Home › Higher Education › Do test scores still matter?

Do test scores still matter?

Read the research brief: Do test scores still matter? →

Test‑optional is not test‑blind. The colleges' own numbers — and the research that's pulling elite schools back to requiring tests — point the same way: a strong score still helps.

The finding, in plain English

The question: at a "test-optional" college, does it actually matter whether an applicant submits an SAT or ACT score?

The answer, from the colleges' own published numbers: at Cornell's College of Arts & Sciences, students who submitted scores were 24% of applicants but 50% of admits — admitted at 3.2× the rate of those who didn't. At Notre Dame the advantage was about 2×; at USC it grew from 1.85× to 2.07× in one year. None of this is our estimate — each figure is computed from that college's own disclosed applicant and admit shares.

The honest caveat: part of the gap is self-selection — students with strong scores are likelier to send them, and likelier to be strong applicants overall. A gap this size isn't proof scores caused the admits. But the pattern is large, consistent across colleges, and at Cornell it widened every year of test-optional — which is why Cornell is reinstating the testing requirement in Fall 2026.

Why it matters: millions of families make the submit-or-don't decision each fall with no data at all. "Optional" reads as "neutral" — the colleges' own funnels suggest it's a strategic decision, and one worth making deliberately.

Submitters are admitted at 1.2×–3.2× the rate of non‑submitters

Each bar is derived from that college's own published applicant‑ vs. admit‑submission shares — fully primary‑sourced, and mathematically independent of the overall admit rate.

Advantage = (admit‑submission share ÷ applicant‑submission share), relative to the same ratio for non‑submitters. Sources are linked in the table below. The gap partly reflects self‑selection (see caveat) — but it's consistent and large.

Spotlight · USC

Just 36% of applicants sent scores — but they were 51% of admits.

Watch the red band — score submitters — swell from barely a third of the applicant pool to over half of those admitted (USC, Class of 2028).

That's the 1.9× advantage made concrete — and USC's submitters landed in a ~1450–1550 SAT range. USC's own figures ↗

↑ Up year-over-year
Class of 2028: 1.85× → Class of 2029: 2.07× · same direction as Cornell, in USC's own data.

Year-over-year computed from USC's First-Year Student Profile (Class of 2029: 39% of applicants / 57% of admits submitted) and USC's "Are you really test-optional?" post (Class of 2028: 36% / 51%). Same B(1−A)/A(1−B) formula as the Cornell chart.

In the schools' own funnels, submitters punch above their weight

The cleanest tell: submitters are overrepresented among admits. That doesn't prove causality on its own — but it strongly suggests scores either helped directly, tracked with stronger applications, or both. Straight from each college's own published data:

At Cornell's College of Arts & Sciences, submitters were just 24% of applicants — but 50% of admits and 62% of enrolled students. Cornell's own analysis (controlling for GPA) found submitting scores “significantly increases the likelihood of admission.”

↑ The submitter advantage grew each year of test-optional

Cornell IRP report ↗

Cornell's Institutional Research office tracked submission rates separately for applicants and admits in each of the three test-optional years. In the two largest test-optional colleges, the gap between submitter and non-submitter admit rates widened every cycle — the test-optional policy didn't fade as families adapted; the advantage grew.

The widening gap, visualized
Shaded wedges = the submitter advantage above the non-submitter baseline · hover any point for the exact multiplier
Cornell A&S (largest college)
Fall 20212.5×
Fall 20222.8×
Fall 20233.2×
↑ Up 28% over 3 cycles
Cornell Engineering
Fall 20212.5×
Fall 20223.5×
Fall 20233.6×
↑ Up 44% over 3 cycles

Submitter-vs-non-submitter admit-rate advantage, computed from Cornell IRP's Table 1: B·(1−A) / A·(1−B), where A is the share of applicants who submitted and B is the share of admits who submitted. Source: Cornell Office of Institutional Research & Planning, "The Use of Standardized Testing in Admissions: Summary of Key Findings," April 2024.

What Cornell did next

Cornell's task force used the data on this chart to recommend reinstating the testing requirement. Effective Fall 2026, all eight Cornell colleges require SAT or ACT scores — A&S, Engineering, Business, ILR, CHE, Brooks, CALS, and AAP. The submitter advantage didn't fade with time; it grew, so Cornell stopped pretending the policy was working as intended.

