Test Prep
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Colleges that Require the SAT/ACT in 2026/27: Full List and Reversion Timeline
Which schools make scores mandatory now, and who joins next
Arkesh P.
Chief Operating Officer
Summary
Test-required colleges won't review your application without an SAT or ACT score. For 2026/27 that includes Harvard, Yale, Penn, Brown, Dartmouth, Cornell, Stanford, MIT, Caltech, Johns Hopkins, Georgetown, and the Florida, Georgia, and Tennessee public systems. Princeton and Columbia join in 2027-28, making it all eight Ivies, with Alabama and Vanderbilt close behind. Schools brought scores back because their own data showed scores predict college performance, so build testing into your plan early.
What does test required mean?
A test-required college makes an SAT or ACT score a mandatory part of your application. Without one, your file is incomplete and won't be reviewed. A few required schools allow limited exceptions, like Penn State's hardship provision for students who truly couldn't test, and a few run test-flexible versions where a score is still mandatory but other exams can substitute in. Only 5% of Common App member institutions required a test in the 2025-26 cycle, so the category is small, but it does contain most of the schools at the top of your list.
Common App members requiring tests, 2025-26
Do not require95%Require SAT/ACT5%
Source: commonapp.org
Test required vs test optional, test flexible, and test free
Four types of test policies are commonly used. They look similar on college admission pages but each one asks something different of you:
| What it means | Examples for 2026/27 |
Test required | Scores are mandatory for review | Harvard, Yale, Stanford, MIT, Cornell |
Test optional | You choose whether scores are considered | Princeton, Duke, Northwestern, UChicago, Michigan |
Test flexible | A score is required, but alternatives to the SAT/ACT can count | Most Carnegie Mellon colleges (SAT, ACT, AP, IB, A-Levels) |
Test free/blind | Scores aren't considered even if you send them | All UC campuses, Cal State system |
Which colleges require the SAT or ACT in 2026/27?
Requirements are ordered by when they took effect, because "since when" tells you how settled a policy is. Everything down to Yale, Auburn and LSU applies to applicants this cycle, and everything after that is coming.
University | Required from | Notes |
Georgetown | Never dropped the requirement | Wants at least one full SAT or ACT sitting and doesn't superscore |
MIT | Fall 2023 entry (2022-23 cycle) | First to reinstate, in 2022 |
Purdue | Fall 2024 entry (2023-24 cycle) | Expects scores; 98.3% of admitted students submitted. SAT, ACT and CLT all accepted, but only from the past five years |
Dartmouth | Fall 2025 entry (2024-25 cycle) | Published its research alongside the announcement |
Brown | Fall 2025 entry (2024-25 cycle) | |
Harvard | Fall 2025 entry (2024-25 cycle) | |
Caltech | Fall 2025 entry (2024-25 cycle) | |
UT Austin | Fall 2025 entry (2024-25 cycle) | |
University of Pennsylvania | Fall 2026 entry (2025-26 cycle) | Automatic hardship waiver, though a score you've already taken overrides it |
Cornell | Fall 2026 entry (2025-26 cycle) | Applies across all eight undergraduate colleges |
Stanford | Fall 2026 entry (2025-26 cycle) | |
Johns Hopkins | Fall 2026 entry (2025-26 cycle) | |
University of Miami | Fall 2026 entry (2025-26 cycle) | |
Penn State | Fall 2026 entry (2025-26 cycle) | Hardship exceptions available |
Ohio State | Fall 2026 entry (2025-26 cycle) | Columbus campus |
Carnegie Mellon | In force for 2026/27 | SAT or ACT required at Computer Science only. Five colleges are test flexible, where a score is mandatory but AP, IB or A-Levels can satisfy it. Fine Arts is test optional |
Yale | Fall 2027 entry (2026-27 cycle) | Required a score since fall 2025 entry, but AP and IB results counted until now. SAT or ACT only from this cycle |
Auburn | Fall 2027 entry (2026-27 cycle) | Previously GPA-conditional |
LSU | Fall 2027 entry (2026-27 cycle) | |
Princeton | Fall 2028 entry (2027-28 cycle) | Test optional for one more cycle |
