More than three years after adopting test-optional admissions, Columbia University is reversing course and will once again require standardized test scores from prospective students.
Columbia announced on June 13 that, beginning in fall 2027, first-year and transfer applicants will have to submit either SAT or ACT scores to be considered for admission. The university will remain test-optional for the upcoming 2026–27 admissions cycle.
University officials said the decision follows a “multiyear faculty review” that found “test scores, among other factors, were a useful indicator of potential student success.”
“Standardized testing is one of many elements that can demonstrate a foundation of academic excellence; others include your performance in your secondary school coursework and the rigor of your curriculum,” the university stated on a webpage outlining its new policy.
As Bill Pan reports for The Epoch Times, Columbia was among the first elite universities to suspend testing requirements during the COVID-19 pandemic, when widespread school closures and testing disruptions limited students’ access to the SAT and ACT. In 2023, the university extended its test-optional policy indefinitely, becoming the first Ivy League institution to make the change permanent.
It was also the last of the eight Ivy League schools to maintain a test-optional admissions policy.
Princeton University reinstated standardized testing requirements in October 2025, leaving Columbia as the sole Ivy League holdout.
The debate over standardized testing has intensified in recent years as some of the nation’s most selective institutions have restored testing requirements. Like Columbia and Princeton, many of those schools have cited internal data showing that test scores are a strong predictor of academic performance and graduation outcomes.
When Princeton announced its decision, university officials said data collected during five years of test-optional admissions showed that “academic performance at Princeton was stronger for students who chose to submit test scores than for students who did not.”
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which reinstated its testing requirement in 2022, also said that considering SAT and ACT scores—particularly math scores—“significantly improves” its ability to predict whether applicants will succeed in the institute’s highly demanding mathematics and math-based science courses.
Critics of standardized testing, however, argue that emphasizing those scores may disadvantage students from low-income and historically underrepresented backgrounds who lack access to expensive tutoring, test-preparation courses, and other educational resources.
Columbia’s move also comes amid renewed interest in standardized testing from the Trump administration.
Administration officials have argued that test-optional admissions policies allow colleges to rely more heavily on subjective criteria, such as personal statements, potentially serving as illegal proxies for race in admissions decisions, a practice the U.S. Supreme Court has declared unconstitutional.
“The persistent lack of available data—paired with the rampant use of ‘diversity statements’ and other overt and hidden racial proxies—continues to raise concerns about whether race is actually used in admissions decisions in practice,” President Donald Trump wrote in an August 2025 memorandum to the secretary of education.
In a proposed compact offered to nine institutions in exchange for preferential access to certain federal funding opportunities, the Trump administration also demanded that they require standardized test scores as part of the admissions process.
The proposal further urged schools to publicly release anonymized admissions data, including applicants’ GPAs, standardized test scores, and other academic measures, broken down by race, national origin, and sex.
Despite the revival of testing requirements at some elite institutions, test-optional admissions remain widespread nationwide.
According to FairTest, an advocacy group opposing the use of standardized testing in college admissions, more than 90 percent of ranked four-year colleges and universities in the United States will not require applicants to submit SAT or ACT scores for fall 2026 admissions. The organization’s survey covered approximately 2,000 four-year institutions.