I think you may be missing my point, which is that we don't tell kids that they aren't ready for college math soon enough, and that we could if we made substantial, meaningful changes to the SAT and ACT.
Bingo.
DD already ran through a practice placement test for her Uni and concluded that Trig was a complete waste of her time-- she placed into calculus easily, and enjoyed the questions.
This in sharp contrast to how she actually performed on the SAT math section, which made her so anxious that she wasn't willing to even take the SAT-MathII at all, in spite of all indicators being that she'd probably do very well on it. She loathes the way that College Board writes (and grades) exams. She finds the writing evaluation to be particularly superficial and meaningless, but the math questions are almost as bad (at least on the SAT).
So honestly, MIT and Mudd both lost out on DD applying in large part because of that requirement. Now, I realize that they want to winnow the applicant pool to those who are legitimately able, but it DOES disproportionately impact students who have limitations related to disability (check), SES, or geography. Oh well.
