Vanderbilt University has announced it will be returning to mandated SAT/ACT scores for students applying in the fall of 2028.

[Excerpts]

Vanderbilt will return to a policy requiring standardized test scores for students applying for undergraduate admission to the class entering in fall 2029.

This update follows a comprehensive review of our test-optional policy, which was implemented in 2020 to support students applying for fall 2021 and their families during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our review found that standardized testing, when considered as part of our holistic admissions process alongside a student’s academic record and other components of their application, provides valuable information that can help identify students who are best positioned to thrive at Vanderbilt.

Vanderbilt remains committed to a holistic, context-based application review that considers all aspects of a student’s application. Standardized test scores, when considered as one component of a comprehensive application review, are useful predictors of collegiate academic success.

In order to provide ample time for students and families to prepare for this change, our return to required testing will take effect for students applying for undergraduate admission for fall 2029.

 
The updated Vanderbilt admissions page has further details.

 
EdSource offers an article co-written by 2 UC math professors calling for an immediate return to SAT/ACT mandates:

[Excerpts]

All students who arrive at the University of California deserve an adequate foundation for success in their coursework. A student can be exactly the right person to admit to a UC and still be unprepared for the course sequence they’re enrolled in.

Critics of the [open] letter offered arguments about access, diversity and who deserves a seat — all legitimate questions — but not the question that more than 3,000 UC professors, including five Nobel laureates, actually raised. The letter states, plainly, that the preparation gaps seen under test-blind admissions are well beyond what a single semester of remediation can close: While our letter focused on math, where our expertise and data lie, colleagues in the social sciences and humanities have since published a parallel letter reporting similar underpreparedness in their own courses — evidence that the concerns raised are not limited to STEM.

This distinction between mathematical capacity and gap filling is also why UC Santa Barbara’s practice of sending underprepared students to community college for a summer of review is not the fix some believe it is. Almost half of UCSB’s own math faculty signed the open letter, indicating that they see the same problems we do.

These deficits, witnessed throughout the pipeline, over years, and across thousands of students, are not merely missed procedures or concepts. What we’re seeing increasingly among UC students is the absence of the capacity to stay with an unfamiliar problem, absence of patience to tolerate not immediately seeing a pathway through the confusion, and an inability to construct a developmentally appropriate, purpose-built, multistep argument rather than just reach for a memorized technique.

That is not a content gap. It is a lack of adaptive ability that builds slowly, through years of cumulative struggle with problems that do not resolve on the first pattern-match — and there is no way to quickly backfill that process. You cannot summer-school your way into the mathematical maturity required to pursue a STEM major.

On equity grounds, the record also cuts against the case for staying test-blind. By reducing applicants to a sea of identical, inflated GPAs, the university has stripped away one of the few tools that enables a gifted student in a struggling neighborhood school to stand out.

A hard-won B+ in a rigorous urban math program is now casually passed over for a meaningless 4.0 earned elsewhere, confirmed by the data on dropping acceptance rates for inner-city magnet schools.

Restoring the SAT/ACT would give admissions offices an apples-to-apples comparison of students’ true underlying knowledge, and would contextualize otherwise indistinguishable transcripts. This would restore the very ladder used by the state’s most ambitious, disadvantaged kids.

The Academic Senate does not need a yearlong administrative delay until June 2027 to study what is already glaringly obvious. More than 3,000 UC professors — a significant part of the Senate — have already delivered the ground-level verdict.

This crisis demands urgent intervention. The Senate must deliver its emergency recommendation in a month, not a year. The UC Board of Regents must act now and schedule a decisive vote no later than September 2026, to reinstate standardized testing for applications submitted in fall 2027 for the fall 2028 entering class. Every additional month of delay leaves disadvantaged STEM students without a ladder or a lifeline, and the university’s operations and reputation in free-fall.

It is time for the University of California to stop pretending we do not see what we see.

 
The controversy regarding Kentucky's planned switch from the ACT to the SAT continues, as seen in this item from the Bluegrass Institute. The organization has been at the center of a successful effort to legislatively require a re-bid on the state's testing recently-awarded contract with the College Board. It's still unknown which test Kentucky juniors will be taking in the spring of 2027.

[Excerpts]

Beginning in spring 2026, Kentucky replaced the ACT with the SAT as the state-funded, state-required college admissions exam for 11th graders. The Kentucky Department of Education (KDE) awarded a four-year contract to the College Board after a competitive bid process. The change ends an 18-year run in which every Kentucky junior took the ACT, starting with the 2007-08 school year.

KDE has pointed to cost savings — the new contract is valued at roughly $30 per student and is projected to save the state up to $350,000 annually — along with the SAT's shorter, digital, adaptive format and free Khan Academy practice resources. ACT, Inc. challenged the contract award, but a state review found the protest lacked merit and allowed the switch to proceed.

[Richard] Innes' research argues the change was managed poorly and threatens Kentucky's ability to track student performance accurately over time. He raises three main issues: (1) the process lacked transparency, including a lack of statutorily-required stakeholder consultation; (2) the ACT and SAT are different enough that switching breaks the Kentucky assessment program’s only long-term trend line in student achievement; and (3) the SAT does not appear to satisfy Kentucky's statutory testing requirements.

District leaders reportedly learned about the change indirectly, through the email sent to assessment coordinators rather than by a direct announcement to superintendents. Superintendents indicated they were given little warning and faced a compressed timeline to prepare students and staff for a notably different test after years of investment in ACT-specific practice materials and training.

State law (KRS 158.6453) requires the statewide college admissions exam to separately assess English, reading, mathematics, and science. The SAT tests reading, writing, and math, but it does not report a standalone English score (covering spelling, punctuation and grammar) and has no dedicated science section. Publishers of the SAT claim a science-related score will be derived from questions embedded in the SAT’s reading, writing, and math sections. Innes argues this raises real questions about whether the SAT meets the requirements of statute. In addition, embedding science-focused questions into the areas the SAT does assess may skew those sections toward science content, disadvantaging students who are stronger in humanities or civics.

