Notre Dame (which had 36,000 applicants in 2025 with an acceptance rate of 9% and a freshman class of 2,118 students) has joined other selective colleges in announcing a return to testing mandates.

[Excerpts from the Notre Dame announcement]:

The University of Notre Dame today announced it will reinstate a standardized testing requirement for undergraduate applicants, beginning with the 2027–28 admissions cycle. First-year and transfer applicants seeking to enroll in fall 2028 will need to submit either ACT or SAT scores. In announcing this change, the University highlighted a broadened set of access and affordability initiatives that ensure talented and mission-aligned students from every background and every pathway can find a home at Notre Dame.

Notre Dame’s decision follows a detailed review of its own admissions data across multiple cycles, which confirmed that standardized test scores provide important quantitative evidence of academic preparation and showed a strong correlation between test scores and classroom performance after students matriculate. Evaluated relative to the opportunities and norms of an applicant’s local high school and community, test scores give the admissions team additional information to better understand a student’s academic profile. The review also underscored an insight articulated by researchers at peer institutions: Students from a variety of backgrounds, including first-generation, Pell-eligible, and rural applicants, are among the populations most likely to be overlooked in the admissions process without a test requirement.

Effective for fall 2028 applicants, Notre Dame, in partnership with Schoolhouse.world, will be offering free SAT Bootcamp and College Admissions Workshops to students engaged with a variety of schools and community-based organizations.

“A test score, evaluated in full context of an applicant's individual circumstances, is an additional measure to aid us in that process" said Micki Kidder, Notre Dame's vice president for undergraduate enrollment in a press release.

 
Town & Country magazine examines "Who Wins and Who Loses When Colleges Require Applicants Submit SAT or ACT Scores?"

[Excerpts]

Although the majority of UC professors—there are over 26,000 across 10 campuses—did not sign the open letter [demanding an immediate return to the former SAT/ACT requirement], the matter has swiftly taken center stage among UC decision-makers. An investigation into reinstating the SAT has been launched with results expected next spring. From now through the fall of 2027, UC will remain test blind. After that—who’s to say.

The debate over the SAT has gone on for almost as long as the century-old test has existed (the ACT arrived 33 years later), touching on issues of equity, race, income levels, and correlations with high school curricula (“teaching to the test”). All that was laid to rest during Covid, when most schools adopted test-optional policies because of lockdown policies and test site closures. But with the pandemic behind us and schools reevaluating their stances because of internal research and pressures from professors and other forces—MIT, Stanford, and Georgetown have resumed test requirements; Duke, Vanderbilt and NYU have not—the debate has never been more complicated.

Schools that went test-optional have seen their all-important selectivity numbers drop due to a higher volume of applications; a return to testing would change that. Ditto for average test scores—another braggy data point—which spiked at test-optional schools because the students who opted to report test scores generally did very well. Meanwhile, faculty, the people who actually teach kids in the classroom, are in a battle with admissions over what constitutes a qualified student. Admissions officers generally favor being test-optional because it allows them to admit diamond-in-the-rough students whose unique qualities aren’t reflected in a standardized test. Throw in the perilous state that colleges and universities find themselves in with attacks from the Trump administration (which favors mandatory testing), an impending enrollment cliff, and further hindrances to attracting students, such as visa delays and student loan crackdowns, and standardized testing is a highly combustible ingredient in the hot mess of today’s college admissions soup.

Mark Stucker, founder of School Match 4U and host of the podcast Your College Bound Kid, has followed the twisty curves of the testing debate for years, and breaks down what’s at stake and what’s likely to come from the latest round of drama.

Mark Stucker: “Pressure always comes from the faculty. I’ve had many admissions officers say to me, depending on how much power the faculty has at their school, ‘I don’t know if we’ll be able to stay test optional because the faculty like test scores.’ People tend to look for people like themselves. And faculty tend to be people who scored really high on standardized tests themselves.

“There’s a real tug of war. It’s like two titans going head to head, because the admissions offices like the access mission. They feel they can bring more interesting kids in (by being test-optional). But the faculty are convinced that not having a testing policy is the reason why kids are struggling. But there can be other reasons for that. There are kids who lost a lot of time during Covid, there’s that factor. And there’s research that shows that even if there are more kids struggling, testing isn’t necessarily the only solution you can use to identify that. So it’s a real battle.”

