Opinion: Should UC bring back the SAT and ACT?

By Editor-in-Chief Janet Guan, A&E Editor Kayla Li, & Staff Writers Abigaile Lei and Michael Qin

Introduction

How much can a single number tell you about an individual? In 2020, the University of California (UC) decided: not enough. 

Spurred by the logistical difficulties of administering the SAT/ACT during the coronavirus pandemic and mounting criticism of the tests as indicators of economic privilege rather than merit, the UC Board of Regents voted to abolish standardized testing from admissions criteria on May 21, 2020. UC adopted a test-blind policy starting with the fall 2021 admissions cycle.

Now, more than six years later, UC has circled back to the same question it confronted in 2020: what role, if any, should standardized tests play in admissions? Recent placement exam results have revealed concerning dips in first-year undergraduate preparedness. One 2025 report from UC San Diego found that the number of freshmen who scored below high school level math standards had increased nearly thirtyfold in an open letter released on June 5, UC STEM faculty described a “widening divergence in mathematical preparation levels within the same classroom” and having to teach middle school math to struggling students. More than 3,000 faculty members signed the letter, which further urged UC to reconsider standardized testing.

After initially announcing a broader admissions review in June, the UC Academic Senate formally charged its Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools in July with reviewing standardized testing, with recommendations due to the Board of Regents by June 2027.

UC’s reconsideration comes as elite universities increasingly retreat from pandemic-era test-optional policies, including all eight Ivy League schools, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and John Hopkins University. Students, however, continue to push back. The UC Student Association, which represents more than 237,000 students, argues that reinstating testing neglects underlying inequalities in the K-12 educational system and disadvantages applicants with fewer resources. 

Both positions identify a real problem, but neither fully addresses it. UC needs to establish a common, contextualized measure of academic readiness; whether the SAT/ACT deserve to serve that role is what its 2027 review should determine. Identifying a preparation gap should not automatically determine how UC responds to it. Some gaps may justify additional support or different placement, while others may make direct entry into certain programs unrealistic. The fairest system isn’t one that pretends every applicant starts equally; it is one that holds students to meaningful academic expectations while recognizing that they had unequal opportunities to reach them. UC should restore the benchmark, not simply reinstate the old gatekeeper. 

Case for testing

The SAT/ACT cannot capture an applicant holistically, but a transcript also isn’t enough to indicate college readiness. CA students apply from thousands of high schools with different grading practices, course offerings, levels of rigor, and access to advanced classes, meaning identical GPAs can represent very different levels of preparation.

A common assessment can’t erase differences in grading standards but can reveal information that transcripts alone obscure. In its 2020 review, UC’s own Standardized Testing Task Force found that SAT/ACT scores were better predictors of first-year UC GPA than high school GPA and roughly as useful at predicting longer term outcomes like retention and graduation. The task force ultimately recommended retaining testing while UC searched for a better replacement — not because a score represented a student’s entire potential, but because it could provide another point of comparison.

Recent faculty concerns make that information harder to dismiss. Eliminating the SAT may not necessarily reduce college readiness, but removing a measurement doesn’t erase the preparation gap itself; it simply postpones when a university discovers it.

This is where the debate often confuses readiness with merit. A student who attended an underfunded school with few advanced courses may be highly capable while entering UC, even with substantial gaps in preparation. But concealing those gaps with test-blind admission doesn’t necessarily benefit that student either. UC San Diego found that students from under-resourced high schools were disproportionately represented in its remedial math courses, raising the concern that low-income and educationally disadvantaged students — whose access and success the UC Board of Regents has explicitly sought to expand — may arrive with substantial preparation gaps that only become visible after enrollment. UC can’t pretend that two students who received radically different educations arrive on campus equally prepared. But it also can’t treat the consequences of that inequality as evidence that one student is inherently more deserving than another. Context should shape what a score tells an admissions officer, not render the score meaningless. 

Used this way, a common benchmark could help UC identify who needs additional support or different placement without becoming an admissions obstacle. The strongest case for testing, then, isn’t that the SAT can measure a student’s worth. It’s that a university responsible for educating that student needs some credible way to understand what they already know.

