More than 90% of four-year universities do not require incoming students to submit SAT or ACT standardized test scores after pandemic-era rollbacks in the name of “fairness.”
But now professors at some of the nation’s top schools are begging admissions offices bring them back — after seeing more and and more students arriving with shockingly poor academic qualifications.
One report from the University of California-San Diego shows the portion of incoming freshmen who needed to be taught math from middle school, and even elementary school, when the arrive surged from 0.5% in 2020 to 8.5% in 2025, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The SAT and ACT used to be ubiquitous parts of the college process, but criticism that it favors white and wealthy students while leaving low-wealth minorities behind led many schools in recent years to make score submissions optional or refuse to look at them altogether.
That movement was underway across the 2010s, but became commonplace when 2020 pandemic lockdown requirements made the proctored tests unfeasible and many schools waved the requirement.
“We now observe preparation gaps so severe that instructors must re-teach middle school mathematics while simultaneously teaching the material students need for sciences, engineering, economics and other quantitatively demanding fields,” the letter read
Fewer than 10% of America colleges and universities require applicants sit one of the major tests to be considered for admission — with the College Board reporting that barely 60 schools nationwide require students submit either its SAT test or the ACT on applications.
But some professors are now beginning to regret those decisions, and are begging their schools to bring them back after encountering a startling increase in students lacking basic aptitude — with teachers even reporting college freshmen with arithmetic skills that wouldn’t pass middle school-level exams.
The situation has come to a head in the University of California school system — which dropped SAT/ACT requirements in 2020.
About 1,200 professors across math and science departments have signed a letter requesting scores be reinstated, while explaining incoming freshmen were increasingly incompetent and classroom standards were plummeting.
“UC is increasingly unable to provide students with the education needed to become leaders in California’s scientific, technological and economic future,” it continued.
The UC-San Diego report from last November is particularly illustrative. It found that about 900 incoming freshmen were unable to do high school level-math — up from just 30 with the same problem in 2020.
And about 70% of those 900 even struggled to do middle school-level math.
Several of the nation’s top academic institutions appear to in agreement with the UC profs.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Dartmouth College both dropped test requirements in 2020, but MIT brought it back by 2022 and Dartmouth by 2024.
Yale University also dropped SAT/ACT requirements during the pandemic, but just last week reinstated them.
Top-flight students appear to also understand that the tests help their chances. At Yale, 90% of applicants submitted test scores — even before the requirement kicked in.