Test Prep
Published:
How Important is Standardized Testing in US College Admissions?
What scores count for, who requires them, and when to submit in 2026/27
Alex H
Princeton & Columbia University Graduate
Summary
A reader weighs your score alongside your transcript, your course load, your essays, your activities and your letters, and no school publishes a formula that hands it 10% or 30% of the file. What's changed is who asks for it. For 2026-27, six of the eight Ivies require the SAT or ACT, along with Stanford, MIT, Caltech, Georgetown and Johns Hopkins, and the last two Ivies follow in 2027-28. A strong score won't rescue a weak application. It will confirm you can handle the work, count for more in a quantitative major, and keep your list open while it changes. Unless every school you're considering is test-free, plan to test.
What role does testing play in US admissions?
Your score is the one number on your application that means the same thing everywhere. Admissions officers encounter tens of thousands of high schools with different courses, grading and reputations, and a 1540 is a 1540 at all of them. That number gets read against everything else in your application: transcript, course load, essays, extracurriculars and recommendations. It isn't something you pass or fail, though a strong score lends a little certainty to the parts of your file that don’t come with a number attached.
Standardized testing does its best work in four places: confirming you can handle a hard academic program, backing an application to an oversubscribed major like engineering, computer science or economics, and settling doubt when a transcript is hard to decipher. What it can't do is cover for weak grades, poor fit or a lacklustre activities list.
How much do test scores actually count?
Test scores count for a lot more than the debate of the past few years has suggested, which is why so many of the top schools are reversing course on whether to require them.
University | What its own review found | Announced |
Dartmouth | SAT scores alone accounted for about 22% of the variation in first-year GPA; high school GPA alone accounted for about 9% | Feb 2024 |
Brown | Students who withheld performed on average about level with students who submitted lower scores | Mar 2024 |
Cornell | Only 24% of applicants to Arts & Sciences submitted scores for fall 2023, and that group made up 50% of acceptances and 62% of enrollments | Apr 2024 |
Johns Hopkins | First-year GPA among students who withheld was statistically similar to GPA among students whose scores fell in the bottom quartile of submissions | Aug 2024 |
Princeton | A five-year review of the test-optional period found stronger academic performance among students who chose to submit | Oct 2025 |
Harvard | Published no review of its own applicant data, and instead pointed to work by the economists behind Opportunity Insights, whose finding was that recommendation letters, activities and essays carry more socioeconomic bias than test scores do | Apr 2024 |
Opportunity Insights, across 12 Ivy-Plus universities | Students scoring 1600 or 36 reached a first-year GPA about 0.43 points higher than students scoring 1200 or 25, and the lower-scoring group was five times as likely to receive a grade of C+ or below | 2025 |
Six institutions with six versions of the same result. The Opportunity Insights row is the one to really look at closely, because it covers twelve universities and settles on the same finding: a score better predicts how a student will actually do in first-year classes than the grades on their transcript. That's what these committees are weighing when deciding their policies.
The faculty really like the testing, they really felt confident in what the testing is indicating, success by sophomore year of university. There often was kind of a tension, at least when I was test-optional at Northwestern, with the Faculty Senate, and they wanted that number in there.
Kimberley L.
Former Stanford Admissions Officer
Admissions offices consider access, and how many applications arrive in October. Faculty think about the twenty people who'll be sitting in their 9am lecture in September, and whether those people can keep up with what's being taught. Where faculty pushed hardest, the requirement came back soonest, and grade inflation handed them the simplest argument. When transcript after transcript arrives with a 4.0 on it, the grade stops differentiating applicants.
The rule underlying all of it is really quite simple. A score above a school's middle range works for you. On the other hand, a score below it does the opposite, and at an optional school it does more damage, because a score you chose to send gets held to a higher standard than one you had no choice about. Where testing is required, your score sits inside formal academic review. Where it's optional, it plays the corroborating witness to the rest of your file. No 1580 has ever rescued an otherwise floundering application. What it does is tip the balance for a reader who was already half-inclined in your favor.
What are the different testing policies?
Four policies exist. Knowing which one applies at each school on your list is an essential starting point.
Policy | What it means | Current examples |
Test-required | You must submit SAT or ACT scores or your application is incomplete | Harvard, Yale, Brown, Dartmouth, Cornell, Penn, Stanford, MIT, Caltech, Georgetown, Johns Hopkins |
Test-optional | You choose whether to submit; strong scores still help | Princeton and Columbia (final cycle in 2026-27), Vanderbilt (though fall 2028 entry), NYU (through fall 2028 entry, and anyone who does submit can send AP, IB or A-Levels instead of the SAT or ACT), Duke, Northwestern, UChicago, Notre Dame, Michigan, WashU, Emory, USC, UVA |
Test-flexible | Another exam can stand in for the SAT or ACT | Carnegie Mellon runs a version by program, where scores are required and you pick the type; Yale closed its AP/IB route in May 2026 |
Test-free (test-blind) | Scores aren't considered even if you send them | University of California system, California State University |
Three things matter more than the labels themselves.
