In reversal, CalTech and Harvard will require test scores for admission

Harvard University will reinstate standardized testing as a requirement of admission, the school announced Thursday, becoming the latest in a series of highly competitive universities to reverse their testoptional policies.

Students applying to enter Harvard in 2025 and beyond will be required to submit SAT or ACT scores, although the university said a few other test scores will be accepted in “exceptional cases,” including Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate tests. The university had previously said it was going to keep its test-optional policy through the entering class of fall 2026.

Within hours of Harvard's announcement, CalTech, a science and engineering institute, also said it was reinstating its testing requirements for students applying for admission in the fall of 2025.

The schools had been among nearly 2,000 across the country that dropped test-score requirements over the past few years, a trend that escalated during the pandemic when it was harder for students to get to test sites.

Dropping test-score requirements was widely viewed as a tool to help diversify admissions, by encouraging poor and underrepresented students who had potential but did not score well on the tests to apply. But supporters of the tests have said without scores, it became harder to identify promising students who outperformed in their environments.

In explaining its decision to accelerate the return to testing, Harvard cited a study by Opportunity Insights, which found that test scores were a better predictor of academic success in college than high school grades and that they can help admissions officers identify highly talented students from low-income groups who might otherwise had gone unnoticed.

“Standardized tests are a means for all students, regardless of their background and life experience, to provide information that is predictive of success in college and beyond,” Hopi Hoekstra, dean of the faculty of arts and sciences, said in a statement announcing the move.

“In short, more information, especially such strongly predictive information, is valuable for identifying talent from across the socioeconomic range,” she added.

CalTech, in Pasadena, California, said that reinstating testing requirements reaffirmed the school's “commitment as a community of scientists and engineers to using all relevant data in its decision-making processes.”

Harvard and CalTech join a growing number of schools, notable for their selectivity, that have since reversed their policies, including Brown University, Yale University, Dartmouth College, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Georgetown University, Purdue University and the University of Texas at Austin.

For Harvard, the move comes at a time of transition, and perhaps a return to more conservatism.

In June, the Supreme Court struck down raceconscious college admissions in cases involving Harvard and the University of North Carolina, raising fears that with the demise of affirmative action, those schools would become less diverse.