Saul Geiser is a research associate at the Center for Studies in Higher Education at the University of California, Berkeley. He received his Ph.D. in sociology from UC Berkeley and taught there before joining UC’s Office of the President in 1981. Geiser served as director of admissions research for the UC system after Californians voted to end affirmative action in 1996, and he helped redesign UC admissions policy. His work has focused on issues of equity and validity in college admissions, with the aim of identifying admissions criteria that have less adverse impact on low-income and...
Berkeley, CA - November 24, 2025 - CSHE Senior Associate Saul Geiser published an op-ed at Inside Higher Education, critiquing the use of SAT in college admissions. It was based on his recent ROPS paper titled "Why the SAT Is a Poor Fit for Public Universities."
John Aubrey Douglass is Senior Research Fellow - Public Policy and Higher Education at the Center for Studies in Higher Education (CSHE), and is a faculty member in the Goldman School of Public Policy, at the University of California - Berkeley. His research focuses on the forces and politics of globalization, the future of Democracy, the role of universities in economic development and socioeconomic mobility, the student experience and...
This report responds to recent announcements by Harvard, Yale, MIT, Stanford, and other institutions reinstating the SAT or ACT for admission. Widely publicized after aNew York Timesarticle and analysis by Harvard’s Opportunity Insights group, these announcement rest on two claims: that standardized tests outperform high school grades in predicting college success and that they may enhance diversity in admissions. Both claims falter...
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...
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-...
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