First, almost every test-required school now offers a waiver. Penn and Columbia take waiver requests where getting to a test is a real problem, Brown makes exceptions in rare circumstances, and Harvard will take AP or IB results where the SAT and ACT truly aren't available. None of it is a way around a disappointing score, but it does mean distance, cost or a canceled test center won't see you penalized.
Second, flexible can mean different things depending on where you find it. NYU is optional through 2027-28, and anyone who does submit can pick one form from a long menu: SAT, ACT, three AP exams, IB, A-Levels or a national qualification. Carnegie Mellon runs it the other way round, and by program. Computer Science wants the SAT or ACT outright. Engineering, Dietrich, Mellon College of Science, Tepper and Heinz's Information Systems program all demand a score of some kind and let you choose the type, predicted A-Level and IB results included. Fine Arts asks for a portfolio instead. So be sure to check your program, not just the university. And think about what you choose to send, because three AP results already in hand may say more than a rushed October sitting.
Third, these policies are changing quickly. Yale ran a flexible one for two years, found that 90% of applicants were choosing the SAT or ACT over the AP and IB options anyway, and closed it in May 2026. A route that existed last cycle may be gone by the time you apply. Take each school's own admissions page for the current cycle as the last word, since databases and even school counselors can run behind live policy.
Which top schools require testing now?
For 2026-27, six of the eight Ivies require the SAT or ACT: Harvard, Yale, Brown, Dartmouth, Cornell and Penn. Princeton and Columbia are optional for fall 2027 entry and required from fall 2028, which makes every Ivy a required school for the class of 2028. Stanford, MIT, Caltech, Georgetown and Johns Hopkins ask for scores too, and public flagships are following in numbers, particularly in the South.
That leaves a real group where you still get to choose: Duke, Northwestern, UChicago, Notre Dame, Vanderbilt (optional for fall 2027 and 2028 entry, required from fall 2029) and a dozen peers. The group is shrinking, and Vanderbilt's timeline is a fair preview of the rest.
The University of California still doesn't look at scores at all, and that's the policy currently under the most pressure.
What's happening at the University of California?
UC went test-free in 2020, and for six years it was the most settled testing policy in the country. Not any more. Faculty petitions asking for the SAT and ACT back passed 1,400 signatures by June 2026 and 2,300 by August. STEM faculty started it, arguing students arrive on campus underprepared in mathematics and the system needs a common measure of readiness, and their letter puts a mathematics requirement as a precondition for equity instead of a barrier to it. Humanities and social science faculty followed with their own letter.
The disagreement isn't about whether the preparation gap is real. Critics accept that it is and question the fix, arguing a public system that has to serve the whole state has other ways to address readiness and that a requirement would screen out the students UC exists to reach. The academic senate is reviewing the policy, the board has called it a major focus with a recommendation due by the end of the academic year.
Nothing has changed yet. Apply to Berkeley or UCLA for fall 2027 and your scores won't be read even if you send them. Aiming at fall 2028 or later, particularly in a STEM major, plan as though a requirement is coming and check again before you build your list. A sitting costs you one Saturday and keeps your options open.
Test-optional doesn't mean test-neutral
A strong score still helps at a test-optional school, and admitted classes lean heavily toward students who sent one. Cornell's submitters were about a quarter of applicants to its largest college and half of its acceptances. Some offices do mean it literally, and at Columbia reading anything into a missing score was out of bounds. What happened instead was that everything else academic got a closer look, AP and IB results included. So the question isn't whether an omission is punished but whether the rest of your file holds up on its own.
What tests can you take?
Students can take two tests, either the SAT or ACT taken interchangeably at every US college that considers scores. Schools treat them as equivalent and convert between them with official concordance tables, so neither carries an advantage. Caltech is the exception worth knowing, since it ignores the ACT composite altogether and reads only the individual subscores.
| SAT | ACT |
Score range | 400-1600 | 1-36 |
Pace | About 82 seconds per question | About 57 seconds per question |
Structure | Adaptive, so your first module sets the difficulty of the second | Linear, so questions don't change with performance |
That pace column is what decides it for most people. The ACT gives you less time per question and rewards fast, confident decisions; the SAT gives you more room to reason. Our comparison walks through how to choose.
One note on the ACT. Science became an optional add-on in 2025 and no longer counts toward your Composite, which is now the average of English, Math and Reading alone. Skipping it also means no STEM score, since that's built from Math and Science. Caltech will read Science and Writing if you send them. Check each school's testing page before you register.
The other exams support your case without replacing these two. AP and IB results demonstrate subject mastery and can earn credit, but they don't act as a substitute unless a college says so in writing.
SAT Subject Tests were discontinued in 2021, so there are no new scores to send. English proficiency tests like the TOEFL, IELTS or Duolingo sit alongside admissions testing as a separate requirement, and a strong score sometimes removes it: Vanderbilt waives the exam at ACT English 26 or SAT Reading and Writing 630, while Carnegie Mellon asks every non-native speaker for one whatever their SAT looks like. A-Levels and the IB Diploma give readers academic context, and only a handful of programs take them in place of a test.
Subject exams do something a single sitting can't.
