The landscape of standardized college admission test policies continues to evolve at a dizzying pace.
Parents and students will remember, and not fondly, the many SAT and ACT cancellations and other disruptions that occurred during the pandemic years. In fall 2021, standardized testing largely became optional for admission for first-year students.
Some colleges that then went “test-optional” have stayed “test-optional.” Yet, emerging from the pandemic, a smaller group of highly selective colleges reinstated “test required” or “test required but flexible” policies or plan to do so for near future admission cycles. Still, other schools already were or decided to become “test-blind.”
How can parents and students keep up with these changes?
Tungsten can help. We keep up with the evolving college test requirements. In this article, we explain the past and current state of admission test requirements – and predict what will happen next.
Table of Contents
Test Policy Terms to Know:
- Test Required: Highly selective colleges and universities that require the submission of the SAT or ACT. e.g., Harvard, MIT, Brown, Dartmouth, Georgetown
- Test Required but Flexible: Highly selective colleges and universities which require submission of tests, but students choose, based on guidelines, which combination of tests to send in. e.g., Yale (SAT, ACT, IB or AP)
- Test Optional: Colleges and universities allowing students to decide whether to submit standardized test scores; “test optional” policies may be permanent or temporary for specific admission cycles only. e.g., American University appears to have a permanent “test optional” policy, but Duke has extended its temporary “test optional” policy to the 2024-2025 admissions cycle.
- Test Free or Test Blind: ACT and SAT scores are not submitted or considered. e.g., Bowdoin College since 1969. The University of California’s public state system (i.e., Berkeley, UCLA) became test-free in 2021.
- *Test Policies Differ by College or Program: e.g., Carnegie Mellon. Applicants for fall 2026 must submit SAT or ACT scores to apply to the School of Computer Science, but a “test-optional” policy applies to applicants to the College of Humanities and Social Sciences.
Some Helpful History:
The SAT and the ACT are the two standardized tests that have ruled the world of college admissions for over seventy-five years. Most colleges and universities in the United States required students to submit their scores as part of their applications.
Well before the pandemic, the first “test blind” school was Bowdoin College, a small, highly selective liberal arts college in Maine, which shook up the higher ed world in 1969 by refusing to consider standardized admission tests, relying instead on high school grades and other factors.
In 2004, Bates College, another small, highly selective Maine liberal arts college, presented data on its years of “test-optional” policies demonstrating that students who submitted scores and those who did not had similar grades and graduation rates.
Influenced by the Bates data, other selective colleges—some small and some larger—subsequently went “test optional”—Wake Forest became “test optional” in 2008, Fairfield University in 2009, and the University of Chicago became “test optional” in 2018.
The Pandemic:
The disruptions caused by the arrival of Covid-19 in 2020 accelerated the “test optional” trend. Many colleges and universities, including the most selective and elite universities and colleges adopted temporary “test optional” policies.
Test optional threw a curve ball at students and their parents. No clear guidelines existed as to when a student’s scores would help their chances of admission – and when they would not.
Post-Pandemic – Data Analysis Prompts a Return to “Test Required”:
Higher Ed experts studying the early outcomes of “test-optional” admission policies found that a student’s chances of acceptance improved if a student submitted test scores at the high end of a school’s testing profile (e.g., typically at the 75% mark or above.)
For example, Tufts University, a temporarily “test-optional” school, admitted 10% of its applicants in 2024 for the graduating class of 2028. Tufts announced that 60% of the admitted students had included test scores in their applications.
From 2022 through 2024, some of the more selective colleges that decided to reinstate testing requirements included MIT, Brown, Dartmouth, California Institute of Technology, Harvard, Georgetown, Purdue, Georgia Tech, and the University of Texas—Austin.
Still, other highly selective schools remain “test-optional” – for now – but plan to reinstate a standardized testing requirement in a near future admission cycle. Stanford and Cornell, for example, will require standardized testing for the 2025-2026 admissions cycle.
Why Have Some Colleges Returned to “Test Required” Test, but Others have Not?