Columbia | Fall 2028 entry (2027-28 cycle) | Test optional for one more cycle |
University of Alabama | Fall 2028 entry (2027-28 cycle) | Required below a 3.0 GPA now; required for everyone from fall 2028 |
Vanderbilt | Fall 2029 entry (2028-29 cycle) | Test optional for two more cycles |
Public school systems that require SAT/ACT scores
System | Requirement | Worth knowing |
University System of Georgia (UGA, Georgia Tech, Georgia State, Kennesaw State, Georgia Southern, Augusta, Georgia College) | SAT or ACT | The CLT can be substituted system-wide from fall 2027, with Georgia Tech and UGA the only exceptions |
Florida public universities (UF, Florida State, USF, UCF and the rest) | SAT, ACT or CLT | Florida never dropped the requirement |
University of Tennessee system, including Knoxville | SAT or ACT | |
US service academies, including West Point, Annapolis and the Air Force Academy | SAT or ACT | Never stopped requiring them. All three also accept the CLT |
Testing requirements are rare everywhere except the top of the list
The small group that has them includes six of the eight Ivies, Stanford, MIT, Caltech, Georgetown, and the flagship publics of Florida, Georgia and Tennessee.
Princeton and Columbia make it all eight Ivies from 2027-28
Princeton announced in October 2025 that it will require the SAT or ACT from the 2027-28 cycle. Columbia was the first Ivy to go indefinitely test optional, in March 2023, and the last to give it up. It reversed course in June 2026, with testing required from August 2027 for the 2027-28 cycle. Both schools remain test optional for 2026/27, which makes this the last cycle an Ivy League application can be submitted without a score.
Princeton and Columbia are the only Ivies still leaving the choice to you, and both start requiring the SAT or ACT in the 2027-28 cycle. Alabama drops its GPA exemption in the same cycle and Vanderbilt follows the year after.
Yale's test-flexible experiment and why it ended
In 2024, Yale reinstated a testing requirement in flexible form: you had to submit scores, but AP or IB results could stand in for the SAT or ACT. That covered two entering classes, fall 2025 and fall 2026, and plenty of strong students built plans around the substitution before Yale ended it in May 2026. From this cycle, meaning students entering fall 2027, first-year applicants have to submit the SAT or ACT, and AP or IB results count only alongside one.
Yale's own numbers explain the decision. 90% of the class that entered in fall 2025 had included a score, 92% of the fall 2026 class did, and more than 80% of applicants across the two most recent cycles chose to submit. When nearly everyone submits anyway, a flexible menu adds complexity without adding information.
Yale's entering class, fall 2026
Included SAT/ACT score92%Entered without one8%
Source: Yale CDS 2025/26
Test flexible still means a score is required
Don't read "flexible" as an easier version of optional. Your application won’t be considered without a score at a test-flexible school, and the only thing you get to choose is which exam counts.
Carnegie Mellon runs the main surviving example, and the policy changes college by college. The School of Computer Science wants an SAT or ACT specifically, while the College of Fine Arts is test optional and asks for portfolios and auditions instead. The other five, which are Engineering, Dietrich, Mellon College of Science, Tepper and Heinz's Information Systems program, are test flexible: you have to send something, but you can choose between the SAT, ACT, AP, IB, Cambridge A-Levels and the French Baccalaureate. Predicted IB, A-Level and French Bac results count at the application stage, and actual results are only needed if you enroll.
Two details there are worth copying into your own plan. CMU takes self-reported scores, so you don't pay for official reports until you enroll. And it wants testing finished by November 1 for Early Decision and January 3 for Regular Decision, which is tighter than the deadline itself.
Why are colleges reinstating the SAT and ACT?