Included in the 2026 legislative package is Senate Bill 197. Even after the governor line item vetoed some of the language regarding the college entrance exam requirement, the bill stipulates that:

The Kentucky Department of Education shall initiate a new competitive procurement process and shall award a contract only to a vendor or vendors whose assessment product satisfies all applicable state and federal statutory requirements for accountability and assessment purposes to be in place for the 2026 2027 school year.

Clearly, legislators are aware of the many issues with the SAT contract and want the job redone, correctly and in accordance with all statutory requirements.

 
The Classic Learning Test has received preliminary approval in Texas, and may be on the path for full acceptance by public colleges and universities in Texas by 2028.

[Excerpts]

Texas’ higher education commissioner signaled last week that the state could expand the use of the conservative-favored Classic Learning Test in public university admissions even though an independent review found far less evidence linking the exam’s scores to college performance than SAT and ACT scores.

In a letter to campus leaders on Thursday, Commissioner Wynn Rosser clarified that universities can immediately consider CLT scores for any applicants who fall outside the top-10% automatic admissions window. While the letter did not alter current statewide rules that currently recognize only the SAT and ACT, it signaled the state’s plan to formally approve the CLT by fall 2028 as a new test option for home school, private school or out-of-state applicants.

Rosser issued the letter one day after the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board voted to send an independent review of the CLT, SAT and ACT to legislative leaders. The board did not vote to approve CLT’s use or change the state’s admissions rules.

The review, required by a law passed last year, did not put the CLT on equal footing with the SAT and ACT.

The Texas A&M Public Policy Research Institute conducted the review of college entrance exams, warning that the three tests were not “equally ready, equally comparable, or equally defensible.”

Researchers found less evidence supporting CLT’s use in statewide admissions, noting that more research was needed on the exam before colleges could rely on those scores in the same way they do the SAT and ACT scores.

The difference was especially stark when examining how well each test’s scores could predict students’ college performance, according to the report. The CLT received 1.4 out of 4 possible points, compared with 3.8 for the ACT and 4 for the SAT.

CLT representatives, however, attributed the low score to the limited amount of Texas data available, saying the review excluded evidence from outside the state.

The CLT submitted evidence covering 259 students at five private Texas universities, while the College Board submitted data covering more than 117,000 students at 14 public universities.

 
The College Board has cited the outcome of the study in Texas mentioned above, which found that between the SAT, ACT and CLT, the SAT most aligns with later success in college.

[Excerpts]

In a new independent study from Texas researchers, the SAT earned a perfect score for predicting college success—the measure the report identifies as most consequential for college admissions. Of the three college entrance exams evaluated, researchers also gave the SAT the highest overall score.

The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board commissioned the Texas A&M study as required by state legislation to provide evidence-based guidance on the use of college entrance exams in admissions.

College Board provided results from more than 117,000 SAT test takers across 14 Texas public 4-year institutions—a large cross-section of Texas students and institutions. The independent researchers also examined data from the ACT and the Classic Learning Test to evaluate how well each exam predicts college success. Of the three tests, the SAT was found to have the strongest evidence base for reliably predicting college success including first-year GPA, retention, and performance in key Texas college courses.

The independent review reaffirms what decades of research has demonstrated: the SAT provides the strongest evidence base of any college entrance exam for assessing student readiness. According to the study, the SAT “appears most ready for advanced admissions consideration in Texas” and demonstrates “strong technical readiness” with the “lowest comparative risk.”

In Texas’s graduating class of 2025, 74% of students took the SAT.

 
The LA Times reports that not only is UC re-visiting the reimposition of SAT/ACT mandates, but will also reassess its current guidelines as to which high school courses prospective enrollees must pass to gain admission to UC.

[Excerpts]

As UC embarks on a new and speedier plan to determine whether to reinstate SAT standardized testing, the university's admissions board is also moving to reexamine key academic requirements that reach even further into California high school classrooms: the exact set of courses students must take to get in.

Those requirements dictate what California teenagers learn long before they even fill out an application. Because of the size and influence of UC across the state, the UC course requirements determine aspiring students' high school careers.

On Wednesday, the UC Academic Council, the executive body of the systemwide faculty Academic Senate, ordered the university's admissions board to review both questions.

The board will study standardized testing first, delivering a report to the council by Feb. 12, 2027, the council announced. The Board of Regents would receive a recommendation on whether to require the SAT or ACT no later than June 2027.

The admissions board will then turn to high school course requirements, submitting an initial report to the council in May 2027; the regents would take up any course changes at an unspecified later date. UC Academic Senate Chair Ahmet Palazoglu is framing the course review as an open question about "how UC defines and evaluates college readiness in a rapidly changing educational environment," rather than a move to add or cut requirements.

UC leaders said the new plan does not change the scope of the earlier road map but accelerates it, moving the testing decision timeline up by about four months.

How the UC admissions review affects high school students

For now, UC officials said, nothing changes for applicants. Students applying by Dec. 1, 2026, for fall 2027 admission will not have to submit SAT or ACT scores, and the university has not decided whether requirements will change for fall 2028 or later. Any change would require a vote by the regents, who have final say over both the tests and the courses.

The course portion of the review targets what UC calls its "A-G" requirements: 15 yearlong high school courses across seven subject areas (thus A-G), that students must pass to be eligible for admission to UC or California State University.

UC said the review will weigh "the current number and subject areas that are required and recommended." The admissions group that will lead it, the Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools, will consult with representatives of the state Board of Education and K-12 subject specialists.