Harvard Crawls Back to the SAT and ACT

Amid a tumultuous year, Harvard University decided the absence of the SAT and ACT exams in its admissions process was unsustainable and is once again requiring the tests from applicants.

Harvard first made the SAT and ACT exams optional during the COVID-19 pandemic. It was a necessary step since the vast majority of SAT and ACT exams were canceled in the spring of 2020 and were still limited through the following school year. But unlike many other schools, Harvard did not reinstate the testing requirement when the pandemic receded and testing was once again readily available.

To say the last year at Harvard has been difficult would be a gross understatement. In June, the university lost its bid to defend the practice of affirmative action at the Supreme Court. Then, in the fall, the school was embroiled in controversy over an explosion of antisemitic activity on campus. And finally, Claudine Gay, the school’s first black woman president, was forced to resign amid growing plagiarism allegations and fallout over her refusal to label calls for the genocide of Jews as harassment during a congressional hearing.

But why, amid all these difficulties, would Harvard complicate its admissions process further for the class of 2029? It may very well be because of the difficulties the institution has faced over the past year, especially the end of affirmative action.

“More information, especially such strongly predictive information, is valuable for identifying talent from across the socioeconomic range,” Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Hopi Hoekstra said in a statement. “With this change, we hope to strengthen our ability to identify these promising students.”

In other words, Harvard has come crawling back to the SAT and ACT tests because it needs the information in order to admit more students from underprivileged backgrounds who otherwise would not attend Harvard.

It is the peak of irony that the end of affirmative action forced Harvard to restore an application requirement that will make the school’s admissions process more meritocratic overall, all in the name of achieving the “diversity” it so desperately wants.

Perhaps this step will be the first in a

broader cultural change that will restore the institution’s place as the preeminent center of intellectual formation in the United States. But I’m not holding my breath.