UC to consider reinstating SAT, ACT tests after faculty say students are deficient in math

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Six years after dropping SAT and ACT test requirements, members of an influential University of California admissions board said Thursday that the group will reconsider requiring the standardized tests, a major move favored by faculty who have complained that many students are severely deficient in math.The potential reversal thrusts the nation’s most prestigious public university system back into a contentious national debate over standardized testing, fairness and college readiness, and follows a wave of elite campuses — including Yale and Caltech — that have already brought the assessments back.The move, announced by the UC-wide Academic Senate’s Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools, comes amid mounting pressure from UC faculty and outside activists over the test-free approach.

More than 1,400 UC professors — many of them in math, science, technology and engineering fields — last month signed an open letter calling on UC to reinstate the admissions tests, setting off intense public advocacy and private lobbying of UC leaders from faculty, parents and students on different sides of the debate.In their letter, the professors bemoaned that “we now observe preparation gaps so severe that instructors must reteach middle-school mathematics while simultaneously teaching the material students need for sciences, engineering, economics, and other quantitatively demanding fields.”The plea followed another remarkable fall 2025 report from a UC San Diego Academic Senate group, which found a roughly 30-fold increase between 2020 and 2025 in incoming first-year students whose math skills tested below high school level, with 70% of those students falling below middle school levels.Then last March, the UC-wide Academic Senate launched a process to further study the admissions process, including high school course requirements.The decision to revisit standardized testi...