“I had a conversation with [the head of admissions at a university]. I remember her telling me, ‘I’ve been doing this 40 years and I don’t trust myself, or our team doesn’t trust each another, to read a test score and not put too much weight on it.’ Because test scores do voodoo on the brain. They really do. When you see a score—it’s not just test scores, it’s numbers. If you see a school’s ranked fourth and another school’s ranked 24th, it’s hard for you to think that that 24th is better than fourth. And it very well may be a better school for you for a lot of reasons. It could be stronger in your major, it could be an environment you’re going to thrive in, it could be the culture, it could be the financial package. There are lots of reasons why it could be better. But you’re turned off. So that’s one of the downsides of test scores.

“There’s a bias there that’s really hard to get out of your mind when you see a lower score. And in some cases it’s understandable. If the number is extremely low. But what ends up happening is, let’s say you have a school and it’s a pretty selective school, let’s say their average test score is a 1450. And then they see a kid that has a 1310 and the kid gets dinged. But if that kid had the right tutor they could have a 1510 really easily. So too much weight gets imported on test scores and then they end up biasing the decision in a way that they shouldn’t just because of the way numbers work on the brain.”

“Test optional is here to stay, there’s no question about it. The majority of schools are still test optional. Bowdoin has been test optional for 56 years. Bates, 45 years. Wake Forest, 20. But different schools are going to do different things. I do think you’ll see more of the most selective private universities that haven’t gone back, go back. Some of that is because now that all eight Ivies have gone back, along with MIT, Stanford and Caltech, other top schools are going to feel some pressure, especially if they were test mandatory pre-pandemic.

“But not all of them. Because, one, they do get more applications [when they’re test optional], which they like. Two, some of them have gotten very comfortable reading without test scores. At first it was, How do we do it? Now it’s, Hey, we know how to do it and do it well. And don’t forget that most of the selective liberal arts schools are test optional. It would be surprising to see Swarthmore and Amherst go back. Those schools were test-optional pre-pandemic. More than half of the top 50 ranked, small, liberal arts schools were test-optional before Covid. So I don’t see that necessarily changing.”

“Multiple schools have told me, ‘If I don’t see an SAT, I want to see some high APs. I want some standard metrics in the file.’ So there are some schools that see lots of 4’s and 5’s on AP exams and their own internal research indicates those kids do perfectly fine.

“So I think you’re going to see more innovation like that in this space, because it’s an ongoing debate. Who is education for? What are we trying to do? Are we trying to be an engine of social mobility? It’s troubling because test scores are highly correlated with family income, education, race. They’re highly, highly correlated. But if you have academic information, especially if someone has taken really rigorous classes and done well, they’re usually not that risky.”

 
The Washington Times examines "Why 90% of colleges still don’t require the SAT, even as the Ivy League returns to it."

[Excerpts]

The Ivy League has restored or is restoring SAT and ACT admissions requirements that had been suspended during pandemic lockdowns, but a new report finds 90% of colleges and universities nationwide still do not require standardized test scores.

Fair Test, which has tracked admissions exam policies since 1985, found that only 161 of 2,247 colleges (7%) will require prospective students to submit a standardized test score for the 2026-2027 application cycle.

Another 86% of colleges remain test-optional, meaning students may submit scores if they like, and 4% have test-free applications that do not consider scores. The remaining 3% lack clear policies.

Overall, Fair Test found that 11 campuses reinstated testing requirements for the upcoming admissions cycle, while 10 dropped them, resulting in a net gain of one school restoring the practice.

Several college admissions experts told The Washington Times that it is unlikely most schools will ever return to mandatory testing because waiving it boosted applications.

“Colleges are making their decisions on tests based on their own revenue needs,” said Gary Stocker, a former private school administrator who founded College Viability to evaluate campus finances.

He noted that colleges that require test scores tend to have lower acceptance rates, better-performing students and higher four-year graduation rates than colleges that do not.

“We may like to think that colleges are selective in students they admit, but that only applies to a small number,” Mr. Stocker said. “The financial pressures on hundreds of colleges are so intense that any friction to getting a student enrolled is avoided.”

Research from the College Board, which administers the SAT, shows that scores predict success in four-year programs better than high school grades.

That makes admissions testing a key tool for elite schools to screen the sliver of applicants they accept, even as less-selective schools shun it.

“If a college finds that scores help predict which students are going to perform well and graduate, there’s a good argument for requiring them,” said Brian Safdari, president of College Planning Experts in Los Angeles. “If their data show that the test adds very little and requiring it discourages qualified students from applying, then staying test-optional may make more sense.”

