University of California officials have sped up the timeline for making a decision on whether to bring back standardized testing in admissions, an issue that has divided faculty and thrust the university under a national spotlight.
The faculty committee that oversees admissions said last month it would launch a more-than-yearlong study of whether UC should again require applicants to submit scores from the SAT or ACT. The university had nixed that mandate during the pandemic amid concerns that the tests disadvantaged low-income students, students of color and those with disabilities.
But with 3,000 of the university’s roughly 26,000 faculty signing a pair of open letters urging the university to bring back the tests, pressure mounted to move more quickly. At Tuesday’s UC regents meeting, board chair Maria Anguiano said she now expects faculty to make a recommendation by June 2027.
Proponents of bringing back the SAT and its competitor the ACT — which is less commonly taken in California — point to what they say is a crisis of student preparedness, with some freshmen setting foot on UC campuses unable to do basic high-school math. UC Berkeley math professors have been among the most vocal supporters of the tests.
Critics say the declining preparation among students is real, but has more to do with the COVID-19 pandemic and other factors than UC’s choice to be test-blind. They argue standardized tests tell us more about a student’s family background and privilege than how they’ll do in college — a reality they say hasn’t changed since the university ditched them in 2020.
As both sides mobilize to make their case to the regents, who will make the ultimate call? Here’s what you need to know.
We’ve sought to answer the key questions about UC and the SATs. If you have a question we didn’t answer, please email felicia@berkeleyside.org, and we’ll consider updating this post.
Why did UC scrap standardized tests in the first place?
Higher education researchers and advocates had long raised concerns that the high-stakes environment surrounding standardized testing — including pricey test prep courses that helped wealthier students excel — disadvantaged low-income students and students of color.
Then in 2020, the pandemic magnified those worries, complicating the logistics of administering the tests. Americans were also engaged in a nationwide conversation about racial justice. The number of universities going test-optional surged.
A UC faculty taskforce recommended that the university keep requiring the SAT and ACT in admissions while it worked to develop its own test that might better measure students’ preparedness. But the regents instead scrapped the standardized test requirement starting with the fall 2021 admissions cycle, ultimately barring all consideration of them in admissions amid a lawsuit filed by high school students and nonprofits that argued they were discriminatory. UC never developed its own test.
What has student performance looked like since then?
University of California data show applications to the university increased by 19% the year it went test-optional, yielding a slightly more diverse student body. The number of those students who stayed enrolled into their second year was similar to previous classes, and their first-year GPAs were just 0.1% lower than those who were admitted with test scores the previous year.
But STEM faculty on some campuses paint a picture of a far more dramatic decline in some students’ readiness for college, especially in math.
“There is a big chunk of students who are very well prepared, an equally big or larger chunk who have severe math deficiencies and almost no one in the middle,” said Zvezdelina Stankova, a UC Berkeley math professor who has taught introductory calculus. “We are not talking about derivatives, we are talking about simple algebra skills that the students don’t have anymore — not all of them, but a large enough portion that you have to stop a lecture and explain how to add fractions.”
Stankova and her colleagues analyzed tests given to UC Berkeley introductory calculus students and found that the number who were severely unprepared for the class nearly doubled between 2021 and 2023. Another report from UC San Diego showed similarly grim numbers, with a rapid growth in remedial courses for students who were arriving on campus without having mastered even middle-school math.
What’s hard to parse is how much of the decline is due to UC’s test-optional policies, as opposed to other factors like the pandemic. STEM faculty who are pushing to reinstate the SAT argue that if the pandemic were to blame, performance would have declined equally for all students, with most falling somewhere in the middle of a traditional grading curve. Instead, they say they’re seeing a U-shaped curve, with greater numbers of students who are either excelling or struggling.
But the pandemic exacerbated existing inequality among high school students with different levels of resources, said Jesse Rothstein, director of UC Berkeley’s Center for Higher Education Studies. “The pandemic left kids more on their own and some kids did well with that and some kids didn’t,” he said.
Rather than reach for the SAT as a silver bullet, testing skeptics argue, California should focus on how to address the learning deficiencies caused by the pandemic and other challenges like students’ shorter attention spans.
What else has changed since UC went test-blind?
Pandemic-related concerns about access to the test have receded, and a settlement in the discrimination lawsuit requiring UC to stop using the tests has expired, giving the university free rein to make a new decision. The political climate has also shifted, with the Trump administration pressuring universities not to take diversity into account when recruiting students.
The rise of AI has complicated the admissions process, with universities questioning whether students’ essays are their own work. And worries about post-pandemic grade inflation have cast new doubt on the reliability of high school transcripts.
The format of the SAT itself has also changed. For the last few years, it’s been delivered digitally — no more filling out bubbles with No. 2 pencils — and in an adaptive format that the College Board, the nonprofit that administers it, says is more easy for high schools to give to students during the regular school day. About 60% of California test-takers accessed the exam this way in 2025.
What options does UC have?
The university could allow or require applicants to submit SAT and ACT scores for admission.