That matters beyond Ithaca. Submitter-over-non-submitter admit rate gaps of this size show up at most selective test-optional schools that disclose the numbers — USC, Notre Dame, Vanderbilt, the Ivies. Cornell is the first to act on it publicly. Expect more to follow. Cornell Chronicle ↗

CollegeApplicants submittedAdmits submittedSubmitter advantageCycle
Cornell University — Arts & Sciences
Cornell Office of Institutional Research & Planning ↗		 24% 50% (62% of enrollees) 3.2× Fall 2023
University of Southern California
USC Undergraduate Admission Blog + Common Data Set 2024-25 ↗		 36% 51% 1.9× Class of 2028
Vanderbilt University
Vanderbilt Office of Undergraduate Admissions ↗		 56.3% 61.1% 1.2× Class of 2025
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame Admissions ↗		 54% 70% 2.0× Class of 2026 (REA)

The honest caveat

Part of that gap is self‑selection: students with strong scores choose to send them, and they tend to be stronger applicants overall. The “testing advantage” is real but often over‑interpreted. What makes it matter is the evidence below — scores genuinely predict college success — which is exactly why the most selective schools are bringing tests back.

Scores predict success — high‑school GPA barely does

Opportunity Insights studied admissions records and first‑year grades across the Ivy‑Plus. Holding background constant, a higher SAT predicts a meaningfully higher college GPA — while high‑school GPA, compressed by grade inflation, predicts almost nothing.

Predicted increase in first‑year college GPA. Source: Opportunity Insights (Friedman, Sacerdote & Tine, 2024) ↗

~4×
SAT is roughly four times as predictive of college grades as high‑school GPA — grade inflation has flattened GPA's signal.
5×
Students who entered with lower scores were about five times more likely to land in the bottom of their college class.
0 bias
Scores predicted success equally well across income and demographic groups — no calibration bias by background.

From the same Ivy‑Plus study of admissions records and first‑year grades. The "no‑score ≈ 1300" figure means readers were right to treat a withheld score cautiously.

Non‑submitters tend to have lower relative scores, on average

In large test‑optional datasets, students who withhold scores skew lower. A study of 47 universities found those who withheld scores sat near the 19th percentile of their college's scores (and a 3.22 first‑year GPA), vs. the 51st percentile (3.38 GPA) for submitters — which is why a missing score is increasingly read as a likely below‑average one.

Avg. SAT percentile within the college. Source: Admissions Research Consortium study of 47 universities.

The widening gap: rising GPAs, falling readiness

Two trends are pulling in opposite directions — and they're why colleges that paid attention to their own data started bringing tests back.

↑ Grades have inflated dramatically
  • 13.4% of incoming college freshmen reported an A or A+ high-school GPA in 1985 → 39.7% by 2022.
  • Counting any A-range grade (A–, A, A+), 68.6% of incoming freshmen now report straight A's.
  • Average HS GPA rose from 2.68 (1990) → 3.00 (2009) → 3.11 (2019), and ACT data show it kept climbing to 3.36 by 2021.
  • The biggest jumps land in subjects that previously varied most: ACT's research found math grades inflated more than any other subject.
↓ But readiness is falling
  • SAT total average for the class of 2024 was 1024 — down from 1028 (2023) and 1050 (2022). Three straight years of decline, with no recovery to pre-pandemic norms.
  • Only 39% of class-of-2024 SAT takers met both the College Board's college-readiness benchmarks for math and reading.
  • ACT's national average dropped to 19.4 in 2023 — the lowest in over 30 years.
  • NAEP (the "Nation's Report Card") shows the same pattern: steepest math declines on record for 13-year-olds.

Both trends compress the signal an admissions officer can extract from a transcript. When two-thirds of applicants report straight A's, GPA stops sorting them. When SAT readiness benchmarks are met by 39% nationally, a submitted score becomes the single piece of evidence in the file that didn't drift.

"We now observe preparation gaps so severe that instructors must reteach middle-school mathematics while simultaneously teaching the material students need for sciences, engineering, economics, and other quantitatively demanding fields."

— Open letter to the UC Board of Regents, signed by seven of nine chairs of UC math departments and more than 800 UC faculty. The letter calls for the SAT or ACT to be required of STEM applicants beginning with the 2027–28 admissions cycle. A companion UCSD admissions analysis found a ~30-fold increase in entering first-year students with math skills below the middle-school level since UC dropped its testing requirement in 2020.
Press coverage: Inside Higher Ed · Daily Bruin · Applerouth analysis · Wall Street Journal editorial: The Academy Rethinks the SAT

The UC system has not yet reinstated the requirement; the open letter is the most explicit faculty pushback to date and may shape the next Regents review. Read this section as evidence for why a strong score matters, not as a prediction that the policy will change.

