The UC faculty letter has taken the world by storm, and the UC system has responded, indicating that SAT and ACT testing requirements are now back under consideration. The administrators had no choice but to respond to this petition. As of Friday, 6/12, 1468 faculty had signed the letter, including 7 of the 9 Chairs of UC Mathematics Departments and an additional 53 STEM department chairs. It is not surprising that the faculty at UC San Diego and UC Berkeley signed at rates double that of other UC Campuses, as their student body has been significantly impacted by the decline in student quality since the advent of test blind admissions.
Why UCSD and UC Berkeley faculty are leading the charge
The faculty letter referenced the degradation of math skills for the students entering UCSD. Since abandoning the use of the SAT and ACT in admissions, the increase in remedial math students at UCSD has been staggering. In 2020, 1 in 200 (.5%) incoming students needed math remediation. That number skyrocketed to 1 in 8 (12.5%) as of 2025, an increase of 2,400%. In a similar fashion, the students at UC Berkeley have entered campus unprepared for the rigors of college level math courses. For three consecutive years, “20-30% of UC Berkeley first-semester calculus students who participated in mathematical diagnostic testing displayed severe preparation deficits.”
The University of California had no option but to respond to its faculty
The open letter lays out such a striking conclusion, that the students entering campus without test scores are not college-ready, are taking up too many faculty resources, and are going to negatively impact the quality of UC grads, which may imperil “California’s highly skilled STEM workforce.” How could the administration possibly ignore this? This petition casts doubt on the quality of UC students and eventually UC graduates.
UC Berkeley has one of the finest academic reputations in the country. If the reputation of UC Berkeley students becomes “these kids have weak math skills,” that’s a total black eye for the institution, its faculty, alumni base, and more. The UC leaders have a brand to protect, and that provides leverage for the faculty. That the faculty went public with this letter is not a surprise, given the administration has completely ignored their voices before. Rather than go back to the administration, they went to the court of public opinion, where they had greater leverage.
The faculty never wanted the change to test-blind admissions
That faculty are pushing back against test-blind admissions is not remotely surprising. The faculty never wanted to lose the standardized admissions tests and fought to keep them when the UC President and Board of Regents began rattling sabers against testing in 2018 and 2019. The faculty-led Standardized Testing Task Force of UC was assembled in early 2019 and released its 200+-page empirical report in February 2020.
The STTF report confirmed the predictive value of the SAT and ACT in UC admissions, and found that eliminating the testing requirement would likely decrease student preparation, retention and graduation. Based on this data, the UC Academic Senate, consisting of UC faculty, voted unanimously (51-0) to preserve SAT and ACT testing for five years. The Regents, led by vocal testing critic John A. Pérez, and Vice-Chair Cecilia Estolano, completely ignored the research findings and the pleas of the faculty to preserve testing. Politics trumped research, and UC adopted a test-blind admissions policy. But the test-blind experiment may be coming to an end.
The Board of Regents has been reconfigured
The Board of Regents has new leadership, and many of the most strident testing critics are gone. Pérez resigned from the Board of Regents in 2024, and Cecilia Estolano’s term expired in 2022. The new Board Chair, Janet Reilly, does not appear to be negative on testing. Back in 2020, she questioned then president Janet Napolitano regarding the wisdom of dropping testing, referencing the STTF conclusion that dropping standardized tests would likely decrease student preparation, academic success at UC, retention rates, and graduation rates. Moreover, one of the Board members who spoke up forcefully against ignoring the findings of the task force, Jonathan "Jay" Sures, remains on the Board. When Pérez and Estolano moved to dismiss the UC faculty’s research on testing, Sures shot back, “But I do think that facts do matter. Let me say that again. Facts matter and data does matter. We went to the faculty and asked for their opinion and their presentation, and they presented data. I think the data was interesting, and I think we need to look at it.”
Reinstating Testing Requirements at UC will take time
One thing we know for certain is UC is not going to make any moves on testing without going through a process involving the Faculty, the Academic Senate, the Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools (BOARS), the University President, and the all-powerful Board of Regents. The current chair of the Academic Senate, representing the UC faculty, Ahmet Palazoglu, published a letter speaking to the time-intensive, deliberative process.
“I strongly support this approach and the deliberate, evidence-based study it requires. This work will be collaborative and informed by faculty expertise, campus and systemwide leaders, institutional research, engagement with K–12 and higher education partners, and input from other constituent groups with a vested interest in UC students.
Any proposed changes to UC’s admissions requirements or processes will be subject to review by the Academic Senate, consultation with stakeholders, consideration by UC leadership, and ultimately, review and approval by the UC Board of Regents. Throughout this process, we will be guided by evidence and go where the data takes us.”