The same four reasons come up in nearly every reinstatement announcement:
Their own data showed scores predict performance
They all started by looking at their own campuses. Dartmouth found that scores predicted academic performance in first years more reliably than high school GPA. Princeton found "academic performance at Princeton was stronger for students who chose to submit test scores than for students who did not." Cornell's task force reported weaker first-year GPAs among test-optional students, and Ohio State found higher GPAs and better retention among submitters in its own pilot. Columbia landed in the same place, saying a multi-year faculty review had determined that test scores, "among other factors, were a useful indicator of potential student success." Once schools that had publicly committed to optional admissions kept finding the same thing in their own classes, the position became hard to hold.
Test-optional inflated the published ranges
Optional policies left every published range describing a self-selected group, since only students happy with their scores were in the count, and the skew gets worse at each stage: at Purdue, 90% of 2025 applicants sent a score and 98.3% of admitted students had one. Ranges that looked like rising standards were partly a narrower slice of the class being counted.
The equity rationale backfired
Test-optional policies were built to broaden access, on the reasoning that testing disadvantages lower-income and first-generation applicants, and the data complicated that. Dartmouth's researchers found students across income levels submitting high and low scores at similar rates, and concluded that withholding hurt the applicants the policy was meant to protect: a score that looks modest against a published median can be strong for the high school it came from, and hiding it removes the only evidence saying so. Common App's latest report shows the same tension from the other side: first-generation, fee-waiver-eligible and below-median-income applicants are still less likely to send a score, and reporting among fee-waiver-eligible applicants grew at over five times the rate of everyone else last cycle.
A 1450 might seem lower within the larger Brown pool, but within their setting, where other students get 1100, that is a big difference. That student shows they have great potential.
Mariama A
Former Brown Admissions Officer
More applications, less information
Optional policies drew more applications and left less to go on in each one. A Yale School of Management study modelling that trade put the cost plainly: an admissions office can read a strong GPA from a school it knows well, while the same GPA from an unfamiliar school tells it far less, and a test score is what narrows the gap. Schools ended up with more applicants and less ability to tell them apart.
Where published ranges go next
As required testing puts the whole class back into the count, published ranges at the most selective schools should drift down over the next few cycles. A sophomore measuring against today's numbers is looking at a bar slightly higher than the one they'll actually face.
Testing is not a differentiator. It is looked at the same way at all top 20 universities, which is just a threshold thing. You either meet the threshold and are considered competitive, or you will not meet it and get triaged out.
Aman D.
Former MIT Admissions Officer
The CLT: a third test enters the mix
The Classic Learning Test is a shorter standardized exam that more than 350 colleges now accept alongside the SAT and ACT. Read that number carefully, though: most of the list is small private and religious colleges, and no Ivy League school or top-20 national university takes the CLT. It matters in four places. Florida's public universities use it for admission and state scholarship eligibility, and Georgia's system allows it from fall 2027 with UGA and Georgia Tech excepted. The UNC system approved it for fall 2027 across all campuses, and West Point, Annapolis and the Air Force Academy take it too.
What required testing means for your strategy
At a required school there's no submit-or-withhold decision to make. Your score is in front of every reader from the start, and the only job it has is to be strong enough that nobody in the admissions office wonders whether you can handle the work.
Set the target against each school's own enrolled-student range, published on its admissions page and in its Common Data Set. You can see these score ranges for individual schools in our how to get into top universities guides.
75th percentile or above
Counts in your favor. Testing is done.
Around the median
Clearly competitive, but it won't set you apart.
Below the 25th percentile
A weakness the rest of your file has to carry, and you can't leave it out.
When should you sit your SAT/ACT tests?
Getting testing done early matters more than the last few points, because it's the one major part of your application you can finish before senior year. Past the 75th percentile, extra points buy you less than the same hours spent developing your essays and extracurriculars.