Why elite schools reinstated the requirement — in their own data

Opportunity Insights (Friedman, Sacerdote & Tine, 2024) source ↗
Among students with the same high-school grades and background, a 1600 SAT predicts a first-year college GPA about 0.43 points higher than a 1200. A 4.0 vs. 3.2 high-school GPA predicts less than 0.1 — “high-school GPA does little to predict academic success in college.”
Yale University (2024) source ↗
Scores are “the single greatest predictor of a student’s performance in Yale courses” — and test-optional applicants, especially from lower-income backgrounds, were less likely to be admitted.
Dartmouth College (2024) source ↗
A faculty study found scores predict success regardless of background — and that less-resourced students wrongly withheld scores (around 1400) that would have *helped* their admission.
UT-Austin (2024) source ↗
Score-submitters earned a first-semester GPA 0.86 points higher and were 55% less likely to post a GPA below 2.0 — a key reason UT reinstated its requirement.

The roster now requiring tests for some or all programs is growing:

Harvard Stanford MIT Yale Penn Caltech Johns Hopkins Brown Cornell Dartmouth Carnegie Mellon Georgetown UT-Austin Georgia Tech Purdue Ohio State Florida Georgia Miami Tennessee Florida State Cooper Union U.S. Service Academies

The UC system remains test‑blind — a separate policy choice. Compiled from the schools' own announcements.

Where does testing matter most?

Not every college weighs scores the same. A rough map by selectivity:

Admit rate ≤ ~10%
Where testing still matters most
Almost every applicant is qualified and almost every one is denied. Test-optional policies pushed rates even lower. A strong score is a way to stand out — and standing out is the whole game.
Selective, read supportively
Where testing can add value
Demand outstrips supply, so selection is careful but applications get a fair read. Scores have always mattered — but less than a sustained record of achievement. Strong scores help; they're rarely the deciding factor.
Accepts the majority
Where testing is a lower priority
Admission is largely a yes/no read on whether a student can succeed there. Decisions don't hinge on scores, and testing is likely to matter even less over time.

What score is competitive? — the bands at the most-applied-to schools

Required or not, admitted students cluster in a published range. A score below the band is a flag; moving into it is one of the most controllable parts of an application. Here are the ten most-applied-to colleges in each selectivity tier — then search all 2,864 colleges ↓

Can you actually move into the next band? Test Prep Gurus students starting below the elite tier average +190 SAT and +5.7 ACT. Elite-tier starters average +120 SAT and +3.4 ACT.

See the per-tier breakdown →

Admit rate under 10% Hyper‑selective

Almost everyone is qualified and almost everyone is denied. A strong score is one of the few ways to stand out. Ranked hardest‑first among the ten most‑applied‑to.

#CollegeAdmit rateSAT (mid‑50%)ACT (mid‑50%)
1 Harvard University · MA 3.5% 1500–1580 34–36
2 Stanford University · CA 3.9% 1510–1580 34–35
3 Columbia University in the City of New York · NY 4.2% 1490–1570 34–35
4 Yale University · CT 4.5% 1500–1580 33–35
5 Brown University · RI 5.2% 1500–1570 34–35
6 Northeastern University · MA 5.6% 1460–1550 33–35
7 University of Pennsylvania · PA 5.9% 1500–1570 34–35
8 Northwestern University · IL 7.2% 1490–1560 33–35
9 Cornell University · NY 8.2% 1480–1560 33–35
10 New York University · NY 9.4% 1480–1570 33–35
Admit rate 10–25% Highly selective

Demand far outstrips supply. A strong, in‑band score is a meaningful boost on top of a sustained record of achievement.

CollegeAdmit rateSAT (mid‑50%)ACT (mid‑50%)
University of Michigan-Ann Arbor · MI 17.9% 1350–1530 31–34
University of Southern California · CA 10.0% 1440–1550 32–35
Boston University · MA 10.8% 1400–1520 32–34
University of Florida · FL 24.0% 1300–1480 28–33
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill · NC 18.7% 1370–1530 30–34
University of Virginia-Main Campus · VA 16.9% 1410–1530 32–34
Georgia Institute of Technology-Main Campus · GA 16.5% 1330–1530 28–34
University of Miami · FL 18.5% 1330–1470 30–33
Boston College · MA 15.7% 1430–1540 33–34
Tufts University · MA 10.1% 1460–1550 33–35
Admit rate 25–40% Selective

Careful selection, but a fair read. Scores help land you in the range; they're rarely the single deciding factor.

