Princeton University has reinstated its former SAT/ACT requirement, which will be back in place for students applying for enrollment in the fall of 2027. This leaves Columbia University as the only Ivy League university with a test optional policy.

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Princeton will require undergraduate applicants to submit SAT or ACT test scores beginning with the 2027–28 admission cycle, the University announced Thursday. The decision will end a seven-year stint of test-optional undergraduate admissions that began during the pandemic.

Several peer institutions including Harvard, Penn, and Brown, have announced in the past year and a half that they would require standardized tests, with changes set to take place in the application cycles during the 2024–25 or 2025–26 school years. Yale, meanwhile, has adopted a test-flexible policy allowing students to choose from SAT, ACT, Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate scores to submit. Columbia has become permanently test-optional.

Many peer institutions had announced these changes in March or April to begin in the application cycle the next fall. The University’s announcement is significantly early in comparison, applicable beginning with the entering Class of 2032, students who will matriculate two admissions cycles from now in the fall of 2028.

Like many of its peers, the University said that test scores helped predict academic success among undergraduates.

“The decision to resume testing requirements follows a review of five years of data from the test-optional period, which found that academic performance at Princeton was stronger for students who chose to submit test scores than for students who did not,” the University said in a statement.

The Class of 2029 is the first class to have experienced COVID-19 prior to high school. About 22% of the Class of 2029 did not submit test scores when applying, according to The Daily Princetonian’s Frosh Survey.

 
One test prep firm believes that other selective colleges will follow Princeton's decision in the near future:

We’ve heard this repeatedly from colleges, public and private, that reinstated testing requirements: overall, students with test scores academically outperform those without. Further, test scores have proven to be much better than high school grades at predicting academic success in college (particularly first-year college GPA). That first-year performance is especially important to colleges, as it has a huge impact on retention and graduation rates. These metrics are the primary driving force behind the return to SAT and ACT requirements at selective colleges across the country.

Princeton has favored test-submitters, even while test-optional

Like many test-optional institutions, Princeton has continually admitted and enrolled more students with test scores than without. In the most recent enrolled class, 56% of Princeton students submitted SAT scores and 21% submitted ACT scores.

The lane for students applying without testing was relatively small and is now disappearing altogether.

Federal signals tilt toward testing

There is no indication that Princeton’s decision was influenced by federal pressure, but it’s notable that the administration recently proposed a compact offering preferential funding to select universities that, among other criteria, would require "applicants to take the SAT or similar test.” While it’s unclear how (or whether) colleges will respond, federal signaling in favor of testing could shape future admissions decisions.

Looking ahead

Princeton is the latest highly selective university to reinstate testing requirements, and we anticipate more are likely to follow. One strong predictor: the share of enrolled students who submitted scores. Princeton’s most recent class had roughly 75% test submitters before returning to testing requirements; Penn had similar numbers and also reinstated testing. Other schools with high submitter rates—UNC (69%), Alabama (74%), Chicago (76%), Emory (63%)—could plausibly join the test-required ranks. We’ll continue to monitor developments.

 
Auburn University has also reinstated a test-requirement policy:

Starting in fall 2027, first-year students applying to undergraduate at Auburn University will be required to submit their ACT or SAT scores. This change will mark the end of the University's test-optional policy, which initially began during COVID-19.

Currently, Auburn University has a test-optional policy for certain eligible first-year applicants. This eligibility relies on applicants maintaining a minimum high school GPA of 3.6. Students who do not meet this GPA requirement are ineligible to apply as test-optional.

Jennifer Adams, vice president of public affairs, communication and marketing for the President's Office, provided more details in a statement for The Auburn Plainsman.

"For fall 2027 admission, all first-year applicants to Auburn University will be required to submit ACT or SAT scores as part of the undergraduate admissions process," Adams said. "The test-optional pathway began during COVID. It is a pilot program that will be sunset after the 2026 admissions cycle."

According to Adams, even though test-optional eligibility mandates a minimum 3.6 GPA, students who were admitted without test scores have higher GPAs on average than the required GPA.

"As a transition year, for fall 2026 admission only, a very limited number of exceptionally qualified applicants with at least a 3.6 high school GPA may be considered without test scores," Adams said. "For reference, the average GPA for students admitted without a test score was 4.2."

In fall 2021, when the test-optional pathway was first implemented, the Office of Admissions reported that the acceptance rate for first-year freshmen was approximately 71%. The Auburn Plainsman reached out for the acceptance rate of fall 2025 but did not receive a response. However, according to U.S. News and World Report, Auburn University now boasts an acceptance rate of 46%, only four cycles after fall 2021.

As applications become more competitive, as shown with the 25% decrease, many applicants have opted to disclose their test scores, with few deciding to use the test-optional track.

"Historically, the test-optional pathway has represented a very small portion of the incoming freshmen class," Adams said. "Fewer than 10% of enrolled first-year students have been admitted without a test score."

 
Kentucky has completed its switch from the ACT to the SAT:

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The Kentucky Department of Education has officially transitioned from using the ACT as a college entrance exam to the SAT. The KDE announced the College Board will administer the SAT Junior State Administration as the state-funded college admissions exam beginning in spring 2026.

Robbie Fletcher, Commissioner of Education at the KDE, said this change is a good thing, as the SAT has benefits for all.

