Testing Policies Are Still Moving

The testing picture keeps shifting, and this month brought developments at both ends of the spectrum.

Columbia’s announcement that it will reinstate its requirement means all eight Ivy League schools have either brought testing back or plan to, as Higher Ed Dive reported. Meanwhile, the University of California regents opened their first sustained public discussion of whether to bring the SAT back, and one regent who voted to eliminate it said he’s starting to think that decision may have been a mistake. The conversation is driven partly by falling grades in UC’s math courses, and more than 3,000 UC faculty have signed letters urging a return. The Academic Senate is expected to send its recommendation to the regents by June 2027, so any change would come well after this application cycle.

In Wisconsin, the regents’ education committee advanced a plan to make test-optional admissions permanent across all 13 Universities of Wisconsin campuses, with a final vote still to come. System research found that high school GPA predicted college completion better than test scores did.

A Chalkbeat review of the research offers useful perspective on the debate. Two studies found that test-optional policies raised the share of lower-income students by only about one percentage point, and many lower-income students with solid scores chose not to submit them.

For counselors, the takeaway is that there’s no single national answer. A test can matter a great deal at one school and not at all at another, and policies at some schools are still changing. Encourage students to check each school’s current policy directly, and see Brian Safdari’s recent piece for how to decide whether submitting a score helps.