Several leading colleges and universities are reinstating SAT or ACT scores as part of their admissions requirements after years of being "test blind" (not looking at standardized test scores, even if submitted). The move has revived the debate over the fairness and value of such testing.

Institutions initially removed the test score requirements during the COVID-19 pandemic. Since testing centers were shutting down, many students didn’t have access to testing or test preparation, so dropping the requirement seemed only fair. When schools eliminated their standardized testing requirement, they either went “test optional” or “test blind” (also called “test free”).

Dartmouth College, Yale University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are leading the reinstatement trend, each arguing that requiring test scores helps them spot deserving hidden talent in underfunded high schools. These schools also say they can better assess student readiness with standardized test scores than with grade point averages alone.

Columbia University will become the final Ivy League school to bring back testing requirements for the 2027–28 admissions cycle. Meanwhile, more than 1,300 faculty at the University of California have signed letters asking that test requirements be reinstated in that system.

College Board is tracking the full list of colleges and universities now requiring SAT or ACT test scores with student applications.

Impacts of Dropping Test Score Requirements

Schools have often complained about the impact of dropping test score requirements on admissions quality.

College faculty members have expressed concern that an increasing number of students are arriving on campus unprepared for college-level coursework. They have to teach the basics to some students who, they believe, should never have been admitted, says independent educational consultant Laurie Kopp Weingarten, president of One-Stop College Counseling.

“We’ve seen too many students enroll without the foundational skills needed to succeed in college-level coursework,” explains Kevin Krebs, founder of the college admissions consulting firm HelloCollege, who has over 20 years of experience advising students on what they can do to improve their chances of college acceptance. “That’s difficult for students, who can quickly become overwhelmed, and for faculty, who are often forced to spend more time filling academic gaps while still trying to deliver the curriculum. Ultimately, it can contribute to lower retention as students struggle to keep up.”

Immediate Impacts of Closing Testing Centers

After dropping test score requirements, many schools discovered that going “test optional” made their applicant pools bigger and their admission rates lower.

“That looks great on a press release. Once you’ve enjoyed that, going back is a hard sell internally,” says John Morganelli Jr., director of college admissions at Ivy Tutors Network and former director of admissions at Cornell University.

Application volume rose sharply at selective schools, Morganelli says. But removing test scores added more weight to the other parts of the application: essays, activities, letters of recommendation, course rigor. While that sounds democratic, the parts of the application that replaced the test score are the parts most sensitive to who has access to good resources. “I don’t think that trade was as equitable as it was advertised to be,” he explains.

Rising application rates and falling admission rates made highly selective schools look more competitive than ever. In addition, the average SAT or ACT scores for each school soared with the “test optional” choice because only high scorers submitted, discouraging many students from submitting applications.

“From the college point of view, without test scores, colleges had one less common measure for comparing applicants from schools with different grading scales, course offerings, and levels of grade inflation,” Weingarten explains. “Some were more comfortable with that than others. That’s why some colleges will remain 'test free' or 'test optional' while others will return to requiring test scores.”

The Value of Standardized Tests

Reinstating SAT and ACT test score requirements aids student applicants in another important area — securing scholarships.

That is a hope of Annie Bao, a high school senior at Auburn High School in Auburn, Alabama. Bao has taken the ACT test and plans to apply to several colleges and universities. Alabama allows every student to take the ACT test for free, ensuring that college-bound students have at least one test score to include with their application.

Still, Bao understands the debate over the full value of such testing.

“I do not believe standardized tests completely represent a student’s readiness for college,” Bao says. “However, they do provide useful information as part of a student’s academic profile, such as their ability to reason quickly, solve problems, and adapt under time constraints while responding to a variety of questions.”

Svetlana Kekutiia agrees. As regional director of admissions at online high school Crimson Global Academy, she says highly selective universities have an enormous amount of information to evaluate, and more credible academic data generally allows them to make better-informed decisions. A standardized test can provide useful evidence of academic readiness, particularly when interpreted alongside school context, curriculum rigor and grades.

Asking the Right Question

According to Marsha Familaro Enright, president and program director at Reliance College in Chicago, the “test optional” debate has been framed poorly.

“The question isn’t ‘are these tests predictive?’ They predict first-year grades reasonably well. The question is ‘predictive of what?’” Enright asks. “They don’t predict whether someone can think independently, hold an argument together or change their mind when the evidence shifts. Those are the capacities employers and graduate programs keep saying are missing, and no bubble sheet has ever measured them.”

Enright says an SAT score tells her how a student performs alone, against a clock, on questions with exactly one right answer. Almost nothing she asks of a student resembles that. She believes that schools reinstating the test score requirement are optimizing for a metric they can defend publicly — not necessarily for the students they say they want.

“I’d add that, for a small institution, the tradeoff looks completely different than for a large one,” Enright explains. “When you admit a small cohort, you can afford to actually get to know applicants. A score is a rationing device for schools with more applications than they can read. That’s a legitimate operational problem, but we should be honest that it’s an administrative solution, not a pedagogical one.”

Benefits of Reinstating Test Score Requirements

Reinstatement of test score requirements, supporters argue, should pay immediate dividends. Krebs says standardized tests provide admissions offices with a common benchmark across thousands of high schools and can help identify high-achieving students whose transcripts alone may not tell the full story. Strong scores also remain an important factor in merit scholarship decisions at many institutions and third-party scholarship providers.

Testing has never been a completely level playing field, Krebs says. Students from under-resourced schools often have less access to quality preparation, so scores should be considered alongside coursework, essays recommendations and personal context.

In addition, Krebs says the biggest mistake he sees students and families make is assuming that “test optional” means test irrelevant.

“Many selective colleges have remained test optional in name, while a majority of admitted students still submit scores,” Krebs notes. “Families should pay attention to enrollment data rather than the label alone.”

Reinstating the test score requirement can also address the stress among students who couldn’t decide if they should submit their scores in a test optional scenario.

“As an IEC member [International Education Corporation], I had to spend time with each applicant deciding whether to submit,” Weingarten explains. “When students asked admission officers directly, they would often receive a response such as, ‘If you feel your score represents your ability, then submit.’ Students didn’t know what to do with that answer. With ‘test required,’ that stress, and how to possibly ‘game’ the system, disappears.”

Test Scores as a Part, Not the Whole

As schools reinstate SAT and ACT test requirements, they are focused on treating test scores as one piece of a holistic admissions process rather than a sole measurement for admission. The goal is to use both testing and holistic review together in a way that provides meaningful context.

“It’s important that colleges continue to use a standardized test as one data point among many, and not make decisions solely based on test scores — which they don’t do,” Weingarten explains. “It should never outweigh four years of classroom performance, but it can help confirm that a student’s transcript accurately reflects their academic preparation.”

This is where holistic reviews are important, where colleges consider test scores as one part of the application while also considering grades, extracurricular activities, community service, essays, and other accomplishments, student Bao says.

“The objective should not be to identify students who are simply good at taking the SAT. It should be to build the clearest possible picture of a student’s academic potential,” Kekutiia explains.