Colleges That Are NOT Test Optional
Since college policies can change annually, if you want to fully understand a college’s standardized testing policies, you must visit their admissions websites (and sometimes you need to dig deep into their FAQs). It’s also extremely important to know that even if a college is test optional generally, that doesn’t mean it is test optional for everyone. Here are few examples of “special” categories of students for whom test scores may be required: NCAA athletes, combined BS/MD program applicants, homeschooled students, international students, students applying to honors colleges/scholarships at some state schools.
We also have no idea, at this point, how the College Board’s January 25, 2022 announcement that they are changing the SAT’s format and it’s delivery to a computer-based test for 2024 will affect standardized testing policies.
Check back here from time to time for updates!
Test Required Colleges
These colleges and universities require you to take the SAT or ACT
Georgetown University
University of Florida
Georgia Institute of Technology
University of Georgia
Florida State University
SUNY (likely for fall 2023)
University of South Florida
University of Central Florida
United States Naval Academy (You must submit unless you can prove you could not test.)
United States Military Academy (a.k.a. West Point)
Test Preferred Colleges
Here, things get a murkier and require some reading between the lines. As I said in my recently published letter in The Chronicle of Higher Ed, if you dig deep into a college’s admissions website and read between the lines, you may learn that optional really means “preferred” or “it depends.” (See quote from Harvard’s admissions FAQ below.)
MIT (and special note here that MIT requires ALL AP scored; you may not choose which AP scores you want to submit).)
Purdue University
Quinnipiac University
University of Idaho
University of Idaho
University of Michigan – Ann Arbor
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
University of New Mexico
Yeshiva University
IMO based on reading between the lines is that all ivies and most highly competitive research universities/liberal arts colleges prefer to see standardized test scores unless you are from an underrepresented, low-income, first generation family or have experienced some other significant life hardship.
“…SAT and ACT tests are better predictors of Harvard grades than high school grades, but this can vary greatly for any individual. Students who have not attended well-resourced schools throughout their lives, who come from modest economic backgrounds or first-generation college families have generally had fewer opportunities to prepare for standardized tests. Each application to Harvard is read with great care, keeping in mind that talent is everywhere, but opportunity and access are not.”
Test Policies Unknown for 2023
These colleges had piloted test optional policies through spring of 2022 and haven’t yet announced their intentions for 2023.
Cal-Tech
Elon