SAT/ACT now required. Is the era of test-optional admissions over?

Are SAT/ACT requirements coming back at top colleges?

• Yes, at the most selective schools. Yale announced on May 26, 2026, that it will require the SAT or ACT for first-year and transfer applicants beginning Fall 2026, ending its test-flexible policy.
• Six of the eight Ivies now require testing for 2026-2027. Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, Brown, Cornell, and Penn. Princeton requires scores starting in 2027-2028. Columbia remains permanently test-optional. MIT, Caltech, and Stanford also require scores.
• "Optional" usually isn't. At selective test-optional schools, 80-85% of applicants submit scores anyway, up from 55-60% in 2021-2022.
• Many strong schools remain test-optional. These include the University of Chicago, Duke, Vanderbilt, Johns Hopkins, Rice, Wake Forest, Bowdoin, and Wesleyan. UC Berkeley and UCLA are test-blind.

Yale just closed the door on its SAT/ACT testing optional policy. In a press conference on Wednesday, May 26th, 2026, the university announced first-year and transfer students will be required to submit either their SAT or ACT scores beginning this fall.

This marks a retreat from the “test-flexible” policy Yale rolled out in 2024, which allowed applicants to satisfy testing requirements with AP/IB scores in place of the SAT/ACT.

After six admissions cycles without a testing mandate, the university is returning to its pre-pandemic policy.

This isn’t surprising. Yale’s move toward required testing comes against the backdrop of more schools swinging in this direction. The five-year testing optional policy that began when Covid shuttered testing centers is steadily disappearing at top schools.

For rising juniors and sophomores, the question of whether tests count has shifted to how to best plan for them.

Yale’s testing policy has moved through three distinct phases since the pandemic.

• In 2020, the university suspended score requirements entirely, joining hundreds of other colleges that went test-optional when students couldn’t safely sit for exams.
• Then in 2024, it launched a “soft version” of testing requirements. Applicants could submit SAT, ACT, AP, or IB results — whatever combination was most flattering.
• Now, with this new announcement, that flexibility is gone.

The university framed the decision as a recommitment to academics rather than copying other schools’ homework.

Jeremiah Quinlan, the Dean of Undergraduate Admissions, said that academic strength remains the admissions committee’s most important consideration, and this priority held steady even as testing rules shifted around it.

Yale’s enrollment data hints at why the flexible model was always a symbolic gesture rather than actual policy. Among enrolled first-year students last fall, 90% submitted an SAT or ACT score despite the policy. Two-thirds also sent AP or IB results, and 61% submitted scores from multiple exams.

In other words, the text-flexible policy gave applicants four doors. Most of them walked through the SAT/ACT entry regardless.

Yale isn’t acting alone. The reversal began with Ivy-adjacent MIT. The school never fully committed to test-optional and quickly reinstated its policy in 2022.

Dartmouth followed in February 2024, becoming the first Ivy to bring back testing. Dartmouth published a research paper showing that scores predicted academic success better than GPA — particularly for first-generation and low-income applicants.

Harvard reinstated testing in April 2024, while Brown, Cornell, and Penn each fell in line for Fall 2025 applicants.

The pattern provides a clear roadmap going forward. Six of the eight Ivies require the SAT or ACT. Princeton is holding out with an expiration date — it’ll remain test-optional for one final cycle before requiring scores for 2027–2028 applicants. Columbia University stands alone with its permanent test-optional policy.

Outside the Ivy League, testing policies at top schools pull in one direction: Caltech reinstated testing in April 2024, while Stanford returned to requiring testing for applicants in the Fall of 2026.

The chart below shows where each Ivy stands with testing policies.

Ivy League Testing Policies

Equity was the reason top schools stayed test-optional. The justification for abandoning it turned out to be the same, as the Dartmouth study above showed.

Three findings are driving the formal readoption of SAT/ACT scores:

• Test scores reliably predicted first-year performance better than GPA (grade inflation has flattened the usefulness of transcripts)
• SAT and ACT help admissions officers spot high-potential students from under-resourced high schools
• Eliminating scores didn’t make admissions more equitable. Instead, it shifted the weight toward recommendations, essays, and extracurriculars. These factors correlate with family income more than test scores.

