The University of California system abandoned its standardized testing requirement. It’s facing an existential crisis in the classroom.

By  Mina Aganagic

Mina Aganagic is a professor of mathematics and physics at the University of California at Berkeley.

The University of California’s STEM programs have long powered upward mobility and economic growth. In 1960, California built a three-tiered higher-education system designed to ensure excellence and broad access, offering a world-class education at a public-university price. That promise has benefited students, made for a fairer society and produced extraordinary graduates: winners of Nobel Prizes and Turing Awards, astronauts, internet pioneers and transformative inventors. 

In an effort to broaden access to STEM — science, technology, engineering and math — for more first-generation, low-income and underrepresented students, UC has been running an experiment: expanding admission without reliably measuring preparation. 

This confuses access with admission. Every young person with the talent and drive for a STEM career deserves an opportunity. But admission provides only a seat in a classroom, not the preparation required to succeed in a college-level course.

In spring 2020, the University of California’s Board of Regents suspended the use of SAT and ACT scores in admissions amid concerns that standardized tests were inequitable. But UC faculty had already examined and rejected that claim. In January 2020, after a year-long review, a faculty task force had recommended keeping standardized testing requirements. The task force found that UC interpreted SAT scores holistically, taking into account applicants’ backgrounds, schools and opportunities. For many students who had faced adversity, standardized tests established eligibility when grades would not have been enough.

UC’s faculty governing body, the Assembly of the Academic Senate, voted 51-0 to adopt the task force’s recommendation. Then-UC President Janet Napolitano decided to eliminate the testing requirement anyway, and the regents reluctantly followed. Thus began UC’s admissions experiment: a systemwide policy change launched against the unanimous opposition of UC’s faculty.

Six years later, the experiment has run its course. The faculty task force was right. Napolitano was wrong. And the outcome is even worse than the task force predicted. 

Having abandoned standardized testing requirements, UC now relies heavily on high school grades and essays. But grades have been inflated for years, and artificial intelligence has made essays a poor measure of unaided writing and reasoning.An admissions process without a universal quantitative measure is less reliable, less transparent and more vulnerable to human bias.

The consequences are visible in college classrooms. UC San Diego reported that entering students with math skills below high school level increased nearly thirtyfold in five years and roughly 1 in 12 had preparation below middle school benchmarks. At UC Berkeley, 20 to 30 percent of first-semester calculus students have displayed severe preparation deficitsfor three consecutive years.

Students who struggle with fractions are being asked, in the same semester, to learn far more complex concepts like limits, derivatives and Riemann integrals. Mathematics is like building a tower: Each level depends on the soundness of the one below. A student who has not mastered basic algebra is missing the load-bearing structure on which calculus depends.

Placing unprepared students into the same classroom as prepared ones puts brakes on the entire class. Our UC Berkeley calculus classes now have to pause to explain basic properties of addition and multiplication — for example, that (a+b) c = ac + bc. According to California’s Common Core standards, this material is taught in third grade. 

The students most hurt are those the policy was supposed to help — first-generation, low-income and underrepresented students. Hiding preparation gaps does not remove them; it shifts them to the classroom, where they become harder to overcome. While weaker students drown in material they were never prepared to learn, stronger students tune out. 

The administration has been trying to solve the STEM preparation problem by changing classroom expectations. Having declared progress toward equity in access, a 2025 report by the UC Office of the President on the future of STEM demands that “equity in access must be matched by equity in outcomes.”

If “equity in outcomes” means tutoring, bridge programs and summer preparation, faculty would welcome additional resources. But there are limits to what professors can reasonably address. When our schools fail to teach algebra in classrooms of 20 to 40 students over several years, a one-semester calculus course with more than 400 students will not work as a quick fix. 

If “equity in outcomes” means we should pass students who have not mastered the course material, the result would be disastrous. California needs a more skilled workforce, not a less skilled one. Lowering standards would conceal failure, weaken STEM education and devalue a UC degree.

Recently, more than 2,100 UC STEM faculty signed an open letter — which I co-authored — calling for the restoration of standardized testing in UC admissions. A parallel letter from non-STEM faculty followed, and has already attracted more than 800 signatures. 

A groundswell of this magnitude is rare. Faculty are raising an existential concern: The UC house is on fire. The test-blind process is locked in for at least the next admissions cycle, affecting hundreds of thousands of applicants. The urgency is heightened by the fact that many selective universities, including Harvard, MIT, Caltech, Princeton, Yale and Columbia, have restored or announced the restoration of standardized testing requirements. If UC remains test-blind, California risks losing even more top STEM talent, who will be readily identified and recruited by competing universities.

