The University of California (UC) Admissions Committee announced on June 11 that it will consider reinstating the requirement for standardized test scores in the admissions process. Just two weeks ago, over a thousand professors within the university system complained that many incoming freshmen lacked adequate math skills.
The SAT and ACT exams primarily assess students’ math and language abilities, originally designed to measure their likelihood of academic success in college. Historically, higher-ranked universities have typically required higher SAT scores for admission.
Ahmet Palazoglu, the Chair of the Academic Senate at the University of California, stated in a press release that the university will conduct a comprehensive review of key admission policies, particularly the role of standardized tests and the effectiveness of its college preparatory education framework.
The Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools (BOARS), under the Academic Senate, approved a roadmap on June 5 to establish two teacher-led working groups. One group will research the use of standardized tests in admissions, while the other will review the academic course requirements at the University of California, known as the A-G subject requirements. Any proposed modifications to admission requirements or policies will be submitted to the Board of Regents for final approval.
In 2019, several students and groups filed lawsuits against the University of California, claiming that the SAT and ACT exams reflected wealth and racial disparities rather than predicting students’ abilities to succeed in college. In May 2020, the Board of Regents approved changes to the admission policy, gradually phasing out the consideration of SAT and ACT scores starting in the fall of 2021.
In August 2020, during the course of related litigations, a California court ordered the University of California to cease using SAT and ACT scores in admissions and scholarship evaluations. As part of a settlement, the university was ordered to pay $1.25 million in legal fees.
In May of this year, faculty members across the UC system published an open letter, urging the reinstatement of the requirement for STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) applicants to submit SAT or ACT math scores starting in 2027. As of June 15, over 1,500 UC teachers had signed the open letter, including seven out of nine mathematics department heads.
The open letter emphasized that the SAT/ACT math requirement is not a barrier to fairness but rather a prerequisite for achieving fairness. It stated that not addressing the disparities in student preparedness cannot eliminate fairness barriers; it only shifts the issues to the classroom, making them harder to resolve.
According to a report released by the UC San Diego Admissions Task Force in November 2025, the university witnessed a significant decline in freshmen’s foundational math skills between 2020 and 2025.
The report revealed that the number of students with math skills below high school level increased nearly 30 times, with 70% of students (approximately 1/12 of the total) having math proficiency even below middle school level.
The faculty’s open letter also noted that UC Berkeley, as the flagship public university of California, saw as high as 30% of students evaluated in introductory calculus courses over the past three years facing “serious academic unpreparedness” issues.
The letter stated, “Masking the issue of student unpreparedness not only harms students but also damages the entire university system. While this approach may seem to widen certain ethnic groups’ access to higher education, it actually diminishes the likelihood of students successfully completing their academic pursuits.”
A member of the Ivy League, Columbia University, announced on June 12 that starting from August 2027 (for the 2027-2028 application cycle), it will officially reinstate the requirement for undergraduate applicants and transfer students to submit SAT or ACT standardized test scores.
During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, due to nationwide testing center closures, many prestigious universities implemented temporary policies that did not mandate the submission of standardized test scores.
In 2023, Columbia University became the first Ivy League school to announce a “permanent” shift in making SAT/ACT scores optional. At the time, the university’s admissions office claimed that this move aimed to “break down societal barriers” and firmly believed that students’ academic potential “cannot be defined by a single test score.”
However, this reform was abolished by the university itself in less than three years.
Columbia University admitted in a statement that a multi-year Faculty Review showed that SAT and ACT scores remained the “most effective, most persuasive” data indicators for predicting students’ academic success at the collegiate level.