CollegeAdmit rateSAT (mid‑50%)ACT (mid‑50%)
Florida State University · FL 25.4% 1240–1390 27–31
The University of Texas at Austin · TX 29.1% 1230–1490 27–33
University of Central Florida · FL 39.5% 1190–1350 25–29
Clemson University · SC 38.1% 1230–1390 28–32
Binghamton University · NY 37.7% 1320–1490 29–34
University of Georgia · GA 37.2% 1160–1390 25–32
North Carolina State University at Raleigh · NC 39.8% 1300–1460 28–32
Case Western Reserve University · OH 28.7% 1430–1540 32–35
Howard University · DC 34.9% 1100–1298 22–28
Villanova University · PA 25.1% 1400–1510 32–34
Admit rate 40–60% Moderately selective

More applicants get in than not. A score inside the band confirms you're a fit; sitting below it is the main flag to clear.

CollegeAdmit rateSAT (mid‑50%)ACT (mid‑50%)
Pennsylvania State University-Main Campus · PA 54.2% 1220–1400 27–32
Purdue University-Main Campus · IN 50.3% 1190–1460 27–34
Ohio State University-Main Campus · OH 50.8% 1330–1480 29–32
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign · IL 43.7% 1270–1510 29–34
University of South Florida · FL 41.0% 1140–1330 24–29
University of Wisconsin-Madison · WI 43.3% 1360–1510 28–32
University of Maryland-College Park · MD 44.8% 1370–1520 32–35
University of Pittsburgh-Pittsburgh Campus · PA 49.7% 1270–1450 29–33
The University of Tennessee-Knoxville · TN 46.0% 1190–1340 25–31
University of Massachusetts-Amherst · MA 57.8% 1300–1480 29–33
Admit rate 60–70% Accessible

Most qualified applicants are admitted. Scores matter mainly for placement, scholarships, and honors — rarely for the admit decision itself.

CollegeAdmit rateSAT (mid‑50%)ACT (mid‑50%)
Texas A & M University-College Station · TX 63.2% 1140–1380 25–31
Grand Canyon University · AZ 60.4% 1058–1175 19–24
University of South Carolina-Columbia · SC 61.5% 1180–1380 26–32
Rutgers University-New Brunswick · NJ 65.3% 1270–1480 28–33
University at Buffalo · NY 69.3% 1210–1380 27–32
University of Delaware · DE 65.1% 1200–1360 27–31
University of Houston · TX 69.5% 1150–1330 23–28
Georgia State University · GA 62.3% 1040–1280 19–26
The University of Texas at Dallas · TX 65.5% 1170–1410 25–32
University of Vermont · VT 60.0% 1250–1420 29–32
Admit rate 70%+ Accepts the majority

Largely a yes/no read on whether a student can succeed there. A score in the band confirms readiness.

CollegeAdmit rateSAT (mid‑50%)ACT (mid‑50%)
Michigan State University · MI 83.9% 1150–1350 26–31
The University of Alabama · AL 75.8% 1170–1400 24–31
University of Arizona · AZ 85.7% 1160–1420 21–30
University of Colorado Boulder · CO 83.3% 1230–1420 28–33
Indiana University-Bloomington · IN 80.4% 1170–1400 27–32
Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College · LA 74.0% 1150–1330 24–29
Loyola University Chicago · IL 81.4% 1160–1340 27–31
Drexel University · PA 77.5% 1230–1430 27–33
University of Minnesota-Twin Cities · MN 77.0% 1310–1480 27–31
University of Oregon · OR 85.1% 1130–1360 22–30

"Most applied to" = raw applicant volume. SAT/ACT bands are the 25th–75th percentile of enrolled submitters; composite SAT = EBRW + Math. Source: federal IPEDS Admissions, 2023. Test‑blind schools (e.g., the UCs) don't appear — they don't consider scores at all.

Outcomes & cost — what do graduates actually earn?

Federal College Scorecard data covering 1,349 of the 2,864 colleges below. Earnings are median annual income 10 years after entry; completion is the 4‑year graduation rate. Both are computed by the U.S. Department of Education from Treasury and Title IV records.

