A major San Francisco Chronicle article argues that the evidence is lacking that reinstating the SAT/ACT mandate at UC is indicated by student outcome data, or that requiring SAT/ACT will solve student preparedness issues.

[Excerpts]

Thousands of University of California academics have made the claim that too many students are showing up unprepared for the rigors of college calculus and other subjects, a problem they say has worsened since the UC campuses stopped using the SAT and ACT scores in fall 2021 for admissions.

Those beliefs, however, are lacking data to back them up, according to independent and other UC researchers.

What the numbers do show, they say, is that a large segment of students were not ready for college courses, including first-year calculus, well before the UC campuses ditched the admissions tests.

At the heart of the heated battle over a return to the SAT and ACT are basic questions: Are the UC campuses admitting more unprepared students because of test-blind admissions? And if the admissions tests are required once again, will the scores shift who gets a seat?

Despite the concerns over student readiness, first-year GPAs, student retention, graduation rates or course units completed remained relatively steady after the elimination of the testing requirement, according to a UC 2025 study of admissions of the 2021 and 2022 freshmen.

“I see little evidence that bringing the SAT back is going to change anything,” said Jesse Rothstein, UC Berkeley professor of public policy and economics. “This new data doesn’t show it.”

More than 3,000 of the 26,000 faculty at the system’s 10 campuses have signed a letter calling for UC leadership to reinstate the SAT/ACT as an undergraduate application requirement, a decision officials said they won’t take up until sometime in 2027. The academics leading the effort to return to testing in admissions say the UC system needs an “objective benchmark” to measure whether an applicant is ready to succeed if accepted. The test scores would be one of several criteria for admissions, they add, but nonetheless a critical and consistent tool to measure “basic readiness” in math, reading and writing in a way that subjective high school grades cannot.

It’s unclear whether a return of the tests would mean low-scoring students would be outright rejected or restricted to majors that don’t require math, for example.

The proposed return of the SAT and ACT has divided the UC system, with the University of California Student Association, equity advocates and a large number of faculty opposing the idea, in part because research shows scores are strongly linked to a student’s socioeconomic background, with affluent students having greater access to tutoring and other educational opportunities.

The UC Student Union, representing 237,000 undergraduates, expressed “deep concern” in July over the demands to bring back the admission test.

“The UCSA does not believe SAT/ACT will result in better prepared students, and furthermore seeks clarity on whether the SAT/ACT may even limit the very access to a UC education we prioritize in our advocacy by closing the doors of opportunity for disadvantaged students,” according to a letter to UC regents. “The role of public education is to ensure all students can access their right to a robust, quality learning experience, and the UC must not limit the number of students able to enter its halls.”

Many UC professors advocating for admission tests say they are seeing a startling trend play out in their classrooms, with a segment of the students ready for college content and a growing number who need help with middle-school math or basic writing skills.

“We do manage to attract very capable, fantastically smart and motivated students, and we end up trying to teach both ends at the same time, which means we teach no one well,” UC Berkeley professor Zvezda Stankova said in a recent podcast.

Relying on a high school GPA and essays no longer adequate given rampant grade inflation and the use of AI, said Stankova, a vocal advocate for the admissions tests, who declined to be interviewed for this story.

“The GPAs in high school, there is a tremendous amount of cheating,” she said. “We need a baseline check, which is the SAT.”

She and other advocates, however, have repeatedly cited particular data points to back their stance that the lack of an admission test has led to more unprepared students being admitted to a UC campus. The reports include a UC San Diego math placement report and UC Berkeley scores of a math proficiency test given to those enrolled in Calculus I.

But the numbers don’t offer a clear indicator of readiness or that test-free admissions caused any decline in overall readiness, experts said.

The Berkeley data, based on assessments given to students enrolled in Calculus I, also have significant problems, including missing scores from an entire class in the fall of 2022 and no apples-to-apples comparison with students before the pandemic, independent researchers and other UC experts said.

The test, for example, was a homework assignment with points given for completion — meaning a significant number of students didn’t take it and those who did had little incentive to do their best on it while they settled into their first days of college life, critics said.

Still, supporters of the SAT and ACT conclude the data shows that “with overall precalculus proficiency at most 50%, the share of strongly prepared students is shrinking while the share of students with severe preparation deficits is growing and now accounts for roughly one-third of the 2023 cohort.”