You must remember that the Academic Senate, which Palazoglu chairs, voted unanimously, 51-0, in April 2020 to maintain standardized testing requirements for 5 years. The Board of Regents subsequently ignored the Academic Senate’s recommendations and eliminated testing requirements a month later. Clearly the power does not lie with the Academic Senate, or BOARS, but with the Board of Regents.
The President of UC, James Milliken, released this statement regarding the plan to review admissions policies.
The Board of Regents and University leadership take very seriously the critical issue of college preparedness, and the UC Academic Senate has proposed a comprehensive, data-driven review to support its recommendations to strengthen student readiness and success at UC. There are few things more important on our agenda. The faculty review will focus on both preparation and admissions, including whether standardized testing should be required. It’s important that UC gets this right. The UC Board of Regents and I will receive an update on the Academic Assembly’s work in July, and we look forward to considering the recommendations that emerge from this important work.
Timing: It will take at least a year to come to a decision
The Academic Senate makes recommendations through BOARS en route to the UC President and the Board of Regents.
BOARS issued a letter spelling out the plan to study this question in depth before making a recommendation to the President and Board of Regents. An 18-member committee will assemble to investigate whether to reinstate testing requirements. This working group will “convene Zoom meetings once per month from early-October 2026 through late-April 2027…and beyond, if necessary, to review available resources/data, identify additional data needs, discuss findings and recommendations, and develop a draft workgroup report.” The final written report is due to the BOARS chair May 15, 2027. A summary of findings and the work group’s recommendations will be presented to BOARS during their regularly scheduled meeting on June 4, 2027. After that the recommendation goes to the Regents for consideration.
The findings from this research will be delivered in almost exactly a year, at which point the Regents will review and make a decision. They will certainly make time for public commentary as they did in 2020 before eliminating testing. If the Board of Regents meets in the Summer of 2027, whatever they decide will not impact students applying in the fall of 2027. Most certainly, the Regents will give students time to get their testing in order before requiring testing for admission. This means that students applying for admission in the fall of 2028, those who will graduate from high school in 2029, rising sophomores, will most likely be the earliest classes to have reinstated testing requirements for UC. Both the LA Times and the SF Chronicle concur that this process will take at least a year to complete, with the LA Times stating, "If the tests are reinstated, the change would not take effect until the fall of 2028 at the earliest."
Key Questions for the Academic Senate and the Regents
There is no question that the working group appointed by the Academic Senate will find testing to be a strong predictor of academic performance and preparedness at UC, and grades to be a weaker predictor, just as the working group did in 2018-2019. The utility of testing is not the question. But does the Board of Regents have the political will to mandate testing for its incoming students? And which students at which campuses will need testing? UCSD and Berkeley have referenced problems of academic preparedness for a subset of students, but not all students.
Will individual campuses be allowed to determine whether they will reinstate testing requirements? Or will departments determine which majors will require admission testing, such as Engineering or Computer Science? Different colleges have taken different approaches to requiring admission testing.
Is it possible to revert from Test Blind to Test Optional or Test Required?
If you are looking for a University that flipped from Test-Blind to Test-Required, look no further than Caltech, which made the transition in 2024. Another school that took an aggressive anti-testing stance and adopted a test-blind policy was Worcester Polytechnic (WPI). In 2021, WPI announced it was adopting a test-blind admissions policy for a minimum of 8 years. Andrew Palumbo, WPI’s Assistant Vice President for Enrollment Management and Dean of Admissions & Financial Aid, said “the SAT and ACT are not useful means for evaluating college applicants, and can even be counterproductive.” He deemed testing “an unnecessary part of the college application process.” Palumbo left WPI in 2023, and within a year, WPI abandoned its 8-year test-blind pilot, returning to test-optional admissions in a nod to the value of testing for its students.
Everything depends on the Board of Regents
We will wait for a year while the faculty build their case for admissions testing. They didn’t want to give it up in 2020, and they desperately want it back, especially on certain campuses. But will the Board of Regents actually listen to their faculty on this issue? My instinct is this time is different; the political climate is different. So many peer institutions, from MIT, Stanford, Caltech, UT Austin, 7 of 8 Ivies, and dozens of other schools have reinstated testing requirements, giving cover for the UC Board of Regents to follow suit. And hopefully, this time they will heed the words of Jay Sures, that “Facts matter and data does matter.” We will see if empirical evidence trumps emotion when the Regents meet in a year. Stay tuned for more developments in this unfolding story.
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