UC Faculty Push to Restore SAT for STEM as Math Readiness Craters

More than 600 University of California faculty, led by Berkeley mathematicians, are demanding the system reinstate SAT or ACT requirements for STEM applicants by fall 2027. Six years after UC dropped standardized testing on equity grounds, professors say they are routinely reteaching middle-school math to incoming students and have no reliable way to gauge college readiness. A Berkeley diagnostic found at least 20% of first-semester calculus students showed deficits between 2021 and 2023, while a UC San Diego report documented a roughly thirty-fold jump in entering students testing below high school math level, with 70% of that group below middle-school level.

The push reopens a fight UC thought it had settled in 2020, when regents eliminated test requirements over the objections of the Academic Senate’s own task force, which had concluded test scores predicted college performance better than GPA and could actually help disadvantaged applicants. Elite peers including Harvard, Stanford, Caltech and the Ivies have since restored testing; UC and Cal State still bar scores from admissions decisions. Lead organizer Zvezda Stankova argues the test-free regime hurts underrepresented students by admitting them into programs where they fail, while critics like Berkeley researcher Saul Geiser counter that GPA outperforms the SAT once income and race are controlled.

The timing matters: UC’s systemwide admissions board is about to debate the policy, with early signals pointing toward possibly requiring 11th-grade Smarter Balanced scores for California residents and SAT/ACT for nonresidents. Statewide context is grim — only 30.5% of California 11th graders meet math standards, and students remain roughly a quarter-year of instruction behind pre-pandemic levels.