The SAT Is Back & You Can't Ignore It

For a few pandemic years, everyone got to pretend standardized tests were dead. Colleges went test-optional, kids stopped studying, parents sighed with relief, and entire cottage industries rebranded overnight.

That era is over.

The most selective colleges in the country are quietly, then loudly, walking back test-optional. Harvard, Yale, Brown, Dartmouth, MIT, Princeton, Georgetown, Caltech, and others are either test-optional again or test-preferred in everything but name.

Beneath that policy shift lies a simple reality: universities cannot determine who is academically prepared without some standardized measure.

The clearest case study is not Harvard or MIT. It is UC San Diego.

Hell Breaks Loose When You Eliminate Tests

UCSD just released a brutal internal report on its admissions. It reads like a postmortem of the “no testing” era.

Between 2020 and 2025, the number of UCSD freshmen whose math skills are at MIDDLE SCHOOL LEVEL went up 30x. Not 3x. Thirty. Roughly one in eight freshmen now place into remedial courses that UCSD had to invent because students were coming in with gaps in elementary and middle school education.

Most of these students had technically “rigorous” transcripts. Many had taken precalculus, calculus, or statistics. A scary number had As in those classes.

They were getting As in APs while doing math at a 6th-grade level.

Grades and course titles have lost meaning. And because the UCs (yeah, UCLA & Berkeley included) don’t look at SAT and ACT, they have no benchmarks.

UCSD then did something fascinating. They are building their own internal test in disguise: a statistical “Math Index” that uses course patterns, grades, and high school data to predict which students will bomb the placement exam and land in remedial math.

Translation: they removed standardized tests in name, then quietly rebuilt a standardized predictor behind the scenes because reality forced them to.

This is why test-required is coming back. The experiment exposed how fragile the rest of the system is.

Why Elite Schools Are Reinstating Testing

Now zoom out to the Ivy level. Although they were once test-optional, Dartmouth, MIT, Harvard, Yale, Brown, Princeton, Cornell, and Johns Hopkins now require SAT & ACT.

Their conclusion: high school grades paired with standardized tests were the most reliable predictors of success in their curriculum. And it was more politically correct: a 34 from a low-income school with no APs meant the kid could pass.

The pattern is clear. The schools with the most resources for internal data analysis all tried test-optional, then concluded that:

• High school GPA is useful but inflated.
• Test scores have flaws, but still add unique information.
• The combination is better than either one alone, especially for demanding curricula.

What This Means For Current Applicants

If you are aiming for selective colleges in the next few years:

1. You should behave as if tests are required, even if a school says “test optional.”

   The most selective schools are either already test required or moving in that direction. Others will quietly treat strong scores as a plus and weak or missing scores as a risk, especially for STEM and business majors.

2. Strong scores are leverage in a noisy, inflated world. When everyone has a 4.0 and five APs, a 1520 or 34 is not about “being perfect.” It is about giving admissions evidence that your transcript is real.
3. If your school does not offer multivariable calculus or IB HL math, a strong SAT or ACT tells colleges that you can handle their problem sets anyway.
4. If you are anxious about “not being a good tester,” read this correctly.

   The goal is not a mythic 1600. The goal is to get yourself into the range. For most students, that means learning how to study strategically, not obsessively.

5. If you are aiming for STEM, CS, business, or quantitative majors, assume tests matter more. UCSD is literally building a Math Index to decide who gets into math-heavy majors because they are drowning in underprepared students.

   Elite privates are looking very closely at math sections for the same reason.

Just Take The Test

Now that the data is in, schools are admitting that they need the SAT and ACT. Not because they suddenly love the College Board. Because they cannot run a serious university if they cannot tell who is ready.

So yes, testing is coming back, and in my view, it should, with important caveats:

But tests haven’t been, and won't ever be, the only fator. Essays, activities, and POV will always count. I’ve seen kids with the killer scores and boring essays get rejected. Because colleges admit students, not numbers.

So use that to your advantage, and treat standardized testing as one tool in your arsenal, not a referendum on your worth.

I’ll sharpen your other knives.