[lancebeet]

>Though secretly, it was to give hope to the students who were defeated by the education system and told “You can’t study Computer Science, because you didn’t know Carbon has a radioactive isotope.”

Forgive me if I'm being elitist here, but this seems like a strange example of outrageous admission requirements. I would have thought knowing about radiocarbon dating (which I'm assuming this is a reference to) is common knowledge (I believe it's in the standard curriculum for grades 7-9 in my country), so it doesn't seem like a completely unreasonable test question. If this is an example that the author uses from his or her own experience, it seems stranger still.

>Every evening, my brother and I would sit in front of an oil lamp and study, mostly maths and science.

[jefftk]

It reads to me like this was on the exam for getting into the CS program in particular, though. Which makes it sound like IIT has dealt with the very large number of students who want to study CS by trying to limit it to the overall academically strongest students?

[DanielHB]

I am Brazilian and people from US and Europe are completely clueless about the level of competition at the end of high school in those kind of countries (Brazil, China, India). He is talking about college entrance exams.

"vestibular" in Brazil, "gaokao" in China, the JEE (Joint Entrance Examination) in India. Those are the keys to upper middle class and they are guarded jealously. In my case to get in CS at a top university in Brazil there were 30 students applying for each spot in the Major in that year.

It is often used as a measurement "X per spot" for different majors to say how hard it is to get in. Some majors like Medicine can reach 200/spot. And trust me since most people have to pay to get those tests the less prepared students don't even bother because they know they won't pass. A lot of people also go for an easier-to-get-in major than the one they want hoping they can do an internal transfer after getting in (people apply for Pharmacy major in order to transfer to Medicine for example). Pretty much all majors at the top universities have at least 5 per spot, even the useless ones (which won't get you a job either).

It is grueling, it is not uncommon to see people crying in the hallways after the exams and occasionally suicides directly linked to the exams. There is such a glut of graduates and such a lack of jobs that unless you go to one of the top schools you won't get a good job or you will have to endure years at bad jobs to get experience before moving on to a good job.

Oh yeah, also student loans? Forget it, you have to pay for yourself, so hope you live close to the uni or daddy can cover your living costs. At least in Brazil (and I believe in China and India as well?) tuition is free at the top unis.

[JumpCrisscross]

> sound like IIT has dealt with the very large number of students who want to study CS by trying to limit it to the overall academically strongest students?

It might also be a check against rote learning.

[thatloststudent]

I interpreted it as knowing the basics of nuclear physics in order to do a CS Bachelor's degree, which is what the entrance exam for these colleges ask.

[eesmith]

Like lancebeet, I learned there are radioactive isotopes of carbon as part of learning about carbon dating while in high school.

I think there's a big step from that knowledge to say that means I know the basics of nuclear physics. If anything, it's a better test for the basics of archaeological dating.

Or, as I learned recently, the 12C/13C/14C ratios are used to help determine the source for the increase in atmospheric CO2, since fossil fuels have essentially no 14C. (TIL it's the "Suess effect", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suess_effect ). So it can also be a test for how well one understands the evidence behind the causes for global warming (while also making carbon dating trickier - https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1504467112 ).

I also know that nuclear power plants split the uranium atom to generate power, as do atomic bombs. I also know that radioactive materials are used in smoke detectors and as power sources for some space probes, that bananas are radioactive, and that radon is a radioactive gas that can build up in houses and cause cancer.

That still doesn't mean I know the basics of nuclear physics, which starts with how the nucleus contains protons and neutrons, and is incredibly tiny compared to the nominal size of the atom.

[ben_w]

Knowing about carbon dating is a proxy for general knowledge or nerdiness, but any proxy that becomes a measure, stops being a good proxy.

The only way physics helps with computer science, is by being a convenient source of coding challenges.

In this regard, it's like treating programming languages as "languages" and only allowing people to study them if they can also master French or Spanish.

Also:

Common knowledge is much, much less STEM-y than most commentators I've seen, seem to think.

https://xkcd.com/2501/

Back 24 years ago, the final mandatory exams I had at school (UK GCSE), one of the questions in the higher level biology exam was asking me to… count ~ten dots within a rectangle and none of the dots outside.

Most people have no motivation to care what carbon dating is, or that it involves radioisotopes, even if they're smart, hence (though I think things have improved since then) The Two Cultures: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Two_Cultures

Instead of STEM, culture: Soap operas, Harry Potter, Pokemon, ball games, etc. — I have no idea what the "offside rule" is, as despite having heard people explain it, I have no motivation to care and therefore don't remember it.