Mr. Safdari noted that most colleges admit at least 60% of applicants, making them less concerned about weeding people out than a top school that accepts 4% or 5%.

Campus leaders are bracing for a “demographic cliff” as a decline in U.S. births, beginning around the 2007-2008 recession, is expected to drive a 13% drop in the pool of potential college applicants. The nonprofit Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education projects that U.S. high school graduation numbers will fall steadily from a record 3.9 million students in 2025 to less than 3.4 million in 2041.

“A lot of state schools across the country are in a dire financial situation, so requiring test scores and enrolling even fewer students would be disastrous,” said Jake Williams, co-founder of Ivy Brothers in New York City, which helps families apply to top-ranked schools.

“Some institutions then retained the policy because it reduced barriers and increased application volume,” said Mr. Williams, a Princeton graduate. “The Ivies are reversing course because they now have several years of internal data showing that testing provides useful information about academic readiness.”

 
The New York Times has published an opinion piece regarding the University of California's deliberations around a possible return to SAT/ACT testing that is receiving considerable engagement by commenters. The article is titled "This California Educational Juggernaut Doesn’t Need the SAT."

[Excerpts]

Miriam Pawel is the author of the forthcoming “California Dreams: The Making and Remaking of the University of California.”

When the University of California eliminated the SAT requirement for admission in 2021, U.C.L.A. saw a significant jump in applications from high-achieving Black and Latino students, for whom the standardized tests had been a barrier. “We are enrolling one of the most academically accomplished and diverse classes in our history,” the admissions director wrote. Since then, applications have risen at all nine undergraduate campuses, the most prestigious have become increasingly selective, and the university retains and graduates students at record rates.

Yet just five years later, the University of California is embroiled again in a very public battle over whether to reinstate the SAT. Faculty, whose 2020 recommendation to retain the test was overruled, have led the charge. In a widely circulated letter and opinion piece (both edited with the help of artificial intelligence), a math professor who organized the campaign blamed the test-blind admissions policy for a troubling increase in undergraduates who lack basic skills.

Math literacy is a real issue, not only in California, and not only since the elimination of the SAT for admissions. The argument that reinstituting the standardized test will rectify the math crisis, however, obscures a more fundamental debate over the mission of this elite public university and the longstanding tension between its twin goals of excellence and access.

The University of California is an educational juggernaut that has helped propel the state to its status as the world’s fourth-largest economy. It has arguably made its most important contribution not in Nobel Prizes, patents and scientific breakthroughs but in the lives of those not born into privilege. At a time of obscene wealth and inequality, that role has never been more important. The SAT fight is a proxy for a far more complex challenge: the university’s responsibility to remain true to its founding mission, crucial if the Golden State is to maintain its reputation as a land of opportunity and dreams.

To reinstate the SAT is to follow the pack rather than to lead, to grasp at a dubious shortcut rather than tackle more intractable underlying issues, chief among them the reality that the best public university in the country relies on one of the weakest, most inequitable public school systems.

Arguments over the value of the SAT have been litigated and re-litigated since the Regents elevated its importance in admissions by a one-vote margin in 1977. Even its advocates point to studies that show the test has predictive value of success only largely for freshman year. Under the university’s unusual shared governance structure, a faculty committee will issue recommendations by June 2027; final action will be up to the Regents, who have already expanded the discussion to look broadly at college readiness.

What has made the University of California exceptional is its commitment to increase access without sacrificing excellence. In recent years, California has proudly defied a national trend: On average, about 40 percent of its students are the first in their families to attend a four-year college. More than half qualify for free tuition. The percentages of underrepresented students have crept up, through a variety of initiatives. The California Dream Act gave undocumented students access to financial aid, as well as in-state tuition. Students on University of California campuses may struggle with basic math, but they are graduating at record rates.

These are perilous times for the very students for whom the University of California is a life-changing experience. Cuts in federal aid have reduced support programs, especially vital for first-generation students. ICE raids mean even citizens fear filling out financial aid forms that might jeopardize their undocumented relatives. International students face restrictions on visas.

The University of California needs to redouble its commitment to forge its own path, to remain a beacon of hope, albeit flickering. Now is not the moment to regress.

 
Jason L. Riley, Opinion Columnist at The Wall Street Journal for upward mobility has written an op-ed titled “The SAT Didn’t Create the Education Gap.”

 
NBC News offers a 4-minute video regarding the Classic Learning Test titled "This conservative-backed test is gaining traction as an alternative to the SAT."