Their conclusion: “The suspension of standardized testing requirements has removed an entry-level metric of math readiness.”

But the holes in the data, including a lack of scores from an entire class, is a big problem, said Ann Edwards, senior director of Mathematics, Science and Engineering at San Francisco-based WestEd, which conducts nonpartisan education research.

“You’re missing a huge amount of data,” she said.

While it’s understandable that UC faculty are concerned, the math readiness scores offer no evidence that student preparation levels are worse now than before admission tests were eliminated, she said.

In other words: “They have no grounds for ‘worse.’”

Given what has been a decades-long effort to address student readiness for college in California and other states, it’s hard to connect the dots between the current outcry to the relatively recent elimination of test scores in the admission process, Rothstein said.

“I see very little evidence to things (supporters of the tests) have pinned on the SAT,” he said. “Every university professor ever has thought students are less prepared than they used to be.”

Only recently have universities — including top tier campuses such as Harvard and Yale — started to add the testing requirement back to the admissions process.

The UC system is so far a holdout, much to the chagrin of Elizabeth Statmore, a longtime math teacher at San Francisco’s academically competitive Lowell High School. She declined to comment for this story, but has been vocal about the need for the test.

“Restoring the SAT/ACT would give admissions offices an apples-to-apples comparison of students’ true underlying knowledge, and would contextualize otherwise indistinguishable (high school) transcripts,” Statmore wrote in a July opinion piece with co-authors Svetlana Jitomirskaya, a UC Berkeley math professor, and Stankova. “This crisis demands urgent intervention.”

Stankova has insisted the demand to reinstate the testing requirement is not about who gets in, but the preparation of the students admitted.

Jonathan Glater, UC Berkeley law professor and an expert in education law and economic justice, doesn’t buy that. It’s unclear how a required SAT score would address the lack of college-level readiness unless it acts as a gatekeeper, he said.

“The premise of their argument is that the admissions office should reward students who do well,” he said.

At its core, Rothstein said, the debate over the SAT actually represents the age-old battle regarding the role of public universities sustained by taxpayer dollars: access vs. excellence.

“With the SAT in particular you achieve a higher excellence that is particularly bad for access,” he said.

The thousands of faculty who signed the letter disagreed.

“UC has been a national leader in supporting under-resourced students to do well in mathematics,” according to the demand letter sent to the UC regents. “However, UC has finite resources and can help only so many students, and only when the preparation deficits they need to overcome are within reach.”

Ignoring the problem hurts students and the UC system, they said.

“For the University of California to remain a global leader in STEM, it is essential to restore these objective benchmarks,” the letter said.

Whether to require the SAT is ultimately about who will get a UC acceptance letter, Rothstein said, which is a political decision, not an academic one.

“It’s certainly easier for us when the students are geniuses,” he said. But: “I have to think our job is to serve the students our high schools are producing.”

 
The College Board and the state of Virginia will implement SAT School Day for the coming 2026-2027 academic season. This will result in a significant increase in the number of Virginia students taking the exam, as only 48% of the state's high school graduates from the Class of 2025 took the exam. SAT School Day could result in an additional 50,000 students taking the test. Here are excerpts from the College Board press release:

[Excerpts]

Virginia schools now have a new opportunity to expand students’ access to college and career readiness by offering SAT School Day in the 2026–27 school year. This initiative, established through the 2026 passage of Virginia House Bill 410, is designed to help more students take the SAT and connect their results to college and career pathways.

HB 410 requires Virginia school districts to offer the SAT to juniors at their own school, during the school day, during the fall or spring testing windows. By removing the need for students to test during the weekend and potentially travel to an outside test center, the law is designed to break down long-standing barriers to participation—particularly for students who otherwise might not have taken the SAT at all. Governor Spanberger signed the legislation on April 8, 2026, and it went into effect on July 1, 2026.

“House Bill 410 reflects a simple principle: opportunity shouldn't depend on a student’s ability to attend or travel around the state on a Saturday,” said Jenna Conway, Virginia’s Superintendent of Public Instruction. “By bringing the SAT directly into our school days for our juniors and seniors, we're giving every Virginia student a fair chance to show what they know regardless of background or life experience.”

