Harvard and Caltech require test scores for admission

Harvard will reinstate standardized tests as an admissions requirement, the university announced Thursday. This makes it the latest in a series of highly competitive universities to reverse their test-optional policy.

Students applying to Harvard in fall 2025 and beyond will be required to submit SAT or ACT scores, although the university said a few other test scores will be accepted in “exceptional cases,” including Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate tests. The university had previously said it would maintain its test-optional policy through the fall 2026 entering class.

Within hours of Harvard’s announcement, Caltech, a science and engineering institution, also said it would reinstate its testing requirements for students applying for admission in the fall of 2025.

The schools were among nearly 2,000 colleges across the country that have dropped test score requirements in recent years. This trend only increased during the pandemic, when it became more difficult for students to get to testing locations.

Dropping test score requirements was widely seen as a tool to diversify admissions by encouraging poor and underrepresented students who had potential but did not score well on the tests to apply. But proponents of the tests have said that without scores it made it more difficult to identify promising students who performed better in their settings.

In explaining its decision to accelerate the return to testing, Harvard cited a study by Opportunity Insights, which found that test scores were a better predictor of academic success in college than high school grades and that they can help admissions officers identify highly talented students from low-income backgrounds who might otherwise go unnoticed.

“Standardized testing is a means for all students, regardless of background and life experience, to provide information that is predictive of success in college and beyond,” said Hopi Hoekstra, dean of the faculty of arts and sciences, in a statement announcing the move.

“In short, more information, especially highly predictive information, is valuable for identifying talent from all socio-economic strata,” she added.

Caltech, in Pasadena, California, said the reinstatement of testing requirements reaffirmed the school’s “commitment as a community of scientists and engineers to use all relevant data in its decision-making processes.”

Harvard and Caltech join a growing number of schools notable for their selectivity that have since reversed their policies, including Brown, Yale, Dartmouth, MIT, Georgetown, Purdue and the University of Texas at Austin.

For Harvard, the move comes at a time of transition, and perhaps a return to more conservative policies.

Last June, the Supreme Court dismissed college admissions cases that discriminated by race against Harvard and the University of North Carolina. This led to fears that these schools would become less diverse if positive discrimination were to disappear.

And in January, Harvard’s first black president, Claudine Gay, resigned amid pressure from critics who said she had not acted forcefully enough to combat anti-Semitism on campus after the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, and amid mounting accusations of plagiarism in her academic work, which she had supported.

The provost, Alan Garber, was named interim president, while the dean of the law school, John Manning, became interim provost, the university’s second-highest administrative position. Mr. Manning is considered a strong potential candidate to replace Dr. Gay. His background is notable for its conservative associations, having clerked for former Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

In the current climate on campus, a return to test scores can be seen as a return to tradition. It could also address the concerns of many parents that the college admissions process, especially at elite institutions, is inscrutable and disconnected from merit.

Harvard’s applications fell 5 percent this year, while many peers rose, suggesting that the recent turmoil may have tarnished Harvard’s reputation. But it still received a staggering number of undergraduate applications — 54,008 — and admitted just 3.6 percent. Requiring test scores could make sorting through applications more manageable.

Critics of standardized tests have long raised concerns that the tests have fueled inequality as some wealthier students boosted their scores through expensive tutoring. But recent studies have found that test scores help predict college grades, chances of graduation and post-college success, and that test scores are more reliable than high school grades, in part because of grade inflation in recent years.

But Robert Schaeffer, director of public education at FairTest, an organization that opposes standardized testing, said Thursday that the Opportunity Insights analysis had been criticized by other researchers. “These scholars say that if you eliminate the role of wealth, test scores are no better than high school test scores,” he said, adding that it’s not clear whether that pattern holds for the admissions pool of super-selective colleges like Harvard.

Mr. Schaeffer said at least 1,850 colleges will remain test-optional, including Michigan, Vanderbilt, Wisconsin and Syracuse, which recently expanded their policies. “The vast majority of colleges will not require test scores.” One exception, he said, could be the University of North Carolina system, which is considering a plan to require testing but only for those students with GPAs below 2.8.

Harvard acknowledged critics’ concerns and said it would review the new policy regularly. The school said test scores would be considered along with other information about an applicant’s experience, skills, talents, contributions to communities and credentials. They also will be considered in the context of how other students are doing at the same high school.

“Admissions officers understand that not all students attend well-resourced schools, and that students from modest economic backgrounds or first-generation college families may have had fewer opportunities to prepare for standardized tests,” William R. Fitzsimmons, Harvard’s dean of admissions and financial aid, said in a statement.

Harvard said that in order to select a diverse student population, it has expanded financial support and increased recruitment of disadvantaged students by joining a consortium of 30 public and private universities that recruits students from rural communities.