Last month, just weeks after this year’s college admissions season came to a close, Yale University announced that it was doing away with its “test flexible” standardized testing policy, which allowed applicants to choose between submitting scores from a range of exams, including the Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate. (Previously, Yale was briefly test-optional.) But starting this fall, the venerable school is going back to the tried and true standard of making all applicants take the SAT or ACT. The move follows on the heels of a number of high-profile institutions that are reinstating standardized test requirements—the University of Pennsylvania just returned to form and Columbia University is bringing required tests back in 2027, making it the last Ivy to do so.
The dramatic and seemingly nonstop shift in testing policies is one of many factors that defines the current college admissions landscape as it wraps up for the year—on May 1, students across the country committed to their colleges and universities of choice, bringing to a close one of the most arduous, frustrating—and peculiar—rites of passage into American adulthood for many teenagers. Kids, their families and college counselors may be sighing with relief, eager to settle into a few months that won’t be devoted to stressing over GPAs and strategizing over extracurricular game plans.
Yale reinstated SAT and ACT requirements in May 2026.
But colleges themselves aren’t able to luxuriate in any kind of respite. Indeed, American colleges and universities have never been more caught in the crosshairs of forces that have them both fretting that they’re not attracting enough students who will succeed at their institutions (hence the return to standardized testing) as well as that they’re not attracting enough students, period. At a time of great economic uncertainty—spurred by the Trump administration’s funding freezes (many schools paid significantly to have their money restored); the upcoming endowment tax; complications around full-freight-paying international students; and a looming enrollment cliff—colleges are twisting themselves into knots trying to draw in more students who will, in turn, drive down their acceptance rates. The more selective a college, after all, the better the optics, which drives even more applications. Lower acceptance rates also affect a school’s bond rating and its ability to borrow money.
The result has been nothing short of chaos for families who have had to interpret and react to colleges’ desperate maneuvers to attract better and more applicants. Nat Smitobol, an admissions counselor with IvyWise, broke down some of the biggest whoppers in college admissions over the last year, explaining the method behind colleges’ madness.
T&C: Six years after Covid, there’s a very distinct trend to bring back standardized testing. In addition to University of Pennsylvania’s recent shift, Yale and Columbia are also now going to start making kids test. Meanwhile, faculty at the University of California are waging a war to have UC schools—which don’t even look at test scores even if they’re submitted—reverse course, saying there are students who are at middle school math levels. What seemed like a calm conversation over the merits of testing suddenly feels very urgent. What’s going on here?
Nat Smitobol: “The return to standardized testing is about two issues. When you have standardized testing you have more data about your pipeline. Admissions officers get to see how many kids took the PSAT and so you have a lot more information in planning travel” to recruit students. “You know that this area had a 15 percent increase in kids taking the PSAT, so let’s go visit that area.
Some faculty at the University of California are lobbying to have SAT requirements reinstated.
“Also, for some of these schools it’s helpful for them to use as another metric to weed out students. A school’s number of applications will go down, but in some cases, as with Penn, some of its programs are quantitative and a test score is a helpful predictive measure. Maybe they took kids (without test scores) that they hadn’t been able to take in years past, but those kids didn’t perform as well on campus compared to how students performed when they mandated test scores.
“As you get more applications, it’s hard to standardize, like, what does an ‘A’ mean here? There are some regions where there’s a lot of grade inflation. And some where there’s not. So to have one metric that’s universal can be helpful when you’re trying to figure out, OK, who should we take?
The past cycle also saw more early decision windows introduced from some pretty big players, such as the University of Southern California and the University of Michigan, both of which were binding. This came on the heels of other schools introducing new, early admissions options, such as the University of Chicago, which has an “early early” window whereby students who have participated in a UH Chicago summer program can apply and be notified as early as October of their senior year. All of this feels like increasingly shameless ways to improve yield.
“This is all just everyone’s individual way to try to work on their bond rating. There’s a lot of uncertainty out there. We had this increase in applications after the pandemic and it’s starting to plateau. One of the levers that affects bond rating, part of the algorithm to calculate that rating, is yield. When you put in an ED option, the kids you accept ED are close to 100 percent of yield. So you accept 238, you’re going to have 237 come—that’s a huge boost. And schools have really been struggling with yield.
High school students who complete a University of Chicago program are eligible to apply via a special early-decision process.