“This test is an opportunity, not something you should have to struggle to access, and everybody should be able to have dreams of higher education,” said Saniya Yamin, an incoming Harvard University freshman from Loudoun County, whose yearlong efforts brought the bill to fruition. “It takes a lot more effort than you’d think to test on a Saturday morning. Students have to work, travel for away games, or take care of younger siblings. I took the SAT once at my own high school and once had to travel 30–40 minutes because all the seats were filled. And my classmates had to do the same. This bill can have an impact on so many different demographics of students who otherwise wouldn't be able to access the SAT; it will give students more opportunities to pursue the schools they hope to attend.”

 
Some additional thoughts on Virginia's SAT School Day news come from a James Madison University education professor:

[Excerpts]

School is almost back in session, and there is something new for high school students in the Commonwealth. Virginia schools are now required to offer the SAT to juniors and seniors on-site during the school day.

This day is called “SAT School Day” and was established through House Bill 410. Juniors and seniors can take the test in the fall or spring testing windows for the 2026-27 school year according to a press release from College Board.

Gov. Abigail Spanberger signed the legislation on April 8, and it took effect on July 1.

JMU Professor of Education John Almarode, said it removes barriers and provides greater access for students to take the SAT.

“We are improving access for Virginia’s public school students to move to the next level of their careers and becoming active and contributing members of society,” Almarode said.

He also said this does not mean providing accessibility is over.

“In other words, there are lots of other barriers that we still need to address,” Almarode said, “but this is a step in the right direction, and it’s a positive step.”

Almarode did talk about how this is one more thing that would take away students’ valuable time in the classroom.

“It’s not a major issue, but it is something to think about,” Almarode said. “How are schools going to balance this and time this to ensure that they’re still maximizing instructional time?”

However, Almarode said that the tradeoff is worth it.

“This small payment now will have a high return on investment later,” Almarode said. “I would think about it that way as an investment in their future career and workforce development, not as a ‘oh my gosh, we’ve lost more instructional time.’”

Almarode said this could increase diversity of the applicant pool for higher education institutions. He thinks the debate on the SAT as a predictor of student success in higher education is going to come back.

“We’re going to need to go back and revisit and study, okay, does it really predict what we think it predicts in learners?” Almarode said.

 
Higher Ed Dive examines the current tension regarding SAT/ACT testing caused by the reimposition of testing mandates by many elite schools in an article titled "Elite colleges are returning to the SAT and ACT. Will others follow?"

[Excerpts]

The Trump administration has taken a firm position in favor of standardized test requirements for college admissions.

For now, it has been mostly top-ranked universities — including some major public institutions — that are returning to SAT and ACT requirements. But it remains to be seen whether the Trump administration’s position will spur more colleges to follow the Ivy League’s lead.

“A lot of higher ed institutions tend to take their lead from the more selective institutions,” said Pamela Burdman, founder and executive director of the California-based Just Equations, a nonprofit focused on equity in mathematics education. “So the question is: Will the practices of the Ivy League seep down into the rest of higher ed?”

So far, however, the Trump administration’s stance and the move of the Ivy League institutions are hardly the death knell for test-optional policies nationwide.

“The truth is over 90% of schools are still test optional. A variety of schools have just double downed again,” said Harry Feder, executive director of FairTest.

Feder said high school grades are far more indicative of how students will perform in college than the SAT or ACT.

A 2014 study of colleges that don’t require standardized testing scores found almost no difference between the graduation rates of applicants who submitted scores and those who didn’t. Meanwhile, it found strong GPAs in high school were linked to high GPAs in college.

Feder also contended that standardized tests have “all sorts of class and race discriminatory properties” that make them exclusionary.

There have been persistent findings of racial disparities, for instance, in standardized testing performance, with a 2020 Brookings Institution report showing that Asian and White students consistently outperform their Black and Latino peers on the SAT’s math section.

But a January 2025 working paper studying Dartmouth College applicants, co-authored by Dartmouth economics professor Bruce Sacerdote, found that standardized test requirements often help high-achieving students from disadvantaged backgrounds.

“There’s not really an association between being test optional and having a more diverse pool, at least in a lot of places,” Sacerdote said. “It’s not like there’s some cutoff score that everybody’s got to hit and then you’re in or you’re out. It’s much more about: Are you succeeding in the context of your environment?”

Brown University economics professor John Friedman agrees.

