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Colleges embraced test-optional admissions when COVID-19 shuttered SAT and ACT testing centers worldwide in 2020. Years after that emergency ended, however, the policy remains widespread—and evidence suggests it may disadvantage the very students it was intended to help.
Among Common App members, the share of schools requiring test scores plunged from 55% in 2019-2020 to a record-low 4% in 2023-2024. That figure has since edged up to 5%, an increase that should continue.
Equity is the leading argument for keeping standardized tests optional. William and Mary and Columbia University have retained indefinite test-optional policies, saying the flexibility improves access for low-income and underrepresented applicants. The University of California system has gone further, refusing to consider scores at all.
The concern behind those decisions is legitimate. Affluent families can pay for tutors and repeated attempts at the SAT or ACT. Opportunity Insights, a Harvard research group, found that children from the wealthiest 1% of American households were 13 times more likely than low-income children to earn an SAT score of at least 1300.
But wealth shapes nearly every other part of an application, often more dramatically. Families can spend hundreds of dollars an hour on consultants who help polish essays. They can finance expensive sports, including sailing, or overseas trips presented as charitable work. Removing test scores does not remove those advantages; it gives greater weight to application elements that money can influence even more easily.
Standardized scores at least provide colleges with a consistent benchmark. They can also give talented students from less-affluent communities a clear way to demonstrate academic ability. Under test-optional policies, those students must decide whether to submit scores without always understanding how admissions offices will evaluate them.
A Dartmouth College study found that some less-advantaged applicants with SAT scores in the 1400s withheld them, apparently believing the results were below Dartmouth’s average. Yet submitting those scores would have increased their admission chances nearly fourfold. Admissions officers would have assessed the results in the context of each student’s community, making a 1400 more significant for someone from a lower-income area than for an applicant surrounded by greater resources.
Grades alone cannot always provide that level of distinction. According to the University of Virginia’s 2024-2025 Common Data Set, 90.5% of its incoming students had a 4.0 high school GPA. When nearly everyone arrives with the same top-line number, admissions officers have little room to distinguish among applicants. Different grading scales and grade inflation add even more uncertainty.
There are also troubling signs of a disconnect between transcripts and academic readiness. At the University of California, San Diego, a workgroup found that the number of students whose math skills were below the high school level tripled from 2020 to 2025.
Among those students, 70% performed below middle school standards. The records did not always match the demonstrated skills: Of the students who failed to reach middle school math levels, 42% had reportedly completed calculus or precalculus.
The better response is not to abandon testing but to make it easier for every student to participate. States can increase funding for programs such as SAT School Day, which lets students take the exam at no cost. The College Board can also expand partnerships like its work with Khan Academy, which offers free, personalized SAT preparation online.
Colleges could provide additional flexibility without eliminating scores. Yale’s test-flexible policy, for example, requires standardized results but allows applicants to choose among the SAT, ACT, AP and IB exams. That approach gives students more ways to present their strongest academic work when the SAT or ACT is not their best fit.
Standardized testing is imperfect, just as the broader admissions process can be unfair and unpredictable. But removing one of its few common measurements risks making family wealth—not academic merit—even more decisive.