As of March, over 50 private and public colleges have reinstated their SAT/ACT requirements for the 2025-26 admissions cycle, and it is anticipated that others may as well.
While many Ivy League and other private universities reinstated this policy last year, the shift is no longer isolated to private institutions. Purdue, Ohio State, the University of Florida, and the University of Texas at Austin are some of the numerous public schools to announce this policy change.
Schools are shifting back towards test scores primarily because they offer a way to compare students from different parts of the country and backgrounds.
When Dartmouth decided to reinstate its testing requirement last spring, they argued that the policy would help “high-performing students who may attend a high school for which Dartmouth has less information to (fully) judge the transcript.”
On the contrary, many opponents to standardized testing believe that it increases inequities and bias in college admissions. In 2015, a College Board study showed that students from families earning less than $200,000 scored the lowest, and those earning more than that scored the highest. However, schools like Dartmouth argued that even though someone’s score may be outside of Dartmouth’s acceptance range, it could still be a good score in the eyes of admissions officers because scores are “assessed through that local framing.”
Additionally, when some schools are getting upwards of 150,000 applications, test scores are another way to assess applicants and make a decision.
Upon hearing the news of an increase in test requirements for universities, juniors at JR are changing the way they think about the SAT, but not necessarily where they are applying. Junior Madelyn Woods said that “it won’t necessarily impact where [she] chooses to go, but it will definitely impact how seriously [she] takes the test.”
Junior Anna Yoder added that she’s “not just taking the test more seriously for schools that are now test-required but even for schools that are test optional but will look at scores.” Yoder said “[she] wants a good score to impress schools even more now.”
Changing test-optional policies are greatly impacting the way standardized tests are viewed by students and the pressure put on them to achieve their desired score.
While the majority of schools are yet to reinstate testing requirements, and many have made a commitment to being permanently test-optional, the shift of these schools represents a change in the value placed on standardized test scores in a college application. •