The University of California’s administration so far does not share this sense of urgency. While formally acknowledging concerns about student preparation, its practical response is to propose a 12-month process that “will investigate the advantages and disadvantages of relying on” the SAT, ACT and other tests, “as these tests may have evolved” since 2020. It “will provide recommendations about whether standardized tests should be used for admissions or not.”

The proposal amounts to spending 12 months replicating the work that the faculty task force has already done, with no new data and no clear justification for the do-over. This has the familiar look of delay by committee.

The regents — the stewards of the University of California — can cut through this runaround. They should acknowledge the failed test-blind experiment and reverse the misstep of 2020. The preservation of the world’s greatest public research university system, and the future of California’s students, are at stake. 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/06/30/california-stopped-requiring-sat-now-students-struggle-with-fractions/

It shouldn’t be a make or break, but my god if you are applying to Harvard and you can’t get over a 600 on Math, maybe it’s time to look elsewhere. Plus, there are tons of free resources online that are easily accessible and insanely helpful. It’s a standardized indicator that you are ready for college and that you can handle a longer test, which I believe to be necessary.

As it stands now, there are tons of students lumped together at the upper end of the scoring scale on the standardized tests for college admissions. This makes it impossible for anyone to stand out from the pack, and it doesn’t allow for differentiation between the higher-performing students. If you score 36, for example, on the ACT, so did tons and tons of other people. It isn’t an achievement or anything to be proud of. They even give you a cushion to work with so you can mess up a section, and they’ll still round your score up to 36. If they made the tests less trivial, students might actually have the opportunity to distinguish themselves.

Dartmouth College announced this morning that it would again require applicants to submit standardized test scores, starting next year. It’s a significant development because other selective colleges are now deciding whether to do so. In today’s newsletter, I’ll tell you the story behind Dartmouth’s decision.

Read the rest of it here: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/05/briefing/dartmouth-sat.html

Here's the policy update on the Dartmouth website: https://admissions.dartmouth.edu/apply/update-testing-policy

has anyone gotten into a t30 test optional and high income?

SATs are considered less across the nation and are no longer used for UCs due to income inequality in scores. While this is true, income inequality affects literally everything in college applications and to a far greater extent.

Essays: Privileged people get professionals to write and edit their essays. Essays should be abolished altogether, but that's an argument for another time. Interviews are far better for showing personality without income inequality.

GPA: Rich private schools have insane grade inflation, while in public schools, grades are overall lower and more inconsistent. At my school there are 2 English teachers, one gives all A's, the other mostly C's. I got lucky with my teacher, but my best friend didn't. Our GPAs were left to the roll of a die. A private school likely would have forced that teacher to change her grading system to keep the averages up. Also, rich people can use private tutors to boost their GPA, which is the same reason we're told SATs are unfair.

Extracurriculars: Rich people can get prestigious internships with connections, pay for expensive summer programs, and fly across the country for tournaments. My parents work all day, so I'm limited to what is within biking distance. I work 30 hours a week and barely have time to relax, let alone do extracurriculars.

Universities often take income/location into context when looking at extracurriculars, which is amazing, so why not do the same for the SAT?

There are plenty of free resources out there I used to study for the SAT and get in the 99th percentile, like the 10 full-length, college board-created practice tests. While private tutoring may be a cause for the disparity in test scores, the biggest reason for it is rich people prioritize college. Thousands of low-income students who prioritize college get 1550+ on the SAT every year. Although the SAT is affected by income inequality, other factors in admissions are affected much more. If we applied the justification to discontinue the SAT to other factors in admissions, they would have been abolished 10x over.

The SAT allows us to prove our academic strength and show we're on the same level as most privileged applicants worldwide, even when we have a tenth of the opportunities. We're told the SAT creates an economic divide but removing it only makes it far worse.

It may be because I grew up in the 90s, when it seemed that everyone took the SAT and almost no one took the ACT, but I have just always assumed a high SAT score was more valued than a high ACT score. It seems like a 36 on the ACT is not that rare, while a 1600 on the SAT is.

Put another way, if you had to submit one score to a college, would you submit a 36 ACT or a 1570 SAT? What about a 1530 SAT compared to a 36 ACT?

The University of California admissions board has voted to rescind — for now — its plan to study whether to resume SAT or ACT requirements in admissions, a move that leaves one of the university’s most closely watched debates unclear a day before the Board of Regents meets in San Francisco.

UC’s Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools, known as BOARS, announced last month that it would convene two work groups through next year: one to weigh the role of standardized tests in admissions, the other to reexamine high school course requirements for acceptance to UC.

