Recently, many colleges and universities have brought back mandatory standardized tests for admission. On Apr. 11, 2024, Hopi Hoekstra, Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard, announced, “Harvard College will require the submission of standardized test scores. The College will accept the SAT or ACT to meet the standardized test requirement. In exceptional cases in which those tests are not accessible, a set of alternative standardized tests can meet the requirement.” Other Ivy League schools—Dartmouth, Yale, and UPenn—as well as technology-focused schools like Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and California Institute of Technology (CalTech), have all reinstated requirements to submit standardized test scores for admission.
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, most colleges and universities required applicants to submit standardized test scores such as the ACT or SAT for consideration in their admission. During the pandemic, it became significantly more difficult for students to complete standardized tests, so many colleges and universities adopted test-optional policies allowing students to choose between submitting or withholding standardized test scores with their application.
On Jul. 7, 2020, MTU announced that it was waiving the requirement of submitting test scores for some applicants. Since then, MTU Admission has not announced whether or not they will be reinstating the requirement, though according to Michigan Tech’s admissions site FAQ, “SAT and ACT test scores are not needed to apply for undergraduate admission. Domestic students will receive an admission decision based on their high school transcripts. Homeschool applicants and students with a GPA below a 3.0 may be asked to submit official test scores or other documentation.” Additionally, MTU admissions recommends, “If you have taken, or have the opportunity to take the SAT or ACT, we strongly encourage you to provide official scores as they can be used for merit scholarship consideration, as well as future course placement.”
