Top universities such as Harvard, Georgetown and the University of Texas will once again require SAT scores in admissions after taking a “test-optional” approach that was supposed to bolster the odds for minority applicants.
The California Institute of Technology, Dartmouth and the University of Wisconsin were among dozens of schools that suspended SAT requirements in March 2020 as applications from Black and low-income students dwindled during K-12 school lockdowns. Some analysts predicted a profound shift in the application process.
In recent months, however, most of those schools have announced reversals over the next several admissions cycles.
The University System of Georgia’s board of regents voted this month to reinstate SAT or the alternative ACT requirements at four public research institutions in 2026: Augusta University, Georgia State University, Georgia Southern University and Kennesaw State University. The state’s three most selective schools, the University of Georgia, the Georgia Institute of Technology and Georgia College & State University, had made similar decisions.
Several less-selective Georgia schools, including Atlanta Metropolitan State College and Clayton State University, have never required standardized test scores for applicants. They emphasize decades of data showing that the scores tend to screen out many low-income, minority applicants who don’t score as highly on the standardized tests as their White and Asian American counterparts.
“Even for highly selective institutions, requiring the SAT or ACT has the potential to change the application pool in favor of students who are more privileged,” said Tim Cain, a professor of higher education at the University of Georgia. “As such, institutions might miss out on highly qualified applicants from lower socioeconomic status and more diverse backgrounds when they mandate the tests.”
Several university officials said they suspended SAT requirements in 2020 because COVID-19 prevented most high school students from taking the exam in person. They said the past four years of experience and research have demonstrated that SAT scores help rather than hinder their efforts to attract racially diverse student bodies.
“In each case, the colleges say that requiring test scores allows them to find, admit and support a diverse pool of students in a way that grades alone cannot,” said Priscilla Rodriguez, senior vice president of college readiness assessments at the nonprofit College Board, which administers the SAT.
Some said that making the SAT and ACT optional during school lockdowns dramatized their role in helping admissions officers identify students who can succeed in a college environment.
“The best decision on admissions is from a combination of grades, standardized test scores, extracurricular activities and recommendations,” said Michael Warder, a California-based nonprofit consultant and former vice chancellor of California’s private Pepperdine University. “With standardized testing, there is a higher level of objectivity that allows an admissions officer to evaluate the capability of the student.”
Some social justice advocates disagree. They said the Supreme Court’s decision last year to overturn the use of racial preferences as a factor in college admissions has inspired a general retreat from diversity, equity and inclusion commitments.
“I believe these tests are returning in part due to the diversity fatigue America is experiencing,” said Omekongo Dibinga, a professor of intercultural communications affiliated with the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University. “Ending affirmative action as we know it has led to increased scrutiny on college applications, and [conservatives] are actively challenging every aspect of the college admissions process that might take DEI into some form of consideration.”
SAT surge
In March 2022, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology became the first elite school to announce that it was restoring SAT requirements. At the time, MIT officials said the test helped them “better assess” applicants and identify disadvantaged applicants.
Most other schools continued their test-free policies until this year. In the Ivy League, Yale announced in February that it would return to the SAT, and Harvard said in April that it would require scores for entering freshmen in 2025.
Brown, Dartmouth, Cal Tech, Cornell, Georgetown, the University of Tennessee System, the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Wisconsin at Madison have done the same in recent months.
Brian E. Clark, a Brown University spokesperson, said a “thorough analysis” of the Ivy League school’s test-optional policy “found that SAT and ACT scores are among the key indicators that help predict a student’s ability to succeed and thrive” there.
“Therefore, Brown will reinstate the standardized testing requirement beginning with the next admission cycle for the class of 2029, resuming the consideration of test scores among a wide range of factors that are considered as part of Brown’s holistic approach to evaluating each individual applicant and their overall academic record, background and opportunities,” Mr. Clark said.
The College Board has overhauled the test in recent decades. In 2005, the group removed direct analogies and a verbal reasoning section that critics said favored White applicants and native English speakers.
“It measures how well students have learned reading, writing, and math, which is a matter of opportunity and preparation,” the College Board said in an email. “That’s why civil rights advocates remain some of the staunchest voices supporting the need to preserve standardized testing — it’s a powerful tool for revealing inequities in opportunity, not differences in innate ability.”
Mr. Dibinga said the test still exhibits a cultural bias toward students from wealthy schools and privileged backgrounds with more test preparation resources.
“The SAT is a flawed measure of intelligence and aptitude,” he said.
Other academics expressed mixed feelings about the resumption of SAT testing for different reasons. They questioned whether more recent changes have “dumbed down” the content.
“I’m ambiguous about the SATs,” said the Rev. Stephen Fields, who has taught at Georgetown for 30 years. “More information is better, but I suspect their changed standards no longer reliably measure potential.”
In recent years, the College Board has allowed 7 million students to take a digital form of the SAT in approved testing centers and has removed a long-standing ban on calculators for some portions of the math section. The digital version of the test now lasts two hours and 14 minutes, ending an hour earlier than the pencil-and-paper version.
Holding back
As universities weigh the value of the SAT, some have delayed their return to standardized testing. Vanderbilt will reinstate its SAT requirement in 2027, and the University of Wisconsin will make the test optional for two more admissions cycles.
Purdue University’s admissions policy “expects” but does not “require” applicants to submit SAT or ACT scores, a spokesperson said.
“Recognizing that in some exceptional cases, applicants may not have been able to take a test, we allow submission of applications in those cases via the Common App,” the Purdue policy states.
Analysts say the early pandemic experiment in test-optional admissions demonstrated instead the indispensability of standardized testing.
“GPA [alone] is not a good metric because there is wide variability in grade point average scales across high schools,” said Shaan Patel, founder and CEO of Prep Expert, a Las Vegas-based company that produces SAT preparation materials. “In addition, there has been so much grade inflation in high schools over the past 20 years that now almost 50% of all high school seniors graduate with an A average.”
Much of the SAT’s unpopularity stems from its success in weeding out students who cannot succeed in college, regardless of their race or income level, said Peter Wood, president of the conservative National Association of Scholars.
“Abolishing the requirement led these colleges to admit large cohorts of students who could not thrive academically,” said Mr. Wood, a former associate provost at private Boston University. “In general, Black students significantly underperform other students, and the colleges treated this as though it were a defect in the SATs rather than as evidence that some students were insufficiently prepared for a rigorous college curriculum.”
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