The test-optional moment in American college admissions has had three phases. The first was the pre-pandemic era, when a small number of colleges (Bowdoin, Bates, Wake Forest, then a longer list) had moved away from required SAT or ACT scores on equity and diversity grounds. The second was the pandemic shock, when essentially every selective US college went test-optional or test-blind because the testing infrastructure broke. That made test-optional the default for the 2020 through 2023 application cycles. The third phase, the one we’re in now, is the partial walkback. Several of the most selective schools have decided the experiment did not go the way they hoped and have brought testing requirements back, while others are holding the line.
If you are a high school student, a parent, or a counselor trying to make sense of this, the messaging has been confusing because it has actually changed. Here is where things stand and what it means for an applicant’s strategy.
Who’s brought tests back
A meaningful slice of the most selective schools have reinstated a testing requirement for the most recent cycles. MIT was the first, in 2022, citing internal research showing that test scores were the best available predictor of academic success at MIT specifically and that going test-optional was hurting their ability to identify strong students from under-resourced backgrounds. Yale, Dartmouth, and Brown followed with similar reasoning — that scores, taken in context, gave them more equitable signal, not less.
Caltech extended a test-blind policy through several cycles, then settled on a test-flexible posture. Harvard reinstated a testing requirement starting with the high school class of 2025. Stanford has likewise moved back toward required testing in recent years.
The schools reinstating make a fairly consistent argument: the test, taken in the context of a student’s high school, demographic, and resource constraints, helped them admit more first-generation and lower-income students, not fewer. Without the test they were leaning more heavily on grades from variable-quality high schools, on essays that increasingly look polished by paid help, and on activities that correlate with family resources.
Who’s still test-optional or test-blind
A long list of selective schools remained test-optional going into the 2025-2026 application cycle. The University of California system stayed test-blind. Most liberal arts colleges that were test-optional before the pandemic remained so. A long tail of state flagships and private colleges have made the change permanent.
The case here is also fairly clear. For these schools, internal data didn’t show the same predictive value MIT saw, or the equity case ran the other way, or removing the test simply broadened applicant pools enough to be worth keeping. State systems also have political constituencies in play that the most selective privates don’t.
The result is a real split. The schools at the very top of the selectivity ladder are mostly going back to required testing. The schools immediately below them are mostly staying test-optional. Neither group is wrong; they’re optimizing for different things.
What this means for an applicant
A few practical takeaways.
If your test scores are strong, take and submit them. Even at test-optional schools, submitted scores in the upper part of the school’s reported range generally help. Common Data Set reporting from many test-optional schools has consistently shown admit rates somewhat higher for students who submit strong scores compared to similar applicants who don’t, holding other factors equal. The exception is schools that are explicitly test-blind, where the scores aren’t read at all.
If your test scores are weak relative to a school’s middle range, don’t submit. Test-optional means optional. The school’s admissions office will not penalize you for not submitting. A score below the 25th percentile is generally a drag on the application; a missing score isn’t.
Take the test even if you think you might not submit. It is cheap relative to the stakes, you can take it more than once, and the worst outcome is information. Most counselors recommend a junior-year sit and a senior-year retake, then deciding which scores to submit on a per-school basis.
Watch the policy of every school on your list, not the headlines. The granular policies are still moving. Yale’s policy is not Brown’s, and Brown’s is not Dartmouth’s even though both reinstated. Some schools require either SAT/ACT or AP scores. Some accept IB. The Common App has gotten better at surfacing requirements per school, but the application year matters and so does the date you check.
The bigger picture
The most interesting part of the test-optional story isn’t the policy whiplash. It’s that the pandemic created the rare circumstance where every selective school in the country tried the same experiment at the same time, and several years later they’re drawing different conclusions from the same evidence. MIT and the UC system both looked at internal data and reached opposite calls. That’s worth pausing on. It suggests that what tests are measuring, and how that measurement interacts with a particular institution’s mission and student body, is genuinely contested, not settled.
We don’t have a tidy answer about whether tests should or shouldn’t be required. The honest version is that tests are a flawed but useful signal, like grades and essays and recommendations are flawed but useful signals, and the right institutional answer depends on what mix of students an institution is trying to identify and admit. The more interesting question is how applicants navigate a system where the rules vary substantially by school and have moved twice in five years.
The answer to that, for now, is the same as it has always been. Take the test, prepare the application carefully, and pay attention to each school’s specific policy in the year you’re applying. The labels are unstable. The work is steady.