FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
New UC Berkeley Report Challenges Return to SAT: Calls for Public Universities to Double Down on Public Mission
Berkeley, CA – September 30, 2025 — As a number of elite “Ivy-Plus” universities have reinstated SAT and ACT requirements, a new research report by Saul Geiser, Senior Associate at UC Berkeley’s Center for Studies in Higher Education, argues that the tests are a poor fit for the mission of America’s public universities.
The report, Why the SAT is a Poor Fit for America’s Public Universities, responds to a wave of high-profile announcements last year by institutions such as Harvard, Yale, MIT, and Stanford that they were reinstituting the SAT or ACT requirement. These decisions, widely covered following a New York Times article and analysis from Harvard’s Opportunity Insights group, claimed that standardized tests far outperform high-school grades in predicting college success and may even improve diversity in admissions.
Geiser’s findings directly challenge these claims:
- High school GPA is the stronger predictor of college success — The claim that test scores are superior reflect a problem known as omitted variable bias, where key background factors, like income or race, are omitted from prediction models. When controls for those factors are introduced, Geiser shows, high-school GPA outperforms SAT scores in predicting first-year academic outcomes at Ivy-Plus colleges
- SAT scores systematically discount top applicants from disadvantaged backgrounds — Ranking applicants by SAT score disproportionately filters out the highest-achieving students—as measured by high-school GPA--from low-income, first-generation, and underrepresented minority backgrounds. Even when paired with holistic review, SAT scores create what Geiser calls “headwinds” for the very students that public universities are intended to serve.
- Different missions require different policies — Elite private institutions emphasize academic excellence and institutional priorities. By contrast, selective public universities — including land-grant institutions, state flagships, and multicampus systems like the University of California— must also serve public purposes such as social mobility and representation. For these institutions, Geiser concludes, the SAT undercuts their public mission.
The University of California system, which has been test-free since 2021, provides a powerful case study. UC has seen gains in low-income, first-generation, and underrepresented minority enrollment without declines in the academic performance of entering students.
“Rather than emulate the Ivy League, America’s public universities should double down on their traditional mission,” said Geiser. “In a post-affirmative action era, test-free and test-optional admissions offer a proven pathway to greater equity without sacrificing academic quality.”
The report also places current debates in political context, noting that both the Trump administration and the Ivy League see the SAT as an “objective” measure of individual merit. Yet decades of research show that family income, education, and race explain a very large share of score differences, raising ongoing concerns about fairness, bias, and the role of standardized tests in shaping K–12 instruction.
About the Author
Saul Geiser is a Senior Associate at the Center for Studies in Higher Education, University of California, Berkeley. His work focuses on equity, access, and validity in college admissions.
About the Report
Why the SAT is a Poor Fit for America’s Public Universities is published by the Center for Studies in Higher Education at UC Berkeley. The full report is available at https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8xr218pj.
Media Contact:
Saul Geiser (sgeiser@berkeley.edu)
Shanshan Jiang-Brittan (shanshan0233@berkeley.edu)