UC could also make use of a different test, known as Smarter Balanced, that all California public school students take in the 11th grade. Some research has shown that the Smarter Balanced test does about as well as the SAT at predicting college success, while yielding more diversity among top applicants. Students take the test in school, and it’s aligned with state curriculum. But it could prove challenging to administer to out-of-state students and those in private schools — and critics say it’s less difficult than the SAT.
The university could also beef up support for students who enter with gaps in their knowledge. UC Santa Barbara math chair Bjorn Birnir, one of two UC math chairs who has not signed onto the letter calling for a return of the SAT, said prospective STEM majors who want to take calculus on his campus must either pass a placement test or show they’ve completed an Advanced Placement course at a rigorous high school. Those who don’t pass the test take coursework at a nearby community college to catch up.
“They come back and take the exam and almost always do very well,” he said. “We acknowledge the problem that math education has declined among high school students and that has to be addressed. But it didn’t seem to us that taking the SATs was the best way to do that.”
UC Riverside education professor Eddie Comeaux, who co-chaired the UC faculty committee that studied the issue back in 2020, said he opposed returning to the SAT. Instead, he said, UC should take a deeper look at the factors that allow some students to thrive despite arriving on campus with gaps in their preparation.
“What is playing out within their campus life? Are there resources within the university that they’re getting help from?” he said. “We need to do a better job of explaining that to the broader community rather than saying ‘I’m going to rely on a standardized test.’”
What do UC’s administration, faculty and student leaders say?
At Tuesday’s regents meeting, Anguiano described the university’s review of admissions policies — which will also revisit the high school classes students need to take to qualify for UC — as “an opportunity to take a fresh look at how we define and evaluate college readiness in a rapidly changing world.”
She said the conversation so far had focused too narrowly on standardized testing. “We need to ask a broader and more consequential set of questions: What knowledge, skills and experiences best prepare students for success at UC and beyond?”
UC officials said they would be guided by the university’s dual mission of academic excellence and being accessible to Californians. “Our processes may be perceived by some as slow, but they will certainly be deliberative and inclusive,” said Ahmet Palazoglu, chair of the university’s Academic Senate, which will lead the review.
The UC Student Association came out this week against restoring standardized testing in admissions, and instead pushed for the university to strengthen partnerships with K-12 schools and on-campus support for students with gaps in math preparation.
“By reinstating the SAT & ACT requirements, racial and social disparities will reappear in the college admissions process, leading to further educational inequity,” UCSA president Aditi Hariharan wrote in a letter to the regents.
What are other universities doing?
More than 2,000 colleges and universities nationwide remain test-optional or test-free, according to FairTest, an advocacy group critical of standardized tests. But a number of selective private and public universities have returned to requiring test scores in recent years, including Harvard, Yale, the University of Pennsylvania, Caltech, Stanford and the University of Texas at Austin.
In making its decision, Harvard cited research finding SAT and ACT scores were good predictors of post-college success for students who attended elite universities. “More information, especially such strongly predictive information, is valuable for identifying talent from across the socioeconomic range,” Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Hopi Hoekstra said in a press release at the time.
Some universities either require or strongly encourage students to submit standardized test scores after admission so they can be placed in the right course and receive customized support. At UC Irvine, for example, a math score of 650 or more on the SAT will give a student entry into the university’s introductory calculus course.
If UC brings back the tests, what would the impact be?
SAT supporters say they hope the university will use the test in conjunction with other factors to predict whether students will succeed. UC currently considers 13 factors in admissions, including high school grade point average, class rank, honors and advanced placement courses, life experience, geographic location and how much a student has improved recently.
Under UC’s current admissions process, known as holistic review, individual campuses could choose how much weight to give to the tests, experts said.
Test skeptics said they expected some talented students from underresourced communities would be intimidated by the test requirement and not apply. And some mentioned another worry — that bringing back standardized tests would give ammunition to those who want UC to make decisions based on tests alone, even if it means enrolling a student body that doesn’t reflect California’s diversity.
Those fears were fueled by a recent Department of Justice investigation into UC Davis Medical School, in which the Trump administration accused the school of illegal discrimination. It cited as evidence the fact that the school had enrolled a racially diverse class and that most white admittees had test scores “at or above the average Black admittee.”
“I’m not sure UC actually has the option of bringing back the SAT and keeping holistic review,” Rothstein said.
Should I/my child make sure to take the SAT this year?
It’s unclear how soon changes to admissions policies could take effect, which leaves today’s incoming high school juniors in limbo, wondering whether UC will impose a testing requirement for applications submitted in the fall of 2027.
“Students all across the state, the country and also globally are now uncertain about how to plan and prepare for the upcoming admissions cycle,” Hariharan said at the regents meeting Wednesday.
The Academic Senate’s original timeline specified that any new SAT or ACT requirement wouldn’t be in force until the fall 2028 admissions cycle. But that’s now been withdrawn, and the university hasn’t placed any new limits on when changes could take place.
Berkeleyside partners with the nonprofit newsroom Open Campus on higher education coverage.
