[meshr]

It is not Russian but 'Soviets math'. Ironically, Russia introduced analogy of USA's standardized right after Itina emigrated from Russia and now Russian's math is also optimized for memorizing but not for 'emphasizing reasoning and deeper understanding'

[orthoxerox]

I graduated before USE, and my math classes were... mediocre. To graduate, you had to do 10 problems of average difficulty, so our textbooks didn't even have problems harder than that.

I took a look at the entrance exam at the uni I wanted to apply to and was shocked. Thankfully, I had my dad and he went through Skanavi's exercise book with me.

I look at the USE math exam every year and it's much better than my final exam (although I like gaokao more, it has more varied problems that make you combine different areas of math), but I don't know where the cutoff point for "I won't get into trouble for my students' low results" is.

[whimsicalism]

I am so jealous of people who have parents who know/understand math.

[orthoxerox]

Thank you. I guess I was lucky my dad is a MIPT alumnus.

[ymolodtsov]

That's a common criticism that mostly relies on emotions and not facts.

These standardized tests are changed little by little every year and are simply meant to a) ensure similar educational standards for smaller and remote cities b) enable kids to apply to any university in Russia.

Although some specific parents and teachers in particular school might want to focus on repetition of the same problems and tasks it doesn't mean everyone will and it certainly didn't affect me that much. In fact, having some definitive rules on how they assess an essay in Russian helped me get 100% for it the first time, since it was objective.