During the pandemic, many highly selective universities moved to test-optional admissions policies. At the time, the shift was widely interpreted as a permanent change in how colleges would evaluate applicants.
But something interesting has happened over the past year.
The most selective universities in the country – including Harvard, Yale, Brown, Stanford and Caltech – have reinstated standardized testing requirements. At the very top of the admissions landscape, the pendulum has started swinging back.
Families often ask us why.
One reason is that high school transcripts have become increasingly difficult to interpret. At many strong high schools today, A’s have become the norm. In some cases, the vast majority of grades are in the A range. When that happens, the transcript stops functioning as a ladder and begins to look more like a ceiling where many students appear equally strong.
Admissions officers reviewing thousands of applications need some way to understand academic preparation across very different schools and grading systems. Standardized tests, for all their limitations, remain one of the few consistent reference points.
Data has also played a role in the shift. Several studies have shown that standardized test scores still correlate meaningfully with first-year academic performance in college. For universities that enroll students into extremely rigorous academic environments, that kind of information is difficult to ignore.
Another dynamic that emerged during the test-optional era is that many strong students chose not to submit scores at all. In some cases, that removed a data point that might actually have helped them stand out in a crowded pool of applicants with very similar transcripts.
None of this means that standardized tests now dominate the admissions process. Highly selective colleges still review applications holistically and care deeply about the full picture of a student.
But what is becoming increasingly clear is that at the most selective institutions, testing is once again playing a meaningful role as a way of validating academic preparation.
For students in grades 8 through 11, that’s an important shift to keep in mind as they think about long-term planning.
Marc is the author of Untangling the Ivy League, a best-selling guidebook on the Ancient Eight. He earned a BA from Cornell University and an MBA from University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill. Marc chaired the admissions ambassadors at Cornell and the admissions advisory board at UNC.
