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The University of Pennsylvania has officially returned to a policy of test-required admissions, the 6th of the 8 universities in the Ivy League to do so.
A critical mass of colleges have now abandoned their pandemic-driven testing positions to return to test-required admissions. Seven of the top 10 colleges and Universities in the country (per the US News and World Report rankings) have returned to test-required admissions, and more are coming. Half of the top 20 colleges now require testing, as do a third of the top 40. Eight of the 12 “Ivy Plus” colleges (the Ivies plus Stanford, Duke, MIT, and U. Chicago) have officially reinstated testing requirements, leaving Princeton, Duke, Columbia and Chicago as the only test-optional holdouts in this elite and highly-selective group.
Many Ivies that have reinstated testing have referenced the compelling research from the Opportunity Insights group, citing the finding that SAT and ACT scores are the single best predictor of performance in college. Others have made direct reference to the widespread grade inflation and grade compression that have diminished the predictive power of high school grades to predict performance in college. Penn’s decision emphasized the uncertainty and confusion that test-optional policies may create for applicants:
The flexibility of a test-optional policy has escalated decision-making stress in an application process that is already stressful.
While each college will assess testing policies in light of its unique institutional priorities, it is clear that test-optional – once the mandate of the Covid era – is now up for reconsideration across the country.
Of the forty top colleges in the country, 22 remain test-optional. (The UCs in this group are test-blind.) As colleges continue to reinstate testing requirements, future applicants are right to wonder which college(s) will be next.
Some admissions offices extend a preponderance of their offers of admission to students who submit test scores. This “preference” for test scores is not merely a reflection of selectivity, as similarly selective colleges can vary greatly in the percentage of enrolled students who submitted test scores. The data would suggest that colleges that enroll a greater percentage of test-score submitters are more likely to return to test-required admissions. Accordingly, colleges like Princeton, Northwestern, Chicago, Rice, and Carnegie Mellon have a decent chance of joining many of their peer institutions by returning to testing requirements in the near term.
For the state flagships that continue to see their application numbers skyrocketing, a return to testing could help their admissions offices manage the flow of applicants. The flagship public universities in Georgia, Florida, Texas, and Tennessee are test-required. We would not be surprised if “public Ivies” such as UNC, UVA, and Michigan return to test-required admissions in upcoming admissions cycles.
Here are the percentiles of enrolled students who submitted SAT and ACT scores at the top 40 colleges, derived from the 2023-2024 Common Data Set. For the colleges that already required test scores for the 2023-2024 class (e.g., MIT, Georgetown, Florida), the submission percentages add up to over 100% as some students submitted both SAT and ACT scores. Schools highlighted in yellow are now test-required.
From this data, it would appear that an institution like Northwestern University, enrolling 79% of students with test scores, would be more likely to reinstate test requirements than one like NYU, given it enrolls a mere 39% of students with test scores. Both schools are extremely selective, with Northwestern having a 7% and NYU an 8% rate of admission. That Northwestern enrolls nearly 8 in 10 students with test scores and NYU only 4 in 10 reflects differences in their respective admission preferences and processes.
Reinstating test requirements helps an admissions office compare applicants with more complete information, and, in most cases, has no negative impact on application numbers. Many colleges see significant increases in applicant volume following a return to test requirements. Here is a table illustrating the colleges that have recently returned to testing and the corresponding net impact on applications.
Only MIT and Georgetown saw modest application declines following the reinstatement of test requirements. MIT is currently sitting at a 4% acceptance rate, and Georgetown at 13%. The state flagships continue to rise in popularity, independent of test requirements. This year, in its first cycle of reinstated testing, the University of Texas at Austin saw a massive 24.3% increase in applicants - proof that a sought-after state flagship can continue to soar in popularity even with testing requirements.
Penn is the first college to return to testing following the 2024-2025 admissions cycle, but will not be the last. Last year, we saw a flurry of activity and test-required announcements following Dartmouth’s February announcement. In a span of 4 months, we saw Yale, Brown, UT, Harvard, Caltech, Cornell, and Stanford reinstate testing requirements. Now that applications are in for the high school class of 2025, colleges can make announcements for the 2025-2026 cycle and still allow students in the class of 2026 time to complete their testing. We will keep you updated on these developments in the coming months.
