Columbia University will again force applicants to submit their SAT or ACT scores for admissions starting next year after faculty determined the results were “useful indicators of potential student success,” officials announced Friday.
The leafy Morningside Heights campus is the final Ivy League school to reverse course and demand the standardized tests after the policies were mostly dropped during the COVID pandemic.
“Through a multi-year faculty review, it was determined that test scores, among other factors, were a useful indicator of potential student success,” the school said.
Both first-year students and transfer applicants will be required to include the SAT or ACT score for the 2027-28 admissions cycle with the hope enroll in fall 2028, the school said.
“Applicants who face challenges in meeting this requirement may request a waiver at the time of their application,” the school said.
“Columbia College and Columbia Engineering will remain test optional for the upcoming 2026-2027 admissions cycle.”
The SAT policy was initially scrapped in 2020 thanks to COVID, and was then extended in 2023 “with no stated end date, accompanied by a commitment to ongoing assessment to ensure that admitted students were successful within our academic environment.”
At the time, the school argued that dropping the mandate was “rooted in the belief that students are dynamic, multi-faceted individuals who cannot be defined by any single factor.”
Columbia’s policy change comes after other Ivy League schools, including Harvard University, made SAT scores a requirement again because of uncertainty around how prepared students were the college coursework, Bloomberg reported.
Last month, Yale stopped offering test flexibility, in which a student could choose between submitting SAT or ACT scores with Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate grades, according to the school.
