Yale University is bringing back its standardized testing requirement for admissions beginning with applicants for fall 2025, the school announced Thursday morning.
Yale said it reevaluated the school’s optional testing policy and discovered that lower-income, first-generation, and rural students were disadvantaged when the school placed a greater emphasis on factors besides standardized tests to evaluate applicants.
Students at wealthy schools can strengthen their application with advanced courses, strong teacher recommendations, and high-profile extracurricular activities, Yale researchers found. Those who attend less-prestigious schools may lack rigorous course work and receive generic recommendations from teachers with larger classes.
The extracurricular activities pursued by these students may not indicate academic preparedness, making it difficult for Yale to evaluate their academic qualifications without the standardized testing component, Yale said.
Applicants will be allowed to decide whether to include ACT, SAT, Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate scores to fulfill Yale’s standardized testing requirement under its new flexible testing policy. The school will treat all of the tests equally and not punish applicants for failing to include certain test scores.
Yale believes an emphasis solely on the ACT and SAT might discourage disadvantaged students from applying. An optional prompt on the Yale application will allow students to describe outside circumstances that could have affected how they performed on the exam listed in their application.
Test scores and student transcripts will make up the academic portion of Yale’s application, the most important factor in evaluating a prospective student. The exams can be useful for Yale to identify standout students and reinforce a student’s academic qualifications.
Yale believes academic performance is a reflection of the student’s character and motivation over time. The school will continue to use a holistic application to judge students as people instead of using an algorithm or rubric.
Standardized tests have shown to be the best predictor of student performance at Yale regardless of family income or other demographic traits, Yale’s research from before and after the Covid-19 pandemic concluded. The predictability of student grades based on tests applies to the AP and IB exams in addition to the ACT and SAT, Yale said.
The school backed away from standardized testing during the pandemic and extended the policy through the 2023-24 admissions process. Yale originally attributed the shift to optional testing to the circumstances surrounding the pandemic.
Yale is the second Ivy League university to restore standardized testing for admissions after Dartmouth did so earlier this month. Darmouth also observed the ability of standardized test scores to predict a student’s college success regardless of a “student’s background or family income.”