On May 27, Yale announced that it is reinstating its full SAT or ACT requirement starting with the next admissions cycle. The 2024 “test-flexible” policy, which allowed AP or IB scores as substitutes, is gone. Yale is now the seventh Ivy League scThe right target is not perfectionhool to require testing.

Two days earlier, on May 25, more than 800 University of California faculty members released an open letter demanding that the UC system reinstate SAT or ACT testing for STEM applicants beginning in Fall 2027. Seven of the nine UC mathematics department chairs signed it, along with 43 other STEM department chairs.

These two announcements landed within 48 hours of each other. They are not unrelated, and they are not the start of the trend. They are the moment the institutional consensus became visible.

Where things stand

For the 2026-2027 admissions cycle, the testing-required list at selective American universities includes Harvard, Yale, Princeton (starting 2027-2028), MIT, Stanford, Caltech, Penn, Dartmouth, Brown, Cornell, Johns Hopkins, Georgetown, and the University of Florida and University of Texas at Austin among publics. Columbia remains the only Ivy League school with a permanent test-optional policy.

The schools still test-optional in the top tier include Duke, Vanderbilt, Northwestern, the University of Chicago, Rice, and Notre Dame. The University of California system is test-blind by policy but, per the UC faculty letter, that is the policy now under pressure.

Six years ago, the test-optional list was much longer. Two-thirds of the most selective American universities have now moved away from it.

Why they reversed

Two reasons, and the institutions have been clear about both.

First, the schools studied their own admissions data and found that scores predicted academic performance better than grades alone. Yale’s announcement quotes Yale College Dean Pericles Lewis: “SAT and ACT scores are strong predictors of a student’s future Yale academic performance, and… can help identify well-prepared candidates, especially those from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds.” When Johns Hopkins announced its return to required testing in August 2024, the university’s published explanation cited “a comprehensive review of the relevant academic research on testing and analyzed the university’s three years of test-optional admissions experience and related data.” The review found that test scores “serve as an important predictive metric to assess the likelihood of a student’s academic success.”

Second, and the bigger story, the transcript stopped doing the job grades alone used to do. The UC San Diego Senate-Administration Workgroup on Admissions issued a report in November 2025 documenting that the number of UC San Diego first-year students whose math skills tested below high school level had increased roughly thirtyfold between 2020 and 2025. Seventy percent of those students were below middle school level. One in twelve incoming UC San Diego freshmen could not do middle-school math.

The most striking finding in the report is what those students’ high school transcripts looked like. Forty-two percent of them had taken precalculus or calculus. Another 44 percent had taken statistics. The transcripts said “advanced math student.” The actual math skill was below middle school.

This is the finding that broke the test-optional consensus. Without scores to anchor what a grade meant, admissions offices were reading transcripts that no longer described the students they used to describe.

What “test-optional” actually means now

The schools still using the test-optional label are not test-blind, and the label is misleading at this point. Per Common Application data, roughly 80 to 85 percent of applicants to selective test-optional schools now submit scores. At Yale during the test-flexible period that ended this week, 90 percent of enrolled first-year students submitted SAT or ACT scores anyway.

For an unhooked applicant at a selective school, the practical meaning of “optional” has shifted. It used to mean “we will look at your application without scores and not hold it against you.” It now means “you can submit, but almost everyone else is, and you will need a specific reason if you don’t.” Choosing not to submit is no longer a neutral choice. It is a choice that requires explanation.

What this means for your student

Plan to test. The schools that have already restored the requirement (most of the Ivies, the top STEM schools, Johns Hopkins, Georgetown, and the top public flagships in Florida and Texas) require it outright. The schools that still say optional are now operating in an environment where the overwhelming majority of admitted applicants submitted scores. There is no longer a credible path through the highest tier of selective admissions that does not include a score.

The right target is not perfection. It is to score at or above the 50th percentile of the school’s published mid-50% range. That score puts the application past the first-round filter that test-required schools now use and removes the asymmetric risk at test-optional schools where most applicants are submitting.

The test-optional era was an experiment. The institutions ran it, looked at the data, and concluded that grades alone were not enough to predict who was actually prepared. The reversal is not driven by lobbying or politics. It is driven by the colleges’ own internal findings, published in their own announcements. The conversation that should be happening in families is not whether to test. It is how to test well.

Related Reading