Yale itself gave a version of the initial equity argument when it reinstated “soft testing” in 2024. Admissions officers acknowledged that its overreliance on SAT and ACT scores likely discouraged promising students from underrepresented backgrounds from applying.

Its flexible policy was an attempt to thread that needle. As it turns out, Yale was threading the wrong needle. And that needle didn’t have a string. Students were submitting their SAT and ACT scores anyway.

Yale is not an outlier. At selective test-optional schools, submission rates are surging. According to Common Data for 2025, 80–85% of applicants to selective test-optional schools still sent their scores. This is up from 55-60% during the 2021-2022 admissions cycle, when this policy was new.

The message for applicants couldn’t be clearer: a strong SAT or ACT score helps even if the school doesn’t require it.

So here’s the million-dollar question: when should you actually not submit a score? Plenty of schools remain test-optional, including several in the top twenty. (For a fuller rundown of which schools still skip this requirement, see Empowerly’s guide to colleges that don’t require standardized testing.)

For instance, the University of Chicago has been test-optional since 2018. Others holding the optional line for the 2026-2027 cycle include Duke, Vanderbilt, Johns Hopkins, Rice, Wake Forest, Bowdoin, and Wesleyan — alongside true test-blind public flagships like UC Berkeley and UCLA.

For a student whose score truly undersells their record, test-optional and test-blind are a real advantage.

If you’re thinking about whether to submit scores to one of these schools, first ask yourself the following questions:

How does your score compare to the school's published range? Does it sit comfortably between the 25th and 75th percentile? A score at or above that range usually helps your case.

On the other hand, if your score falls well below, you might consider not submitting it. It’s on a school-by-school basis, of course: a 1450 at Princeton isn’t the same at the University of Texas, Austin (with a 1268 score putting you above the 25th percentile).

The truthful interpretation of what “optional” really means varies significantly by institution. At the most selective schools, ACT and SAT scores remained an informative data point, even through the so-called “test optional” years.

At schools outside the top 20 (and especially the top 50), optional might really mean optional for a well-rounded applicant.

Students aiming for Ivies or Ivy+ schools should pull the testing lever early. The first official sitting occurs in spring of your junior year. But students chasing the 1500+ band should actually start test prep in their sophomore year. Closing the gap between a high PSAT and a competitive SAT tends to take more work than families expect.

For students with a wider list of dream schools, the calculus loosens a bit. A score still almost always helps at test-optional schools. It’s worth preparing for and taking either the ACT or SAT.

But a student with a strong transcript and compelling story whose path doesn’t necessarily run through schools where a 1500 is a stretch has more options. At Empowerly, we always encourage students to have a balanced college list. It’s the right move whether you’re sitting once or twice. Whether your score is under 1300 or near perfect.

As for the tests themselves, all the Ivies and Ivy+ schools accept either the SAT or ACT with no preference. The choice is a matter of where your strengths lie.

The SAT (in its current format) leans on reading and reasoning with shorter passages. The ACT rewards speed across longer passages and includes a science reasoning section not found on the SAT.

The best way to choose? Take a full-length timed version of each test and compare percentiles rather than guessing. Students who want structured preparation can look at Empowerly's SAT and ACT prep programs.

It also helps to keep your scores in proportion with top schools' holistic review. As Connie, a counselor at Empowerly and former Brown admissions officer, puts it: "Academics is what gets you to the starting line. Everything is what gets you over the finish line successfully." A competitive score earns a serious read, but it rarely closes the deal on its own.

Empowerly counselor (and former Brown admissions officer) Connie on why strong academics get you to the starting line — and what carries an application the rest of the way.

Yale’s decision to end its test-optional experiment signals that the policy has run its course at many top schools. Although “top” is the operative phrase. Test-optional is alive and well at hundreds of other schools.

For families and students, the work now is less about deliberating whether the tests matter. They matter for some schools regardless of stated policies. At others, not so much.

We recommend students build a thoughtful, well-paced testing schedule that fits the specific schools on their list. Having a college list that reflects your test scores and academic profile matters far more than any headlines from New Haven and elsewhere.

Create a rock-solid application regardless of test scores

Dr. Austin Gorman has worked with students on SAT/ACT test prep and college essay writing. Additionally, he served as an admissions consultant at Clemson University Honors College and Brown University.