At a Friday meeting, the board voted to pull back on the plan, and the links that explained it — which appeared on the UC website late last week — have been removed. There is no replacement plan as of yet, according to two members of the board who attended the meeting, and several UC professors who are aware of the decision and who have been advocating either for or against testing requirements. It is unclear why the plan was suspended.

Learn more at the link.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2026-07-13/uc-suspends-plan-to-reconsider-sat-in-admissions

the schools i want all average above 1500 but i got a 1290 😭 my schools average is deadass like a 900

What do you think?

People who got 1500+ on your SATs and didn’t get into their dream schools, what do you think went wrong?? Is it unfair? I mean you guys are on top of the world (>97 - 99th percentile), so I just don’t get why colleges would reject such bright minds! Besides, your whole app is def gonna be amazing if you managed to suit yourself a 1500+, even if it maybe mid, isn't whatever you say going to be understandable?! I appreciate all your comments in helping me plus other students that maybe confused, and perhaps any advice I would use in considering the SAT (right now, basing on a few info I see, many students get rejected despite their 1500+!)

Is there something you would have done perhaps right after getting your 1500+ SAT at least to boost your chances during the application process?? ( that’s if you got it some time before application deadlines)

Note: if you are an international, and you fall within that class, I would really like to hear your POV about this matter. Your advice will help our intl friends prepare better they apps this cycle!!

Thank you guys in advance! Appreciate y’all’s time!!😇

Should I go test-optional for Princeton, Columbia, Duke, Uchicago???? I have 1410 (790M and 620 R&W). For context, I am immigrant come to US in 8th grade, first gen, low income, go to Title I rural high school in Texas. My school average SAT is 1150.

My stats is pretty good.
- GPA is 5.611/5.0 (weighted GPA only). Class rank is 1/187
- Good ECs including paid work, research with professor (co-authored on manuscript and first author on poster research accepted to American Chemical Society Conference), leadership in school club and science competition.

Do you guys think I should TO or should I submit my test score??? Thanks for your advice 🫡🫡🫡

The most selective universities now largely require testing.

Some selective schools encourage tests (eg Rice) which probably works as a de facto requirement.

But there are many selectives that remain test optional -- Northwestern, Wash U, Emory, Duke, etc.

Why? Also, what's the strategy now with the schools that are still test optional? Submit if at median or better?

You're going to have weird outcomes like Wash U having a better SAT profile than Dartmouth.

Hi All. I was just wondering how important the PSAT National Merit is. I am from California and already got a 1540 on my SAT. Targests are UCS Ivies.

I'm returning to college after a few years and I have a less than perfect academic history, but I think I could do well on the SATs because I did at the past. Recently I spoke to someone at a selective school and asked about the SATs. They told me the only thing the SATs would prove is that I survived a patriarchal capitalist society, and they do not even consider the SATs at all for conventional college age students.

I have ADHD and I have never done well on consistent everyday work like homework. Especially in high school where homework is often pointless and you don't have a lot of freedom, I perform better in classes I choose myself. However even if I don't do all the homework I can learn and do well on tests so I feel like tests are the easiest and most efficient way to prove I am intelligent. Especially in the current era with rampant cheating, socially normalized scam artistry, AI use, grade inflation and ever-increasing illiteracy, I would think testing would be extra useful in a time like this, yet it has less institutional support than ever.

They defend these decisions by pointing to economic and racial disparity in test scores, but no school in the past admitted students entirely based on test scores and nothing else. They would look at your cultural context and say "this student didn't get a great SAT score, but they got one of the top scores in their high school so we will admit them." Studies show SATs pretty reliably predict future performance, see this NYT article.

"Holistic admissions" apparently means you're supposed to do a bunch of extracurriculars which the average public school kid has limited access to, so it's not at all more equitable than the SATs are.

I'm gonna put on my conspiracy theory hat and wonder if this is intentional. Did they get rid of the SATs because they are actually trying to exclude students who aren't already elite, under the guise of progressivism? It's easier for them to admit students who appear visibly different by having a different skin color but still have an upper middle class or higher upbringing. It would be more work for a school to integrate students who are intelligent but from genuinely underprivileged backgrounds, not to mention supporting those students financially in an age of budget cuts.

Edit: Since it keeps coming up, I'm not opposed to test-optional schools. I'm opposed to schools that refuse to consider the SATs at all even slightly because we apparently need to dismantle capitalism before anything means anything.

will it increase chances of getting accepted into a specific college?

Should clarify, appears to be going permanently test-optional.

https://undergrad.admissions.columbia.edu/columbia-test-optional

I encourage you all be polite in your conversations.

Currently I have a 1550 superscore (1520 raw; 750 rw, 770 math and 720 rw and 800 math)

I’ve been under the impression that 1550 superscore is enough and getting higher won’t provide any real advantage.

