Top Universities Rolling Back Test-Optional Policies
December 11, 2025
Princeton is the latest high-profile university to announce that it will return to requiring SAT or ACT scores from applicants, starting with the 2027-2028 admission cycle. Like many other institutions, Princeton paused their standardized testing requirements at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, in part due to reduced access to testing centers. Many of those test-free or test-optional policies have continued in the years since, with some institutions (like Columbia University and the University of Michigan) making them more permanent fixtures.
But the 2025-2026 admissions cycle has seen an influx in top colleges and universities reinstating (or making plans to reinstate) their standardized testing requirements. With Princeton’s announcement, every school in the Ivy League except Columbia has now returned to a testing requirement, with many of them citing internal reviews of their admissions data over the past five years, as well as internal and external research on admissions factors and student performance.
So, what is the reasoning universities are giving for returning to standardized testing requirements? Let’s get into the research.
Why are universities requiring standardized testing again?
In a statement from Princeton University regarding their new policy, they said: “The decision to resume testing requirements follows a review of five years of data from the test-optional period, which found that academic performance at Princeton was stronger for students who chose to submit test scores than for students who did not.”
This general idea—that standardized test scores are strong predictors of student success in high-achieving college environments—also undergirds the reasoning given by other universities, such as Harvard, Stanford, Dartmouth, and Caltech. For highly selective institutions in particular, research has found that SAT/ACT scores are more valuable predictors of academic success in college than GPA alone. Importantly, this predictor is especially significant in identifying students from less-resourced high schools whose achievement and potential might be otherwise hidden by the limited opportunities available to them.
In another extensive research report analyzing data from over 400 institutions and about 3.5 million undergraduate students per year, researchers found that standardized test scores were an important tool for identifying promising students from lower-income families, and potentially, for increasing the socioeconomic diversity of admitted students. While test scores are not a completely objective measure of academic qualifications—since students from higher-income backgrounds may have greater access to test prep and other admissions resources—other measures may be even more biased against lower-income students. The research found that students from the highest income brackets were much more likely to have stronger non-academic portions of their applications, such as recommendation letters, extracurriculars, essays, and leadership opportunities.
These top universities are making the argument that reintroducing the testing requirement will give them a greater chance of identifying (and prioritizing) students of high academic merit and potential, regardless of their socioeconomic background.
How do standardized testing policies differ between universities?
But while this contingent of top universities has drawn certain conclusions about testing requirements, other universities, especially large public universities, have come to different conclusions. Many of these schools have decided to remain test-optional because the policy has allowed their institutions to attract a larger and more diverse set of applicants. Additional research has suggested that test-optional policies may lead to a modest increase in low-income and racially minoritized student enrollment, particularly at moderately selective or selective institutions (as compared to highly selective institutions).
Indeed, student demographics and outcomes, as well as institutional strategic goals tend to differ between private and public colleges and universities. Far from a one-size-fits-all model, a number of universities are using this inflection point to forge more specific, tailored, and flexible testing policies that work best for their student bodies and overall goals. What do some of these specific policies look like?
University of Michigan:
As of 2024, the University of Michigan formally adopted a test-optional policy. Following their COVID-era test-flexible policy shift, the university noted an increase in applications from students of all backgrounds. An internal university committee concluded that formalizing a test-optional policy would be “the best reflection of how to ensure access and fairness to a diverse range of U-M applicants.”
University of Wisconsin:
At the University of Wisconsin, the UW Board of Regents has voted to extend their test-optional policy until 2027, with plans to reevaluate at that point. According to an analysis of UW system student data, researchers found that test scores were both a less reliable predictor of college completion than GPA, and did not necessarily add meaningful academic information beyond what is already collected in applications. The university also noted that a test-optional policy will help them compete with peer institutions in the region and the country, as all but one school in the Big Ten (Purdue University) is test-optional.
Yale University:
In contrast to its Ivy peers, Yale’s new testing requirement is flexible, in that students are allowed to meet the requirement by submitting SAT, ACT, Advanced Placement (AP), or International Baccalaureate (IB) scores. The university asserts that admissions officers do not favor any one test over another, and do not penalize applications for not having particular test scores. They hope that this flexibility will allow applicants to demonstrate their college readiness in the way that best complements the rest of their application.
University of Chicago:
The University of Chicago, which did away with its testing requirement in 2018, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, has had no problem attracting high-achieving and highly invested cohorts of students in the years since. Their policy began as an initiative to better attract and serve low-income and first-generation students. In addition to being optional, testing is also considered on a “No Harm” basis, meaning that submitted scores will only be used in review if they will positively impact an applicant’s chance of admission.
What’s next for standardized testing?
In addition to universities’ own independent data-gathering and research, there may be a new additional source of pressure around testing policies: the federal government. The administration recently made a bid to get a slate of top colleges to agree to a Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education, an agreement that incentivizes schools to align themselves with the administration’s higher education priorities—or risk losing their federal funding and other governmental benefits.
One of the stated obligations of the Compact is “Equality in Admissions.” Specifically, the Compact states that signatory institutions must require all applicants to take “a widely-used standardized test (i.e., SAT, ACT, or CLT)” in order to ensure that “university admissions decisions shall be based upon and evaluated against objective criteria.”
While the adoption of the Compact for Academic Excellence—by any institution, much less all—is still up in the air, there are likely to be wider repercussions around this new pressure campaign. As we’ve already seen regarding diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives on college campuses, pressure from the current administration (notably, not tied to any legal obligation) has been enough to scare university officials into shifting, rebranding, or even eliminating DEI offices, staff positions, and funding streams. It’s well within the realm of possibility that the Compact will have a similar effect, and that we will see more colleges and universities reinstate their testing requirements over the next year.
If you are a current high school student or parent of a high school student who is preparing to apply for college in the next admission cycle or two, be sure to keep an eye on these changes as you build your college list. While there will certainly continue to be some schools that retain their test-free and test-optional policies, we may see more institutions revert to standardized testing requirements in the coming months. These changes could give current high school students less time to prepare for tests than they might have had in previous years.
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