When | What to do |
Sophomore year, or the summer after | Sit one full-length practice SAT and one full-length practice ACT, timed, then commit to whichever you score better on |
Junior year | Prep properly, and take your first official test that winter or spring |
Early senior fall | Retake once if you're short, before early deadlines. Check whether the school superscores first |
Once you hit your target | Stop. Put the hours into essays and activities instead |
Carnegie Mellon is unusually direct about that shape, asking for 11th or 12th grade scores and reading anything from two or more years out as weaker evidence of what you know now.
Important note
Program-level requirements can be stricter than the university's, and merit scholarships are often score-gated where admission isn't. Check section requirements too, since some schools still want the ACT Science section even though the ACT made it optional in its 2025 redesign.
Frequently asked questions on testing
Do all Ivy League schools require the SAT or ACT in 2026/27?
Six of the eight do: Harvard, Yale, Penn, Brown, Dartmouth, and Cornell. Princeton and Columbia are test optional for one final cycle and require scores from 2027-28, so if you apply in 2026/27 you can still choose at those two.
How does superscoring work at test-required schools?
It decides what a retake can do for you. Superscoring means a school combines your best section scores across sittings, so you can target one weak section without putting your strong one at risk. MIT, Yale and Purdue all do it. Where a school doesn't, a second sitting has to beat your first outright: Georgetown wants at least one complete SAT or ACT and won't mix sections, and Carnegie Mellon superscores the SAT but can't superscore the ACT. Purdue adds a limit of its own, refusing any SAT, ACT or CLT score more than five years old.
Can AP or IB scores replace the SAT or ACT?
Only at test-flexible schools, and almost none are left. Yale allowed the substitution for two entry cycles and ended it in May 2026. Most Carnegie Mellon colleges still take AP, IB or A-Level results in place of the SAT or ACT, and will accept predicted IB, A-Level and French Baccalaureate results at the application stage. Everywhere else, AP and IB results strengthen your file without satisfying a testing requirement.
Do international applicants need the SAT at test-required schools?
Yes, and the policy applies exactly as it does to domestic applicants. What changes is everything around it: test center availability is harder in some countries, and an SAT or ACT doesn't waive English proficiency testing. CMU wants a TOEFL, IELTS, Cambridge or Duolingo result from every applicant whose first language isn't English, at published minimum scores, so plan both exams together, because they compete for the same months.
Are there exceptions to testing requirements?
A few schools allow them in special circumstances. Penn runs an automatic hardship waiver covering test center availability, financial hardship, natural disaster and civil unrest, though a score you've already taken overrides it. Penn State's requirement includes hardship exceptions for students who couldn't reasonably test. Alabama requires scores only below a 3.0 GPA this cycle, and from everyone from fall 2028. Exceptions are school-specific and documented, so never assume one exists without finding it in writing.
Do public universities require the SAT?
Increasingly yes, and by system instead of school by school. Georgia's, Florida's and Tennessee's public systems all require scores, UT Austin, Purdue, Ohio State, Penn State, Auburn and LSU require them individually, and Florida, Georgia and the UNC system take the CLT as an alternative. The University of California sits at the other end of the spectrum and doesn't consider scores at all, though even that may not hold: more than 3,000 UC faculty have signed open letters calling for the tests to come back, and the regents have set June 2027 for a recommendation.
Build your testing plan with Crimson
At a test-required school your score doesn't sit quietly in the file. Land near the top of a school's score range and the rest of your application gets read on its own terms. Fall short and your score becomes the thing every other part of your file has to answer for.
Crimson builds a roadmap tailored to each student. Your team may include a strategist to shape the college list and make sure deadlines are met, essay mentors to coach you through your drafts, and former admissions officers to give every detail a final review. Crimson's SAT tutors are there when a score needs real movement, through bootcamps, one-to-one sessions and full-length practice tests, and students who start below 1200 gain an average of 220 points. In the 2025-26 cycle alone, Crimson students received 396 Ivy League offers. Book a free consultation with our Ivy League Admissions Consultants to build the testing plan around your list.