“USC had ED for the first time last year. Michigan had ED, which they botched in some ways. They released their decision really, really early, on November 24th, and they deferred almost everyone, which turned off some kids who were like, Whoa, if Michigan’s going to defer me from ED, which is a binding contract, I’m just going to apply ED2 somewhere else. They lost some really strong kids.
“When schools haven’t been able to figure out yield (through early decision), they go in other directions. So you have approximately the same number of schools implementing ED as you do doing away with supplemental essays. Tulane and Washington University are two schools that notoriously have not had easy supplements”—starting this fall, neither will require supplements. “They’re going to encourage more kids to apply because they’re making it easier to apply. So even though we’re in this same ecosystem, everyone’s in a different place along the spectrum and everyone’s trying to pull whatever lever they can pull to keep up with the madness they’ve created.”
So much talk last year was about how Trump’s restrictive visa policies and travel bans were going to affect international students—not to mention the aftermath of student encampments on Ivy League campuses. The common wisdom was that fewer international students would apply, leaving more slots for Americans. How did things pan out?
“This year the number of applications from international students was high. In fact, it accounted for the biggest increase in applications that we’ve seen historically. Tufts University has said its international numbers were up. Williams College was up—some of the most selective places.
Despite predictions to the contrary, applications from international students were up at many schools in 2026.
My hypothesis is that everyone was expecting a lower number of international students because of the visibility of things happening on Columbia’s campus, on Tufts’ campus. Kids being singled out for protesting, things like that. But what happened was that international students still wanted to apply to the most visible schools in the U.S. One of the popular profiles is an international student who says, ‘I’m only going to apply to X, Y and Z school and if I get in, I’ll go. But if not, I’ll be happy to go to the University of Toronto or Queen’s University. I’m just going to put out applications to the most selective schools and if one clicks I’m going but if not then I’m going to stay home.’”
With all of these unknowns, while colleges are more and more worried about making sure kids enroll to boost yield, will waitlists be more fluid. Historically only a tiny fraction of students are admitted off of waitlists—will that change in the environment we’re in?
“I had a student get off the waitlist at NYU. Brown has used the waitlist, I know of several kids who got off the waitlist there. Oftentimes, the kids coming off, when it’s smaller numbers, are kids that have significant connections to the college. Maybe a trustee connection or a development office, those types of connections. They’ve probably never been more important as we return to the normal world of development. I think after Varsity Blues, development really shut tight and closed down. No one talked about it. But now that we’re a few years out, especially in light of the cuts in funding… The annual fund is so important for tuition revenue and things like that.
Waitlist acceptances vary school by school and because of a numerous factors, including “summer melt.”
So you’re saying it’s a good time to be a donor’s kid?
It is. It’s always been a good time, but now more than ever because of the cuts in funding (by the federal government). There was a date when colleges had to respond to the Trump administration regarding what he wanted out of them. There were some schools that were like, hey, we don’t fully agree but we’re not fully rejecting it. Those are financial decisions. But when you do that you know you’re going to have ramifications in terms of the type of funding that comes to you, so you need to lean in on the philanthropic community.
Back to the waitlist—what do you predict we’ll be seeing this summer now that colleges have received their decisions from students?
“Internally, colleges have a term that’s called ‘summer melt.’ It’s a small percentage of students that, for whatever reason, they were accepted but they just don’t show up. They don’t pay their first tuition bill in August. I know anecdotally, schools have built in for summer melt more than they have in the past this year just because, whenever there’s uncertainty, you’d rather go in over-enrolled than under-enrolled. Sometimes that means going to the waitlist to make sure you’ve accounted for summer melt.
“Some of the uncertainty is coming from the fact that if you enrolled a lot of international students who then have to start the F-1 (student) visa process, you don’t know definitively right now if they’ll get their visa or not. There are international students I worked with who were very, very nervous about not getting their visas. And then they’re like, What do I do? And looking at last year’s data, the number of F-1 visas that were issued was down significantly, about 36 percent.
“I don’t know yet, we’re going to have to see what the summer melt is like, that usually happens in August. But I do imagine there will be some because some kids might not get visas” and so colleges will resort to the wait list. “Right now international students are doing all the paperwork. My prediction is not all those kids are going to get visas. So the waitlist is very dependent on that.”