Friedman helped lead a May 2025 study on standardized test scores and academic performance at “Ivy-Plus” colleges, which included the eight Ivy League institutions plus MIT, Stanford University, Duke University and the University of Chicago.

“Test scores at Ivy-Plus institutions are way more predictive of academic preparation than high school grades. High school grades are, in fact, not that predictive at all of academic preparation,” he said, adding that too many students are getting 4.0 GPAs or close to that.

He called the decision by Ivy League schools to revert to standardized test requirements a positive development.

“My sense is this is the right policy to go to, and it really comes out of the work I did as a researcher,” said Friedman.

…Friedman’s and Sacerdote’s research played a role in the decisions to reinstate the requirements at Brown and Dartmouth, respectively. But they also are quick to acknowledge that test scores are merely one factor in admissions.

Meanwhile, Feder expressed concern that the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling striking down race-conscious admissions, coupled with a return to standardized test requirements, has harmed diversity.

An analysis by Class Action, a nonprofit organization, showed that Black and Hispanic enrollment at Ivy-Plus institutions dropped in the aftermath of the court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard.

“It’s very clear that as a result of that decision, the percentage of Black and brown kids at the elite institutions being admitted has decreased. Going away from test optional contributes to that,” Feder said.

But Friedman and Sacerdote counter that part of the issue is that some students from disadvantaged backgrounds err by not submitting standardized test scores, failing to realize that the scores they attained may be more of an asset than they think.

The University of California system implemented a test-free admissions policy in 2020. But could that be changing?

More than 2,300 University of California faculty members have signed an open letter urging the system to reinstate the SAT/ACT mathematics requirement for STEM majors, starting with the 2027 admissions cycle. The letter alleged students are coming to college badly underprepared in math and that objective benchmarks are needed.

In July, UC’s board chair said a standardized testing review would be a “major focus” of the board and that she expects the academic senate to make a recommendation on the system’s testing policy by the end of the academic year.

Burdman, the founder of Just Equations, said math underpreparedness is a national trend but questions the remedy some professors are proposing.

“I’m skeptical that returning to standardized tests is going to be the solution to the problem they’ve identified, particularly for a public university that has an obligation to serve the broad diversity of the state’s population, whether it’s geography, income, ethnicity or race,” Burdman said.

The UC faculty letter stated, “The SAT/ACT mathematics requirement is not an obstacle to equity; rather, it is a prerequisite for it.”

But Burdman countered that multiple ways of addressing math readiness don’t involve using standardized tests.

Feder agreed and went a step further. “It’s a manufactured crisis,” Feder said. “You’re getting rid of a lot of potential doctors in a lot of communities if you start sifting them out by SAT scores. This isn’t MIT or Harvard.”

But Sacerdote called periodic standardized test assessments “part of life” for potential doctors. He suggested that reinstating these requirements may provide applicants with a better understanding of how to study for the MCAT exam and other tests down the road.

Many experts agree there is no one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to standardized test requirements versus test-optional policies.

Sacerdote and Friedman both pointed to a working paper by City University of New York researchers that concluded that high school grades were more helpful in predicting academic success in college than standardized test scores at a large, urban public university system.

“In cases like CUNY, if the test scores are not helpful as part of assessing students’ academic preparation, then I don’t see any reason to require test scores there,” Friedman said.

Sacerdote added, “It’s definitely not for me to say just because we found this at Dartmouth, every institution should step up and do it the same way we do it.”

 
An op-ed by the editorial board of UCLA's paper The Daily Bruin argues in favor of reinstating UC's former SAT/ACT mandates.

[Excerpts]

Since 2021, UC admissions officers have considered more than 200,000 candidates per year based on these limited metrics. It all started when the UC Regents voted to phase out the SAT and ACT in undergraduate admissions, citing performance disparities along racial and socioeconomic lines.

Six years later, it’s clear that what arose as a noble effort to ensure equity in accessing the UC has fallen short. Since eliminating standardized testing, the UC hasn’t made any significant diversity gains, but it has seen glaring rollbacks in student preparedness. Nobody should be happy with that result.

The regents will soon have the chance to reverse that decision. It is crucial for the success of students – and the preservation of the University’s teaching mission – that they do.

The data is difficult to dispute. Standardized tests are up to four times more predictive of college grades than a student’s high school GPA.

It’s not difficult to understand how we got here. Banning admissions officers from considering the most reliable predictor of college grades left them with criteria far too limited to determine a student’s preparedness.