Admissions officers still prefer to look at APs, look at IBs, or A-level predicted, and put more weight on that, more so than just the SAT or just the ACT, because this is a semester, a year, two years of work, versus a couple of Saturday mornings is how we always put it.
Devery D.
Former Harvard Admissions Officer
That's the argument for keeping your coursework strong while you prepare. Where a transcript and a set of AP or IB results already confirm you can handle the work, one disappointing test day reads as exactly that rather than a ceiling.
How do you submit test scores?
Most colleges let you self-report in the Common App, the Coalition App or their own portal, and only ask for official reports if you enroll. Princeton wants scores sent straight from the testing agencies, so check instead of assuming.
Three things are worth knowing before you register for anything. Superscoring, which most schools do, takes your best section scores across sittings, so several well-prepared attempts pay off. The detail varies more than you'd expect. Vanderbilt superscores across the paper and digital SAT while Princeton won't, and it counts your ACT Science score in only where Science lifts the total, which makes that section a free option there. Carnegie Mellon superscores the SAT and won't take a superscored ACT at all. Score Choice lets you pick which dates a college sees. And a few schools override Score Choice and ask for every score you've ever earned, Georgetown among them, so a rough first sitting stays on the record there. Check each school's reporting policy before you book another test.
Should you submit a score at a test-optional school?
Send it when it materially helps your academic case. Work from the school's middle 50% range for admitted students, or its enrolled range where that's all it publishes, and treat that one as an approximation. At or above the middle of the range, send it. Near the top quarter, send it without thinking twice. Hold it back only where the school is truly optional, your score sits well below the middle, and your transcript and course load already make the stronger case.
School tier | Typical middle range among admits |
HYPSM | ~1510-1580 |
Ivy League (excluding HYPSM) | ~1480-1560 |
Top 20 | ~1430-1540 |
Reading the range matters more than the numbers do. A quarter of admitted students came in below the bottom figure, so a 1500 is competitive where the middle sits near 1450 and under the midpoint where it sits near 1560. The same score is a send at one school and a hold at another. Our score guides cover what to aim for. [internal links: good SAT score article, good ACT score article]
One more thing, and it runs counter the assumption that an optional score gets an easier read.
Especially when you have a school that's test-optional, we were maybe even a little bit harsher on the review of the SAT or ACT scores, because you don't have to give it in. It needs to be a really impressive score.
Jermaine D.
Former Columbia Admissions Officer
A middling score you didn't have to send does more damage at an optional school than at a required one, and a strong one travels further. Name a quantitative major and the bar goes up again, because a reader will hold your math score against what you say you want to study.
Caltech has gone further than anyone in writing this into policy. It reads individual subscores and never the composite, and a subscore in the top two bands reaches the committee as a range with your exact number hidden. Fall below 750 on the SAT or 33 on the ACT and the committee sees the number itself. Caltech's own faculty research sits behind those lines: little difference in how students then performed at Caltech above 780 SAT or 35 ACT, a small one between 750 and 770 or 33 and 34, and a sizable one below that. Those are differences in grades once enrolled, not admission odds, though the policy makes clear which end of the range gets scrutiny.
Does testing matter beyond admission?
Yes, and families often find this out late in the game. Scores drive merit scholarship eligibility at plenty of universities, especially large publics, where clearing a set number can be worth tens of thousands of dollars whatever the admissions office thinks of it. They also drive honors college eligibility and course placement once you arrive, and National Merit runs off your junior-year PSAT. Skip testing because your favorite school is optional and you might close off money and programs you never looked at.
Deadlines carry the same trap. Cutoffs differ between the early and regular rounds, and the last usable date for an early application usually falls in October or November of senior year, earlier than most families plan for. There's a floor as well as a ceiling: Carnegie Mellon asks for 11th or 12th grade results, counts the summer after 10th grade as acceptable, and discounts anything sat two or more years before you'd arrive, so testing very early can cost you the score.
Why testing matters more for international applicants
From outside the US system a score works harder for you. When a reader is unfamiliar with your curriculum, your grading scale or your school, it gives them something they tangibly recognize, and it settles a question a transcript can't. Some schools make that explicit: NYU asks every A-Level, Indian Class XII and Australian ATAR applicant for predicted or final results whatever else they submit, so those results are part of a complete application either way. Dartmouth's review made the point directly: students from schools an office knows least well are the ones a shared measure helps most. Even on a strong IB or A-Level track, a clean score reads as a plain positive where submitting is optional, and it's required at a growing share of selective schools.
Unless your college list is intentionally built around test-free schools, plan to take the SAT or ACT. A strong score keeps options open as your list evolves through senior year.
How Crimson builds testing into application strategy
Which test suits you, the SAT or the ACT? What score does your list actually demand? When should you take it, and how many times? Where submission is optional, do you send it?
Every one of those calls is school-specific, and that's the work a Crimson strategist does with you, starting with diagnostics on both tests and targets set against each school's real middle ranges. Across all starting bands, our SAT program lifts scores by an average of 116 points, and Crimson students earned 388 Ivy League acceptances in the 2025/26 cycle.
Bring your list. We'll build the testing plan around it.