In 2020, the eight Ivy League colleges and universities in the U.S. waived the standardized testing requirement for admissions. Slowly, the institutions have brought back ACT and SAT requirements, saying test scores are in fact an indicator of student success.
Columbia University, the last of the holdouts, recently announced applicants for the Fall of 2027 will be required to submit test scores.
Columbia's own explanation, posted in a Testing Policy Update on its admissions site, points to something faculty noticed in the classroom, not in the admissions office: "Standardized testing is one of many elements we consider in our application review, which starts with establishing a foundation of academic excellence and is rooted in the belief that students are dynamic, multi-faceted individuals who are best understood by careful review of all parts of the application." The university says a multi-year faculty review found test scores to be a useful — if partial — indicator of student success, alongside grades and course rigor.
Columbia's reversal doesn't exist in isolation. It lands amid a broader, increasingly political reckoning over what test-optional admissions cost the students it was meant to help.
Nowhere is that reckoning louder than at the University of California, which — unlike the Ivies — went further than test-optional and dropped standardized testing from admissions consideration entirely in 2020. Starting in May 2026, UC math faculty, led by mathematicians at UC Berkeley, began circulating an open letter calling for the SAT/ACT math requirement to return for STEM applicants by the 2027 admissions cycle. By August, more than 3,000 UC professors across 250 disciplines — including five Nobel laureates — had signed on, joined by a companion letter from humanities faculty pushing to bring back the verbal reasoning section too.
Co-author of the UC letter and professor of mathematics and physics at UC Berkeley, Mina Aganagic, told KQED.org, “We’re not saying that these kids didn’t take pre-calc or calc or they haven’t mastered that,” she explained. “The issue is at a much, much earlier level. Students who struggle with material that’s taught in elementary and middle school.”
California Republicans have expressed their support for the mandatory inclusion of SAT and ACT scores for college admissions. Sen. Rosilicie Ochoa Bogh (R-Yucaipa) has spoken out about the urgency the state faces when concerning student success.
She recently told The College Fix, “More than 3,000 [University of California] faculty members have sounded the alarm and called for action. These professors are the experts on the front lines. They see these challenges firsthand and live with the consequences in the classroom every day, and we need to listen to them. I believe the UC Regents need to act by the end of this year and restore consideration of the SAT and ACT for fall 2027 admissions. Waiting until 2028 risks losing another cohort of students.”
