Top colleges are announcing the end of their test optional policies which were instated during Covid quarantine due to inaccessibility to testing. Many competitive universities have been doing their due diligence crunching the numbers and have come to the conclusion that a standardized admission test, a.k.a. the SAT or ACT, is a better indicator of future success at that college than are high school grades. 

This is the first year colleges have acknowledged outright that they believe grade inflation to be in place at high schools. They declare this because they are seeing admitted students with Grade Point Averages in the colleges’s average range not succeeding in classes at their schools in a way that students did who presented SAT scores in the college’s average range. They have also been able to analyze standardized test scores of admitted students to see “what would have been“ because colleges are able to access students’ SAT information even though it was not submitted in the application, after admission decisions have been made. This information has also indicated that the SAT is a far better predictor of a student’s ability to handle the level of work required at top universities than is the grade point average.

For these reasons, starting in 2025 we will see the return of the SAT/ACT requirement for admission. Some of the schools that have already indicated their intention to reinstate the requirement for 2025 are: Cornell, Brown, Dartmouth, Georgetown, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Princeton.  

Juniors, be sure to double check the SAT requirement policies of each individual college on your wish list for your application year, 2024. Although we will see most of the changes taking place for 2025, you should be sure of each school on your list.