Six years after the University of California dropped the SAT and ACT from freshman admissions, thousands of its professors are pressing to bring the exams back, saying students now arrive unprepared for college math and writing, CalMatters reported on Thursday.
The pressure is getting a hearing. UC leaders are re-examining what, if anything, to do about the tests the system scrapped in 2020, and they have sped up the schedule for deciding whether to restore them, Inside Higher Ed reported in July. A new review of the SAT’s role is expected by June 2027.
The faculty campaign is sizable. More than 2,000 professors in science, technology, engineering and math have signed a petition urging the university to again require the SAT or ACT for applicants to STEM majors by fall 2027. Nearly 1,000 professors in other disciplines signed a separate letter calling for the tests’ full return to admissions.
What complicates the push is the university’s own record since the tests went away. Graduation rates have inched up, more students are returning for a second year, and average freshman GPAs have risen since 2021 — the first entering class admitted without test scores — according to new systemwide data.
That is not what the university once expected. When a UC task force recommended keeping the SAT in 2020, it warned that dropping the test could send student retention rates falling, and it feared first-year grades would slide. Neither prediction came true.
To supporters of the test-free policy, those numbers are proof that abandoning the exams caused no broad academic decline at the public university system. To the professors demanding the tests’ return, the numbers miss what they see in their classrooms. Thousands of them, CalMatters reported, say their students are “absolutely not ready for college,” with weak math and writing skills, and they blame the decision to cut the SAT.
The review now underway is the system’s first formal reconsideration of the policy since 2020. Whether it ends with the SAT restored or test-free admissions preserved is the question the petition drive has put on the calendar, with an answer due by June 2027.