But recently I’ve seen that some ivies like Harvard, Yale, Penn and others have a scoring system for applicants (1-4 or 1-6) for categories like academics, interpersonal, athletics, and activities.

At ivy level applicants are so strong that even marginal improvements in score could be a differentiating factor (not the only one by any extent).

Could having a 1580 raw be the difference to lift someone to a 1 rating in academics vs a 1550 superscore? If so that could be the difference.

Also for schools like Georgetown which don’t allow superscore, would my 1520 raw be an issue?

Curious to hear everyone’s thoughts on this. I know people say there’s more important things to worry about than sat, but I didn’t really dedicate much time to get my current score and I don’t think it would take more than say 5 hours to get up to a 1570+.

Just curious tbh, my school is 1360. Add what region you're in too, I'm bay area!

(edited its actually 1360 lel)

The SAT is a test that doesn't indicate anything but how well you studied for the SAT. I don't understand why a test that's designed to mess with your head is valued and arguably as important as your GPA. 4 years should not compared with 1 day. Not everyone has the time or affordability to study, and not everyone is the fastest learner to catch on the SAT's dumb tricks. A test should NOT define someone's capability.

While I know there is no definitive cutoff, I am curious on when you should stop trying for more SATs for top colleges. For example, people say say that there is a big diffeence between a 1500 and 1550 but is the same true for a 1550 and 1600 (or a 1550 and 1580) etc. Just wanted to know when to stop doing more attempts.

Can we just talk for a minute about the boneheadedness of this alleged rule that one should only submit SAT scores if they fall above the 50% mark for each school's accepted range? This rule doesn't make mathematical sense. If applied consistently year on year, this just drives scores up higher and higher until they approach 1600.

If everyone abides by this rule religiously, it doesn't take fancy math to see how quickly this becomes distortionary. First year 1400 is the 50% mark, so only >1400 submit. Next year, because no one submitted anything less that 1400, the new average is 1450. So that year only >1450 submit. Then, the next year, the new average is 1500. And so on. Where does this end?

I'm trying to convince my son, who has a 1490, to submit his score to an Ivy. He's adamant that this is a bad idea. True, that's lower than their 50% mark, but it's not that much lower. It's still above their 25% mark, which means that 1 in 4 people there (who reported their score) received that score or lower.

I mean, seriously, under what conceivable rationale would this score work against an applicant?

EDIT: I just did some research on this, and the acceleration rate here is DRAMATIC.

• 2023: According to the common data set, the 25% mark for Brown University in 2023 was at 1500: https://oir.brown.edu/sites/default/files/2020-04/CDS_2022_2023.pdf

• 2021: But for 2021 (just as the pandemic was in full swing), the 25% mark was 1440. https://oir.brown.edu/sites/default/files/2020-04/CDS_2020_2021_Final2_0.pdf

• 2019: And going back further to 2019 (before test optional) the 25% mark was 1420. https://oir.brown.edu/sites/default/files/2020-04/CDS_2018_2019_FINAL.pdf

• 2017: And then going back to historical norms at 2017 – just six years ago -- you can even see that the scores were lower, with 1370 (!) as the 25%: https://oir.brown.edu/sites/default/files/2020-04/Brown%20CDS_2016-2017_Final.pdf

The UC system is test blind, which is a bit frustrating but sure, they can go with whatever floats their boat. HOWEVER, it's completely baffling to me that they allow you to put NM Semifinalist / commended on your activities / honors list. Why? Doesn't this defeat the purpose of test blind? Isn't NMSF basically an SAT restatement? In fact, is putting NMSF even positive? What if it looks like the applicant trying to sneak in a standardized test when one wasn't asked for?

Okay so earlier this year my school registered me to take the ACT, but, having already registered to take the SAT, I didn’t really care abt the ACT and studied like the bare minimum; turns out that was enough because I got a 36.
Then, assuming that I would only have to report my best score on my college apps, I completely ignored my SAT and didn’t study for it at all. I got a 1460, which I know isn’t awful, especially for having gone in blind and with 2 hours of sleep, but it’s not MIT-level.

I realized not long after that that MIT requires you to report every SAT/ACT you’ve taken, not just your best score. I’m now worried that despite having gotten a perfect ACT score, my mid SAT will kind of discredit that or make it seem like luck/a fluke.
I know that if I really tried to study I could get a 1550+, but I don’t know if that’s really necessary/would help at all or if i’m just overthinking.

any input would be great!

I know that sounds like a stupid question because a 1510 is in the top 2% of all scores but colleges have gotten so competitive. I’m looking at applying to top public schools like Michigan and UF but I don’t really know if a 1510 would be a super strong score to submit to those colleges.