Highly & hyper‑selective
Admit rate under 25%
$83,443
median earnings, 10 yrs after entry
92% finish in 4 years
Moderately selective
Admit rate 40–70%
$55,504
median earnings, 10 yrs after entry
58% finish in 4 years
All colleges
National median, borrowers only
$23,250
median federal debt at graduation

Why it matters: a strong test score is one of the few signals you can move in 6 months — and at selective colleges, the earnings and completion gaps it helps unlock are real, durable, and shown above. Caveat: debt figures are for federal‑aid borrowers only (students who paid cash aren't counted), and earnings come from Treasury records of federal‑aid recipients. Look at the row‑level data in the table below before drawing conclusions about any specific college.

Frequently asked questions

Short, sourced answers to the questions families and counselors ask most about test-optional admissions.

Does submitting SAT or ACT scores help admission at test-optional colleges?

Yes, according to the colleges' own published data. At Cornell's College of Arts and Sciences, score submitters were 24% of applicants but 50% of admits — a 3.2× admit-rate advantage. Submitter-over-non-submitter advantages of similar size appear at USC (1.85× to 2.07×), Notre Dame (~2.0×), and Vanderbilt (~1.2×). Part of the gap reflects self-selection, but the pattern is consistent and large.

What is the SAT/ACT submitter advantage at Cornell?

At Cornell's College of Arts and Sciences, score submitters were admitted at 3.2× the rate of non-submitters in Fall 2023, up from 2.5× in Fall 2021. At Cornell Engineering, the Fall 2023 advantage was 3.6×, up from 2.5× in Fall 2021. The gap widened every cycle of test-optional, which is why Cornell reinstated the testing requirement effective Fall 2026.

What is the SAT/ACT submitter advantage at USC?

In USC's Class of 2028, score submitters were 36% of applicants but 51% of admits — a 1.85× admit-rate advantage. The advantage grew to 2.07× for the Class of 2029 (39% of applicants, 57% of admits). USC's submitters landed in roughly a 1450 to 1530 SAT range.

Are SAT and ACT scores predictive of college success?

Yes, more than high-school GPA. Opportunity Insights' study of the Ivy-Plus colleges (Friedman, Sacerdote and Tine, 2024) found that holding background constant, a higher SAT predicts a meaningfully higher first-year college GPA. High-school GPA, compressed by grade inflation, predicts almost nothing on its own.

Which colleges have reinstated SAT or ACT testing requirements?

Cornell, MIT, Yale, Harvard, Dartmouth, Brown, Stanford, Georgetown, Caltech, and UT Austin have all brought back SAT or ACT requirements for the 2025 or 2026 admissions cycles. The list of selective schools requiring tests for some or all programs continues to grow.

Why is high-school GPA no longer a reliable signal for admissions?

Grade inflation. The share of incoming college freshmen reporting an A or A-plus high-school GPA grew from 13.4% in 1985 to 39.7% in 2022. Counting any A-range grade, 68.6% of incoming freshmen now report straight A's. When two-thirds of applicants have A averages, GPA stops sorting them — which is why a submitted score becomes the single piece of evidence in the file that did not drift.

Can scores be moved?

Yes — here's what that looks like.

Everything above answers the "do scores still matter?" question. The next question is whether you can actually move yours. Below is Test Prep Gurus' first-party result from a multi-year analysis (current through 2026) of students who completed the program — 12+ instruction hours and ≥80% of assigned homework.

ACT · starting ≤27
22 → 28
+5.7 mean gain
69th → 90th percentile
ACT · starting 28+
30 → 34
+3.4 mean gain
94th → 99th percentile
SAT · starting ≤1350
1210 → 1400
+190 mean gain
77th → 93rd percentile
SAT · starting 1350+
1400 → 1520
+120 mean gain
93rd → 98th percentile

97% of below-elite ACT students gained 3+ points (≈+120 SAT). 93% of below-elite SAT students gained 100+ points — 63% gained 200+. Among elite-tier students, 41% of ACT starters and 38% of SAT starters reached the top 1%.

See the full results →

Your score is the most coachable part of the application.

Test Prep Gurus specializes in moving students into — and past — the range that matters.

Maximize your SAT/ACT with Test Prep Gurus →

What families ask next

What will it cost — and pay back? Guaranteed merit scholarships → Enter scores and GPA — see which awards colleges already promise. What will it cost — and pay back? Earnings by major → What graduates actually earn, program by program. What do we do next? Free Family Decision Report Reach / Competitive / Match / Likely for every college on their list, plus the real cost. Start with a 10-second odds check — no email needed. Check odds →