90% of colleges and universities still don’t require SAT or ACT scores

and what my quote in the Washington Times tells families.

I got quoted in The Washington Times. Never thought I’d write that line!

The Washington Times ran a piece this week on a report finding that 90% of colleges and universities still don’t require SAT or ACT scores, even as a handful of high-profile schools like Harvard and Georgetown bring the requirement back. I’m quoted in the article, and I wanted to walk you through why the headline matters for your family’s strategy this fall.

What I told them

Test-optional policies aren’t going anywhere for most universities, because the policy works in the school’s favor. Here’s the mechanism:

A bigger applicant pool means a lower acceptance rate. A lower acceptance rate boosts a school’s rankings and prestige. And more applicants also means more application fee revenue. Schools that waived the test requirement during the pandemic got all three benefits. They have little reason to add that barrier back.

Why the headlines are misleading

When Harvard, Georgetown, MIT, and a few other elite schools reinstated testing requirements over the past two years, it made national news. Each announcement got its own cycle of coverage. That coverage created the impression that the test-optional era was ending.

It isn’t. The schools reinstating requirements are a small, visible minority. The report behind this article puts the real number at roughly 90% of the nation’s bachelor’s-degree-granting institutions still test-optional or test-blind. A little more than a dozen schools reversed course in 2024.

The schools that did reverse course share something in common: they’re all extremely selective, well-resourced, and don’t need the application volume boost that test-optional policies provide. For everyone else, the math still favors staying test-optional.

What this means for your family

Don’t let headlines about Harvard or MIT set your student’s testing strategy. The decision to submit scores should be made school by school, based on that specific school’s actual current policy, not on what selective institutions two tiers up are doing.

A few practical questions to ask for each school on your student’s list:

1. Is the school test-optional, test-blind, or test-required, right now, for the class your student is applying to? Policies shift year to year, so check the current cycle, not what you remember from an older sibling’s search or a headline from last spring.

2. If it’s test-optional, does your student’s score fall at or above the school’s middle 50% range for admitted students? If yes, submitting the score generally helps. If it falls below that range, it’s usually fine to leave it out.

3. Is the major or program selective within the school? Some test-optional universities still require scores for specific programs, like engineering or nursing, even when the general admissions policy doesn’t.

Read the full Washington Times piece and subscribe to early bird for just $29.99/month to gain the calm and clarity around testing policies you deserve.

You can read the full article here: Why 90% of colleges still don’t require the SAT, even as the Ivy League returns to it