The Wentworth Institute of Technology is dropping its pre-Calculus admissions requirement, opening its doors to a wider range of students looking to pursue STEM degrees there.
Dr. Deirdre Donovan
“We're just recognizing that that Pre-Calculus requirement was just another bar to entry for a whole lot of students,” said Dr. Deirdre Donovan, the inaugural director of first-year math in Wentworth's School of Computing and Data Science. She joined the Boston school in 2022.
Those looking to apply to Wentworth are required to have four years of English, a mathematics course on the level of Algebra II, and one laboratory science course under their belt. And before this most recent change, students aiming to get into the school’s applied mathematics, applied sciences, computer science, cybersecurity, data science, or engineering programs, had to have completed pre-Calculus as well.
But for a number of reasons – including late changes in career/academic plans and lack of high school course offerings – there was a subset of students that just didn’t have pre-Calculus done by the time they graduated.
Per Wentworth’s previous admissions policy, these high school graduates either would not have been eligible to apply to a number of the school’s STEM programs or would have been “conditionally admitted.” Approximately 10% of Wentworth’s students fell into that latter category, said Sue Sontgerath, associate vice president and dean of undergraduate admissions at Wentworth, adding that these students had shown potential.
As of the current admissions cycle, Wentworth has removed its pre-Calculus requirement across the board for all majors, instead only requiring the completion of Algebra II to apply.
"These are students that have great potential and that really want to move into a STEM career,” Donovan said. “So we tried to meet that need while keeping our academic standards the same. We haven't changed our calculus curriculum at all. We have not changed our physics curriculum at all. We have not changed our outcomes or the skills that our students will be meeting Wentworth with.”
