Columbia becomes last Ivy to reinstate standardized test scores requirement post-COVID

Columbia Spectator ^ | June 12, 2026 at 9:41 PM | Simon Leton

[JSM_Liberty]

Columbia will once again require standardized test scores for undergraduate applicants, beginning in August 2027, the University announced Friday. With the change, Columbia is the final Ivy League school to reinstate test score requirements, which most universities made optional in 2020.

Students applying to Columbia College or the School of Engineering and Applied Science will be required to submit SAT or ACT scores for the 2027-28 admissions cycle. During the COVID-19 pandemic, many universities, including Columbia, waived standardized testing requirements, citing concerns about access to testing opportunities. Columbia has deviated from its peers by extending the waiver for more than three years after the pandemic ended.

The other seven Ivy League institutions have already reinstated the requirement; Yale University was the latest to do so, announcing the change in May.

The revision comes after a multiyear faculty review which found that test scores were a “useful indicator of potential student success,” according to the statement from the University, which was released after an update to its testing web page on Monday.

These findings are not novel: Princeton University, Cornell University, and Yale have all found similar relationships between students’ scores and college performance, and all announced that they would subsequently reinstate testing requirements.

Columbia’s policy reversal also comes amid a national reckoning with standardized testing. This week, the University of California admissions board, which had adopted a test-blind policy, announced that it would consider reinstating testing requirements following faculty backlash.

After dropping the requirement in 2020, Columbia indefinitely suspended it in 2023, stating that the University’s admissions process is “rooted in the belief that students are dynamic, multi-faceted individuals who cannot be defined by any single factor.”

In reintroducing the requirement, the University pointed to the importance of academic excellence, but committed to a holistic review of each application and to consider individual circumstances.

“There are no minimum test score requirements for admission,” the web page states. Sixty-one percent of admitted students submitted test scores alongside their application in 2023, according to the University’s 2024-25 admissions data set. In that cycle, the median submitted SAT score was 1540, which is above the 99th percentile nationwide. In 2019, before the test-optional policy was introduced, the median score of an admitted student was 1505, which falls in the 99th percentile of SAT scores.

Most highly selective universities—including Columbia—who dropped testing requirements saw increases in the SAT and ACT medians of admitted students, since applicants generally only submit scores that are helpful to their application. Columbia’s test-optional policy, which lets students decide whether to submit a score, stresses that the omission of a standardized test score will not negatively impact an applicant.

Barnard, whose admission FAQ page describes its test-optional policy as “temporary,” will remain test-optional through at least 2027. In 2023, just 50 percent of Barnard applicants submitted scores alongside their application. The School of General Studies, which also went test-optional in 2020, has not announced any changes to its admissions requirements.

The impact of removing testing requirements is debated among those in higher education. Proponents of test-optional policies deride the SAT and ACT as barriers to entry for historically marginalized communities, and point to the correlation between wealth and standardized test score as evidence of deficiency.

However, universities examine applicant exam results within the context of their circumstances, using zip code and high school information to weigh an applicant’s score. Dartmouth College’s internal review found that applicants from historically excluded or low income backgrounds were often omitting scores that would be considered competitive given their circumstances, reducing the school’s ability to find and admit outstanding applicants from less resourced areas.

Universities that have reintroduced the requirement have seen drops in total applications. After Dartmouth reinstated its testing requirement in 2024, total applications dropped by 11 percent. At Yale, applications dropped by 12.6 percent, and Brown University saw its lowest number of applications since 2019 after reintroducing its requirement last year.

This year, Columbia received 61,031 applications—the most in University history, and more than Yale, Brown, and Dartmouth.

A University spokesperson declined to comment on whether the potential impacts of requiring standardized test scores, which include lower applicant numbers and higher acceptance rates—both of which can impact the University’s performance in college rankings—played a role in the decision to hold off on reintroducing testing requirements.

Applicants to the University this fall will be subject to the same test-optional policy as in previous years.

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TOPICS: Education
KEYWORDS: act; liberaltruth; sat

[Freee-dame]

I guess the professors in subjects like mathematics didn’t like having students admitted into calculus class who could not do Middle School math.

[Mouton]

I guess Scott Palley got in under the wire as a urinalist at Columbia.

[devane617]

Leftists progressives socialists communists do not change their stripes, so, what is the new tactic. No way in hell will those applicants be turned away, so why is the new game?

[BenLurkin]

It looks like Covid will always be given as an excuse for a things that didn’t have to happen, and shouldn’t have been done.

[Recompennation]

Obama dumma ding dong z scholl
With a caramel harris twist,
Just listen to the rubbish college ... roots

“rooted in the belief that students are dynamic, multi-faceted individuals who cannot be defined by any single factor.”

[Libloather]

The DNC’s Hamas wing is deeply concerned.