“The SAT is also an adaptive test. In other words, it is a multi-stage adaptive test in that students will take a packet of questions and depending on how they do, the next packet will be based on how well they did on the first packet. So, they could get a more difficult level or a less difficult level and then it eventually targets whatever that score is on the SAT,” said Fletcher.

Upon the transition, Fletcher said the KDE will ensure parents and students will not be left in the dark regarding this big decision.

The SAT is also more flexible because schools have a six-week window in which the district can select the day they want to give the test. Additionally, switching to the SAT has the potential to save the Commonwealth up to 350-thousand dollars annually.

 
The College Board has dropped its Landscape feature, which was an online dashboard that allowed colleges to seek out potential applicants from less affluent areas. Georgetown University's The Feed has details:

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This month, the College Board, which administers the SAT exam, announced it will eliminate Landscape, an online dashboard designed to help colleges identify promising applicants from disadvantaged neighborhoods and schools, The New York Times reports. Landscape’s cancellation comes after a Trump administration executive order in August mandated that U.S. colleges and universities submit data to verify they aren’t using diversity and other “overt and hidden racial proxies” to continue race-conscious college admissions practices, which the Supreme Court barred in 2023, Inside Higher Ed reports. The executive order didn’t define what those proxies would be nor how a college would prove they weren’t using proxies as a substitute for race or ethnicity, Inside Higher Ed says.

Since 2016, Landscape has been part of a package the College Board offered higher education institutions providing socioeconomic data on applicants’ neighborhoods. The information included median family income, crime rate, and the share of single-parent households but excluded data on race and ethnicity. “The tool helped admissions officers identify talented students from underresourced areas who might otherwise be overlooked,” Diverse: Issues in Higher Ed reports.

INTENSIFYING SCRUTINY OF SOCIO-ECONOMIC DATA IN COLLEGE ADMISSIONS

“[Landscape] is race-neutral and its use is perfectly legal,” Richard D. Kahlenberg, director of the American Identity Project at the Progressive Policy Institute, tells the Times. He also notes that several of the Supreme Court justices who decided the Students for Fair Admissions case said that socioeconomic factors were a permissible way of promoting diversity.

However, Landscape has recently been targeted by Students for Fair Admissions, the organization that successfully challenged race-conscious admissions. On its website, the College Board refers to evolving current policies “around how institutions use demographic and geographic information in admissions” as motivating its cancellation of the tool.

The College Board faced controversy in an earlier effort to measure students’ relative educational and economic disadvantage. In 2019, the organization canceled plans for an Environmental Context Dashboard, meant to give applicants what observers called an “adversity score” that would place applicants’ SAT scores in the context of the school- and neighborhood-level adversity they faced, without considering an applicant’s individual household or their race or ethnicity. The College Board later replaced these efforts with Landscape, the Times reports.

LESS VISIBILITY, LESS OUTREACH

At colleges that used Landscape as part of their admissions process, admittance of applicants from “high-challenge” backgrounds increased, according to a 2022 Brookings Institution study. However, their overall enrollment did not, except in cases where institutions used the tool to help shape financial aid offers. The study also found that socioeconomic-based admissions practices are not an accurate proxy for race, Brookings said.

 
The Wall Street Journal has reported that the US military academies will accept the Classic Learning Test in lieu of SAT/ACT scores.

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The Defense Department is expected to announce shortly that the country’s service academies, including West Point, will soon welcome applicants to submit their scores on the Classic Learning Test, or CLT, a standardized exam alternative to the duopoly of the SAT and ACT. The CLT “will be accepted beginning in February 2026,” the West Point admissions website says.

The CLT was founded in 2015 and pitches itself as a standardized test rooted in the Western tradition. The reading passages draw from names such as Thucydides, Maimonides, Kant, Dickens and Orwell, and text excerpts can run 500 to 750 words. (The College Board, which runs the SAT, says its “passages in the Reading and Writing section range from 25 to 150 words.”) The CLT’s math portion doesn’t permit calculators.

 
The number of US colleges and universities accepting the Classic Learning Test has risen to about 350.

 
The impact of the enduring but controversial US News college rankings are examined in detail by an author on the AGB website (the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges).

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David A. Hawkins, chief education and policy officer for the National Association for College Admission Counseling, believes the news media rankings “play a minimal, if any, role, in students’ decisions” about which college to attend, with the possible exception of international students whose families may be under the impression they carry “an official endorsement from governmental bodies.”

“Our survey research found that students and counselors were much more likely to find the reference information about college deadlines, application options, requirements, etc., to be much more relevant than the ranked order of colleges,” he said.

“The rankings continue to rely heavily on what we call ‘input measures,’ such as standardized admission test scores, which say nothing of the quality of the institution,” said Hawkins.

“Yes, there is a ‘methodology,’ which sounds scientific, but in reality, anyone can assemble data, weight it, and create lists that put colleges in one order or another,” said Hawkins. He likens them “to Consumer Reports for household products. Unfortunately, choosing a college is far more complex and individualized than buying a washer/dryer.”

And Hawkins argues that the federal government’s College Scorecard and College Navigator, which collect data from every institution about graduation rates, student federal loan amounts, and the number of students qualifying for Pell Grants, are more powerful and accurate tools for students, offering “a depth and objectivity that other sources and publications lack.” (USNWR incorporates this official data into its rankings.)

“Our guidance for trustees is that rankings competition is an unhealthy game and that the efforts of governance bodies are better focused on the educational, financial, and cultural strength of the institution than moving up on a list that everyone seems to hate yet also seems helpless to change,” said Hawkins.