Highly selective colleges gathered data and analyzed the academic performance of students who had entered college during the pandemic-induced, temporary “test optional” period without submitting test scores compared to those who did submit. Data showed that students who entered without test scores had lower college GPA’s than test submitters.
Johns Hopkins was among the universities that did research. Hopkins discovered that not only did students providing test scores achieve higher grades in college, but they also fared better in the application review process. Hopkins, persuaded by the “increasing power of test scores, compared to the declining power of high school GPA, to predict college grades,” is now easing away from its temporary “test-optional” policy. Standardized test scores are currently “optional but recommended” at Hopkins, which will return to “test required” for the class of 2026 and beyond.
Other highly selective colleges explain their return to “test required” based on another finding: Considering test scores would help them identify more promising students from less advantaged backgrounds, resulting in a more diverse student body.
Dartmouth explained, after looking at its own data, that less advantaged students had withheld their own test scores during the “test-optional” period while sharing them would have increased their chances of admission. Brown and Yale reported similar findings.
Some colleges are straddling the fence, retaining a “test-optional” policy but encouraging students to submit scores. Rice University, for example, while staying “test optional,” announced in June 2024 that it “recommends” students submit “test scores they feel will showcase their strengths.
Looking Forward:
Looking ahead we predict that the more selective the college, the more likely it will be to move in the direction of “test required” or “test required flexible,” if it has not already. These schools consider SAT and ACT scores to be strong predictors of college academic success and also conclude that requiring test scores will help achieve a more diverse class of incoming students. 
Some highly selective colleges remain on the bubble. For example, as of September 2024, the University of Pennsylvania will remain “test-optional” for the 2024-2025 cycle, but higher ed experts predict that Penn will soon reinstate its test requirements.
Parents and students should recognize that students who submit high test scores to “test-optional” schools will increase their chances of admission.
Yet some very selective universities, such as the University of Michigan, have chosen to adopt a seemingly permanent “test-optional” policy, and the University of California state system does not seem inclined to modify its “test blind” policies adopted in 2021.
The short answer: college testing policies are fluid and likely will remain so for the next few admission cycles.
One More Change – a New ACT is Coming in the Spring of 2026.
Students considering whether to take the SAT or the ACT should know that the ACT is changing in length and format in spring, 2026. Unlike the SAT, the ACT is not becoming a digital-only test.
But the new ACT will have fewer questions, dropping from 215 to 171. Test length will be reduced to 125 minutes from 195. This means students will get more time per question! With the time per question a deciding factor for some of our students, we know future test takers will appreciate this change!
The number of answer choices in the math questions will change from five to four. And perhaps most significantly, the science section of the ACT will become optional. Students will be able to choose whether to take the national test with or without the science section included.
Students planning to test in the spring of 2026 and beyond should consider these changes when deciding whether to take the SAT, the ACT, or both.
Colleges, particularly those with strong engineering, science, or computer science programs, are likely to create new test policies as to whether students must take the soon-to-be optional science section of the ACT.
Keep your eye on this space!
Tungsten will continue to closely watch college testing trends to help guide your students in their academic paths forward. Please contact us.
Other trends in college admissions that you might want to note:
- Affirmative action is gone but students can still highlight the diversity of their identity and experience in their college essays. Controversial and being challenged in courts.
- More students are applying early decision or early action (need to complete standardized tests early!)
Curious about where we got our information? See the links below:
https://offices.depaul.edu/enrollment-management/test-optional/Documents/HistoryOfTOinHigherEd_EMatters3-18-11.pdf
https://fairtest.org/test-optional/
https://www.collegetransitions.com/blog/test-optional-admissions
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/yale-university-joins-dartmouth-mit-152500587.html
https://wapo.st/4eyagJE
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Education/2024/0314/Why-some-top-colleges-are-requiring-the-SAT-again
https://www.applerouth.com/blog/johns-hopkins-reinstates-sat-act-requirements
https://www.compassprep.com/a-testing-revival/