The University of Texas at Austin said Monday it will again require standardized tests for admissions, becoming the latest selective university to reinstate requirements for SAT or ACT scores abandoned during the pandemic.
A few years ago, about 2,000 colleges across the country began moving away from requiring test scores, at least temporarily, amid concerns that they helped fuel inequality. However, a growing number of these schools have reversed those policies, including Brown, Yale, Dartmouth, MIT, Georgetown and Purdue, with several announcing the changes in recent months.
UT Austin, which accepts a cross-section of high-achieving Texas students as part of a plan designed to increase opportunities in the state, cited a slightly different reason than the other schools for returning to test requirements. Without requiring test scores, officials said, they were prevented from placing admitted students into programs for which they would be best suited and determining which ones needed extra help. After making test scores optional in recent years, the university will now require applicants to submit SAT or ACT scores starting Aug. 1, with applications for fall 2025 admissions.
In an interview, Jay Hartzell, UT president, said the decision followed an analysis of students who did not submit scores. “We looked at our students and found that, in many ways, they weren’t doing as well,” Dr. Hartzell said.
Those against the testing requirements have long said standardized tests are unfair because many students from wealthy families use tutors and coaches to boost their scores. But recent data has raised questions about the controversy. In reinstating the test requirements, some universities said making the scores optional had the unintended effect of hurting prospective students from low-income families.
Brown, for example, said some students from less-advantaged backgrounds chose not to submit scores under the optional testing policy, even when submitting them might actually have increased their chances of admission.
But UT Austin operates under a race-neutral admissions rule adopted more than two decades ago to allow a wider pool of students to attend, automatically accepting those in Texas who graduated in the top 6 percent of their high school classes.
Among Texas students admitted to the university, 75 percent are considered “automatic admits.” Other Texas students, as well as out-of-state students, are evaluated through a “holistic” admissions process that includes standardized test scores. In the admissions process for last year’s entering class, 42 percent of students chose to submit test scores.
Miguel Wasielewski, the university’s associate professor of admissions, said many of those students have a 4.0 grade point average. “There’s just not a lot of difference there,” he said, adding that test scores provide more detailed information to help determine placement.
At UT Austin, students are asked to rank their choices among three degree programs. The test scores help the university place those students where it believes they can succeed and identify students who need more support, part of an effort to increase graduation rates. The university’s four-year graduation rate rose to 74.5 percent in 2023, up from 52 percent in 2013.
Scores are especially important in determining which students will do well in the university’s more rigorous programs, such as engineering and business, Dr. Hartzell said.
According to the university’s data for the current first-year class, a group of 9,217 students admitted last fall, students who submitted test scores were 55 percent less likely to have a first-semester GPA below 2.0, the university said.
Those who submitted test scores had a higher GPA — an average of 0.86 points higher — in the fall semester, according to the university, which said the data controlled for factors such as high school grades and class rank.
Dr. Hartzell said the university consulted with the College Board, which administers the SAT, and found that nearly 90 percent of students who apply to UT Austin have taken either the SAT or the ACT.
