UC should go back to considering standardized tests in admissions

At the sixth-ranked American public university, UC San Diego, a quarter of students taking a remedial math course placement exam couldn’t solve for x in this equation: 7 + 2 = x + 6. A third couldn’t subtract 1/3 from 3/4, and fewer than half could round a six-digit number to the nearest hundred, according to the school’s recent viral report.

The remedial course — Math 2 — was designed for less than 1% of freshmen. Five years ago, enrollment stood at 32. By 2025, that number had reached almost a thousand. The number of first-year students at UCSD performing below the middle school math level increased thirtyfold in that period, to 1 in 8 freshmen. Every UC campus is seeing the same trend, if not always at this scale.

Over the last few weeks, outlets far and wide agreed that the UC system brought the disastrous numbers upon itself by eliminating standardized test requirements from the admissions process — a step many universities took early in the pandemic — and by refusing to reinstate them as many other universities have, because as it turns out those tests provide valuable insights about preparedness and likelihood to succeed in college. Even UCSD’s Workgroup on Admissions, which produced the report, suggested the university should at least “examine” restoring the exams.

As a high school junior who sees UC San Diego as a terrific school, I was stunned by the findings about how many students are so ill-prepared for college. I have to wonder: After most other elite colleges’ admissions departments have reinstated testing requirements, why is the University of California system still test-blind?

You might think a college applicant like me would welcome that. Plenty of teens see the SAT and ACT as an ordeal. Maybe a test score would hurt my shot at admission or maybe not, but either way: The UC system should bring back those test requirements to help admit a freshman cohort that’s ready for college and likely to graduate.

This can’t possibly have been the first time someone at UC crunched the numbers and saw trouble coming. The whole test-blind experiment was built on a bold assumption: that standardized tests were screening out too many promising students, especially those from underresourced schools, and that UC could admit a stronger, more diverse class by ignoring scores altogether — a moneyball bet that better predictors of success than the SAT and ACT were waiting to be found. The new data show the bet failed.

In an age of grade inflation and extreme disparities in grading systems from one district to the next, uniform tests are the only dependable way for schools to tell which applicants actually meet the baseline for college-level work. I don’t dispute that disadvantaged students often score lower; however, standardized tests remain one of the least distorted parts of the “holistic” application. Essays, extracurriculars, travel sports, the high school you attend — those can all be sculpted by money and privilege. So can test scores, because affluent students often benefit from expensive test preparation services. But in the end these scores do provide an objective data point, even if not a fair one.

Standardized test results remain one of the strongest predictors for success at elite institutions, while high school grades have almost no correlation with college performance. We find this in the UCSD report: 42% of those who couldn’t demonstrate middle-school-level skills had completed at least precalculus in high school. The average high-school-math GPA among students in that remedial course was 3.7, and more than a quarter had a 4.0.

The institution should be embarrassed by this situation, which ought to prompt a systemwide return to standardized testing. And yet I suspect inertia will prevail, given how reflexively UC defends its admissions philosophy against the constant barrage of criticism.

That may be the system’s biggest foible. In doubling and tripling down — swatting away every critic of their equity agenda, many times for good reason — the UC universities let ideology carry the conversation, setting up a crisis of unpreparedness.

The whole point of going test-blind was to reach talented students from struggling schools and low-income, diverse backgrounds. UC leaders believed low SAT scores were discouraging many of them from applying or that admissions offices would overlook applications with middling or low test scores. A noble goal, but the data now show the policy is hurting the very students it aimed to help.

After dropping test requirements, UC did enroll more students from those communities. Yet those are precisely the students now far more likely to require remedial courses. Students who arrive unprepared for college-level work have significantly lower graduation rates. If a freshman cannot solve 7 + 2 = x + 6, they are nowhere near an admissions-level SAT score.

Pretending otherwise is a disservice to the unprepared students who are being admitted. If the existing admissions process is diversifying the student body, then it is also disproportionately hurting some minorities: Hispanic, Black and Native students are more likely than white and Asian American students to attend college without completing a degree, and four years after entering repayment on student loans, such “non-completers” are more likely to owe more than they borrowed, unlike graduates.

The UC system’s experiment with ignoring standardized tests was worthwhile. Now the results are in. Leaders have a responsibility to make a course correction and resume considering SAT and ACT results.

William Liang is a high school junior in the Bay Area and a political columnist for the Hill.