UCLA and UC Berkeley select about 10% of applicants from a pool of more than 100,000. Test-blind admissions makes the process similar to picking a name out of a hat.

To be sure, the regents’ intentions behind the move were virtuous. America’s education system is unacceptably unequal. But it would be a mistake to scapegoat standardized testing as the cause of those problems. Rather, the SAT and ACT reflect systemic discrimination perpetuated by our K-12 education system, under which a student’s zip code can determine the quality of education they receive.

Ditching a metric that reflects the uncomfortable, unequal reality of college preparedness neither addresses the root cause of inequality nor fixes the outcome. Giving students an even playing field at the K-12 level so they perform better on these tests is crucial to eradicating inequity in the admissions process.

The regents’ intentions were in the right place when they eliminated test-conscious admissions six years ago. Their experiment, though, has failed unequivocally.

Come June 2027, the regents have a chance to get it right. We urge them to take it.

 

Students and educators in Kentucky still don't know whether the SAT or ACT will be given to all juniors next year.

[Excerpts]

As Kentucky prepares to implement new college admissions testing requirements, local school officials say one question remains: Will high school juniors take the ACT or the SAT next spring?

Recently approved legislation directs the state to procure a statewide college admissions examination. While that process continues, school districts across Kentucky are waiting for the Kentucky Department of Education to announce which assessment will be administered.

Despite the uncertainty, educators in Logan County and Russellville say students should keep preparing for college and career readiness, regardless of which test is selected.

Russellville Independent Schools Superintendent Kyle Estes said the district expects the statewide assessment will be either the ACT or the SAT, but the final decision rests with the state.

"The outcome of procurement is still somewhat in limbo," Estes said. "We anticipate the test will be the ACT or SAT, but it is out of our hands as educators."

Regardless of the state's decision, Estes said the district's focus will remain unchanged.

"We will continue to plan and prepare our students for college and career and anticipate strong student outcomes no matter what assessment is administered next spring," he said.

Nicole Clark, Logan County Schools' director of district programs, echoed that message.

Clark noted that the district is awaiting the state's decision and, like Estes, expects Kentucky will ultimately select either the ACT or the SAT for statewide administration.

Until that announcement is made, she said, districts cannot finalize testing plans for the coming school year.

 
The Dallas Morning News argues against rushing the acceptance of the Classic Learning Test by Texas colleges.

[Excerpts]

Texas’ higher education board is considering expanding the use of an alternative to the SAT and ACT, the Classic Learning Test, in public university admissions.

The “traditional” admissions test has been labeled as being favored by conservatives and is accepted at the U.S. military academies, the Florida public school system and a handful of other schools, largely private religious universities.

While it’s worth studying the test and evaluating alternatives to the College Board and ACT duopoly that has its grip on college admissions, the political framing attached to the CLT is exactly what Texas should avoid.

College campuses have become increasingly polarized and hostile toward students and faculty who present viewpoints inconsistent with what has been accepted in higher education spaces, but college admissions tests should be about predicting students’ success, not politics.

The test uses reading passages from classical and historical texts. In contrast, the SAT and ACT typically use shorter, more contemporary reading passages.

In a letter, Texas’ higher education commissioner wrote that the SAT, ACT and CLT “are of sufficient rigor and reliability” to be used in college admissions.

This isn’t the complete picture. An independent study from the Texas A&M Public Policy Research Institute found all three tests met the threshold for continued consideration, but the CLT is “less mature than SAT and ACT for statewide high-stakes Texas admissions use."

That’s not to say the CLT couldn’t evaluate students just as well as the SAT or ACT, but it’s too early to tell, and the potential for the test to be used in admissions by 2028 is presumptuous.

In the Texas A&M study, the CLT submitted evidence from 259 students at five private Texas universities, while the College Board, which administers the SAT, submitted data for over 117,000 students at 14 public universities.

That’s too small a sample to say for sure that the CLT meets the high bar for college admissions.

This doesn’t mean the test should be dismissed. Texas should continue to study the CLT and how it predicts student outcomes.

 
Additional warnings about the concordance of the Classic Learning Test with the SAT and ACT, as well as the rigor of the CLT come from a USA Today article which states that graduation rates have risen in school districts that have implemented the CLT, due to a less demanding math section.