Turn Around

From the Daily Princetonian: Princeton will require undergraduate applicants to submit SAT or ACT test scores beginning with the 2027–28 admission cycle, the University announced Thursday. The decision will end a seven-year stint of test-optional undergraduate admissions that began during the pandemic. Several peer institutions including Harvard, Penn, and Brown, have announced in the past year and a half that they would require standardized tests, with changes set to take place in the application cycles during the 2024–25 or 2025–26 school years. Yale, meanwhile, has adopted a test-flexible policy allowing students to choose from SAT, ACT, Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate scores to submit. Columbia has become permanently test-optional. 

Many peer institutions had announced these changes in March or April to begin in the application cycle the next fall. [Princeton] University’s announcement is significantly early in comparison, applicable beginning with the entering Class of 2032, students who will matriculate two admissions cycles from now in the fall of 2028. Like many of its peers, the University said that test scores helped predict academic success among undergraduates...

Full story at https://www.dailyprincetonian.com/article/2025/10/princeton-news-sat-act-standardized-test-optional-required-admissions.

Note that the UC Regents dropped testing despite having commissioned a Senate report which suggested otherwise. Maybe now is the time to reconsider. Of course, the Regents have a lot on their plates at the moment. And folks don't generally like to consider the possibility that maybe in the past they made a mistake.