Issue 42 — Penn Is Right to Require the SAT

Recent news out of California validates Penn’s decision to restore a standardized testing requirement for undergraduate applicants.

For the last three years, 30% of UC Berkeley students in their first semester of calculus showed “severe preparation deficits” on diagnostic tests. At UC San Diego, one in twelve first-years do not demonstrate mastery of middle school math skills. In response, over the past few weeks, more than 1,400 University of California professors signed an open letter urging their administration to reinstate standardized testing requirements for undergraduate applicants interested in STEM fields. They are concerned that without test scores in applicants’ files, universities are missing an important signal of academic preparation.

For Penn, which required SAT or ACT scores again for the 2025-2026 admissions cycle, the UC debate is a warning about what test-optional or no-test policies can obscure. Penn was right to bring back testing, not because SAT and ACT scores are perfect, but because academic readiness matters. And universities need reliable ways to identify it.

The UC professors’ evidence is jarring. The authors and signers, including seven math department chairs and 53 other STEM department chairs, chronicle the abrupt downturn in math preparation they have seen over the past five years. 

Those preparation gaps compound in the classroom. The professors argue that removing testing requirements has led to enormous disparities in preparation. Within a single lecture, it is common for professors to review basic algebra with some students while trying to teach others the advanced concepts necessary for high-level math, science, and economics. Students at UC Berkeley who arrive unprepared for calculus have up to a 46% chance of failing.

The professors want to reinstate testing to prevent these deficits that erode the universities' academics. Meanwhile, California Governor Gavin Newsom has argued that standardized testing worsens inequality and punishes students from disadvantaged backgrounds. But the research suggests otherwise. 

In 2023, research from Harvard’s Opportunity Insights lab found that SAT and ACT scores were the strongest predictors of academic success in college across demographic and socioeconomic groups. Students with similar standardized test scores tended to earn similar college GPAs, even when they came from different backgrounds.

Not only do standardized tests effectively predict academic success in college, but they also provide an important way to identify talented students from lower-resourced schools that may not offer advanced courses, have teachers with time to write detailed recommendations, or provide extensive extracurricular opportunities. Instead of acting as a funnel against disadvantaged students as Newsom and others have suggested, standardized tests actually act as tools to identify talented students across the country.

The need for this common academic signal has only grown with widespread high school grade inflation. Although 30% of Berkeley students show severe preparation deficits in first-year calculus, 75% of the first-years entered college with a high school GPA of 4.15 or higher. When students are admitted to competitive universities without demonstrating mastery of high school-level math, they are more likely to struggle academically or abandon majors that require quantitative skills.

Testing requirements were suspended across the country, including at Penn and the UCs, during the 2020-2021 admissions cycle because of logistical challenges during the pandemic and concerns about equity. Slowly, elite universities have begun reversing course after concluding that testing remains a valuable tool for admissions.

The 2025-2026 admissions cycle was the first since 2019-2020 in which Penn required applicants to submit SAT or ACT scores. The university is following the path of its peers: MIT led the pack by requiring the SAT or ACT in 2022. Today, Columbia became the final Ivy to reinstate the requirement, announcing that it will require SAT or ACT scores for the 2027-2028 cycle.

Penn’s decision sparked immediate impact. With the requirement in place for Penn’s Class of 2030, applications fell from 72,000 last cycle to 61,000 this cycle, driven in part both by the testing requirement and a decline in the number of American 18-year-olds. 

But applicant quantity is not the same as academic quality. In the long-term, the SAT and ACT can help ensure that Penn admits students who are prepared for a demanding education.

The UC professors’ concerns should serve as a warning. Academic excellence begins with admitting students who have demonstrated the academic readiness to succeed, not by diluting coursework to match the level of admitted students. If Penn wants to preserve the rigor of its classrooms, continue attracting exceptional students, and uphold its world-class reputation, requiring standardized testing remains critical.

Curated highlights from this week’s Penn news

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