Case against testing

Declining student preparedness more directly reflects an unequal K-12 system than the efficacy of standardized tests in measuring college readiness. Decades of residential segregation and discriminatory housing policies have left many low-income Black and Latino students concentrated in schools with fewer resources, and school funding and attendance boundaries remain closely tied to the wealth of the communities they serve. These disparities translate into concrete differences in preparation: schools with high Black and Latino enrollment are less likely to offer advanced courses such as calculus and computer science, limiting students’ opportunities to build the very skills colleges later expect them to demonstrate. Reinstating a test cannot correct the unequal education that precedes it; by using scores to cherry-pick an incoming class that looks cleaner on paper, schools risk neglecting underprivileged candidates who lacked equal opportunities to demonstrate their potential numerically. 

Tutoring companies, academic counselors, and every other gear in the multibillion-dollar industry built around test preparation have transformed testing into a gameable system, with one caveat: players need to pay. According to The College Review, students can typically expect to pay between $50 and $200 per hour for private tutoring. For low-income students, this assistance is a luxury. The contrast is especially visible at MSJ, where the average household income is more than $200,000. Students are surrounded by test-prep centers, SAT courses, advanced math instruction, and college counseling; students trade practice tests, compare scores, and often begin preparing months before test day.

Students also report that, while standardized tests rely on basic knowledge grounded in school curricula, excelling requires substantial effort beyond the classroom. “I do not think the school curriculum prepared me at all for [the SAT] because [the SAT is] structured [so that it’s] very focus[ed] on patterns that you have to notice, and schools don’t really teach you that,” MSJ Senior Ruby Luu said. 

“School absolutely did not prepare me for the English section  … a majority of the second module math questions [were] things that I’ve never seen in school before,” Calmont High School Senior Aeron Gurskis said.

Free preparation materials may reduce the financial barrier to testing, but they cannot create the hours needed to use them. Students who don’t have to worry about supporting their families financially or navigating instability can devote more time to practicing standardized test format and timing, advantages that are not particularly reflections of greater academic ability. As a result, high scores reflect not only what a student knows, but also how much time and support they had to learn how to take the test itself.  “I think [the SAT is] not a good metric for anything but how well you can take the SAT,” Gurskis said.

These inequalities are reflected clearly in standardized test scores. According to a paper written by Opportunity Insights, a Harvard University-affiliated nonprofit that researches disparities in economic opportunity, students with family incomes in the top 1% nationally are more than 50 times more likely to score a 1500 or higher on the SAT or a 34 or higher on the ACT than students with family incomes in the bottom 50%. Furthermore, these disparities disproportionately disadvantage Black and Latino students as opposed to their white and Asian counterparts. Research conducted by Brookings Institution, a public policy nonprofit, found that 43% and 45% of those who scored a 700 or higher on the 2020 SAT math section were Asian and white respectively, while 6% were Latino and 1% were Black. Giving  the students already equipped to score well on standardized tests an advantage in college admissions only perpetuates these inequities.

Whether a student is capable of succeeding in college is far more complex than their ability to ace tests. The SAT/ACT cannot fully quantify a student’s academic merit or potential. A 1530 SAT says nothing by itself about a student’s experiences — the hours they may spend fulfilling family responsibilities, taking care of their community, participating diligently in the classroom — or character. Assuming otherwise only reinforces the barriers that education, as an opportunity, should bridge.

Conclusion

UC is being asked to confront two truths: standardized tests reflect unequal educational opportunities, and those inequalities create real differences in academic preparation. An easy cure simply does not exist; removing the measurement doesn’t fix the gap and neither does reinstating it. The upcoming review in 2027 should resist treating the question as a referendum on whether the SAT/ACT are “good” or “bad.” Rather, UC should determine whether SAT/ACT scores provide meaningful information about college readiness after accounting for high school grades, course rigor, and the rest of its holistic review. If the answer is yes, scores should return only as one contextualized measure of the application process, taking into complete account students’ circumstances and available resources, and not an automatic cutoff or universal ranking of merit. 

After all, attending university opens new doors for students of a huge variety of backgrounds. The real test for UC, then, isn’t whether it brings back the SAT, but whether it can measure readiness without mistaking advantage for merit.