students have to sit their SATs. These test kids in maths and English -including reading and spelling, punctuation, and grammar - but teachers do try to keep them informal to keep some of the pressure off. The results can help parents and teachers identify if pupils may need additional support as they progress along their school journey, though critics worry that they put kids under unnecessary strain and turn schools into exam factories. But wherever you sit on children being tested at primary school age, how do you think you would get on trying to answer questions set for these pupils? Everyone loves a wee challenge, whether that's taking on the world's shortest IQ test or tackling some puzzling brainteasers. These can keep your mind sharp while also allowing you to test your mettle against your friends and family - or, in this case, some primary school children. Our sister title The Mirror has pulled together 15 questions from previous exams to create a short quiz for you to take on. Some are aimed at children as young as six years old and there are multiple choice options, even though that's not always the case with the SATs. So what do you think? To reference a popular quiz show from the Noughties, are YOU smarter than a 10-year-old? Good luck and let us know how you get on in the comments below. If you can't see the quiz below, click on THIS LINK to take part. How did you get on? Did you ace it or did some of the questions leave you stumped? No matter how you did, it's just a bit of fun. Regularly undertaking this sort of challenge is not only a good way to pass the time, but science suggests that practicing these puzzles can help keep your mind healthy and boost brain function. What about trying The Cognitive Reflection Test, often seen as the shortest IQ test in the world. It's only three questions but the pass rate is just 17 per cent. quiz of 10 questions on a range of subjects from previous exams.
