Columbia Reinstates ACT/SAT — All Eight Ivies Now Require Scores

Although it’s been long anticipated, it is now official: all eight Ivy League universities in the United States have rescinded their test optional policies and will once again require applicants to submit ACT/SAT scores. Columbia University, the last Ivy to remain test optional, announced last month that it will return to requiring ACT/SAT scores from undergraduate applicants beginning in August 2027.

Like many universities who reinstated ACT/SAT requirements, Columbia’s decision followed a multi-year faculty review, which found that test scores were “a useful indicator of potential student success.”

Although the announcement provided few other details, it is likely that Columbia’s review uncovered similar student readiness issues as those cited by other universities like Princeton, Dartmouth, Yale, and Cornell, who all noted a correlation between SAT/ACT performance and college academic outcomes in their research.

The University of California (UC) system recently made headlines when two public letters signed by over 3,000 faculty members called for UC to reinstate ACT/SAT admissions requirements, due to the “widening divergence in preparation levels” among their students. To learn more, check out our blog.

Columbia’s decision means that for the high school Class of 2028 and onward, all applicants to all eight Ivy League universities (Columbia, Brown, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, and the University of Pennsylvania) will need to submit ACT/SAT scores. Stanford, Johns Hopkins, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), among other prestigious schools, also require ACT/SAT scores.

As always, Academic Approach will continue to keep you updated as we learn more.

For more information on how schools self-reported their admissions priorities, click here.

For a comprehensive list of all universities requiring ACT/SAT scores, click here.

To read Columbia’s announcement, click here.