Harvard Reinstates SAT and ACT Requirements For Undergraduates: A Shift In College Admissions Trends

 Harvard University announced Thursday it will once again require standardized test scores for undergraduate admissions, the latest—and most high-profile—higher education institution to reverse its test-optional policy spurred by the Covid-19 pandemic.

 

The standardized testing requirement will affect undergraduate students applying for admissions to the class of 2029 this fall, according to Harvard College, the Ivy League school’s undergraduate arm.

While the college will require submissions of SAT and ACT test scores, it will allow other eligible exams in “exceptional cases in which applicants are unable to access” the traditional tests.

Hopi Hoekstra, dean of the university’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, called standardized tests “a means for all students, regardless of their background and life experience, to provide information that is predictive of success in college and beyond.”

Hoekstra said the school’s admissions officers will still consider test scores alongside other factors, including high school academic performance.

3.59%. That’s Harvard’s acceptance rate for the class of 2028. The college accepted 1,937 of its 54,008 applicants. It was the highest acceptance rate in four years, according to the student-run publication Harvard Crimson.


Harvard was one of more than a thousand higher education institutions that implemented test-optional policies in June 2020 amid limited access to testing as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. It has since expanded the policy for recent application cycles, and originally said the test-optional policy would continue through the class of 2030. The move was controversial: Some standardized test opponents argue tests like the SATs and ACTs aren’t fair metrics of students’ ability and benefit wealthier students whose families can afford pricy test prep classes, while others have argued the tests can predict post-college success and help schools identify deserving applicants from disadvantaged schools. MIT became the first notable university to reverse its test-optional policy in March 2022, and other colleges and universities have since followed suit.

Brown University announced in early March that it would reverse its own test-optional policy, making it the third Ivy League to do so.