UC's SAT Standoff: Why 3,000 Professors Demanded Testing Back — and Why the Door Just Slammed Shut
Picture this: You’re a calculus professor at UC Berkeley. It’s the first week of class. You hand out a diagnostic exam — the same one you’ve used for fifteen years. A quarter of your students can’t handle basic algebra. Some can’t round numbers. A few can’t add single digits.
This isn’t a hypothetical. This is what Zvezdelina Stankova, a Berkeley math professor with nearly 30 years of teaching experience, described as her reality since 2020.
“It was as if the floor was taken out,” Stankova told The Daily Californian. “A third of the class was in free fall. There was nothing I could do.”
And she’s not alone. Over 3,000 UC faculty members — including seven of nine math department chairs across the system — signed open letters demanding that the University of California reinstate SAT/ACT requirements for STEM applicants. Then, just when it seemed like change was coming, UC’s admissions policy board pulled the plug on its own plan.
Here’s the full story — and what it means for anyone planning to apply to a UC campus.
The Data That Started a Faculty Revolt
In November 2025, UC San Diego’s Senate-Administration Workgroup on Admissions released a report that sent shockwaves through the UC system. The findings were staggering:
- A 30-fold increase in incoming first-year students whose math skills tested below high school level between 2020 and 2025
- 70% of those students fell below middle school proficiency
- 132 students with straight A’s in high school math were placed in remedial courses covering elementary and middle school material
- At UC Berkeley, at least 20% of first-semester calculus students showed significant deficits on diagnostic exams over three consecutive years
The pattern was clear: something changed after UC went test-blind in 2020, and the consequences were hitting STEM classrooms hard.
How UC Became Test-Blind in the First Place
To understand the current crisis, you need to rewind to May 2020. The UC Board of Regents, led by then-President Janet Napolitano, voted unanimously to suspend SAT and ACT testing requirements. The reasoning was rooted in equity concerns — the tests were seen as screening out students of color and those from lower-income families who lacked access to test preparation resources.
What’s often overlooked: the regents’ vote went against the advice of UC’s own faculty. The UC Academic Senate’s Standardized Testing Task Force had produced a comprehensive report recommending that UC continue using the SAT and ACT. The task force found that:
- Test scores were a better predictor of college performance than high school GPA
- Scores could actually boost admission rates for students from disadvantaged backgrounds when evaluated in context
- UC’s holistic admissions process already accounted for socioeconomic disparities in scores
A California state court injunction in 2020 forced UC to stop using scores even earlier than planned, and the system went fully test-blind.
The Faculty Pushback: “We’re Teaching Middle School Math”
By spring 2026, the frustration boiled over. On May 25, more than 600 UC STEM faculty published an open letter with four specific demands:
- Reinstate SAT/ACT math scores as a requirement for STEM applicants, starting Fall 2027
- Use those scores as a baseline readiness measure
- Give STEM faculty formal oversight of admissions standards for their majors
- Require UC to test admissions criteria against actual student outcomes
The letter’s language was blunt: “We now observe preparation gaps so severe that instructors must reteach middle-school mathematics while simultaneously teaching the material students needed for sciences, engineering, economics, and other quantitatively demanding fields.”
Within weeks, the signature count exploded — from 600 to over 1,400, then past 3,000. Seven of nine math department chairs across the UC system signed on. UC Berkeley faculty were the first to organize, but the movement spread to every campus.
Stankova, one of the lead organizers, made a provocative argument that challenged the conventional equity framing: “I don’t see SAT hurting diversity. I actually see it helping it. You give students an entrance ticket to a great university system like UC, only that they fail. How is that diversity?”
BOARS Steps In — Then Steps Back
In June 2026, UC’s Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools (BOARS) — the faculty committee that actually sets admissions policy — responded. BOARS announced a formal roadmap with two working groups:
Workgroup 1 would study “the advantages and disadvantages” of using SAT/ACT scores and California’s 11th-grade Smarter Balanced Assessment in admissions.
Workgroup 2 would examine whether UC’s 15 required high school courses (the A-G framework) still adequately prepare students, especially given “changing workforce needs, widespread adoption of AI, and UC faculty concerns about preparation.”
The timeline: working groups would recruit over the summer, begin meeting in October 2026, deliver recommendations by May 2027, and — after a lengthy approval process involving the Academic Council, a 90-day systemwide review, the UC President, and the Board of Regents — any changes would take effect at the earliest for students entering in Fall 2029.
UC President James B. Milliken called the approach “comprehensive.”
Then, on July 11 — just three days before the Board of Regents was scheduled to meet in San Francisco — BOARS voted to rescind the entire roadmap. The working groups were cancelled. The documents were removed from the UC website. No replacement plan was announced.
Why Did BOARS Pull the Plug?
This is where things get murky. BOARS has not publicly explained its reasoning. The board’s minutes typically take weeks to be published. What we know comes from board members who spoke to the LA Times and other outlets.
Several factors likely contributed:
Political pressure from multiple directions. Faculty who wanted testing reinstated thought the timeline was too slow. Stankova called the working groups “a way to delay making a decision” and argued that a straightforward recommendation should have gone directly to the Academic Senate. Meanwhile, testing opponents worried that any review — even a neutral one — would inevitably lead to reinstatement.
The data problem. Michael Stryker, a UCSF physiology professor and BOARS member, argued that the planned study was “structurally incapable of producing useful evidence.” Because UC largely stopped collecting test scores after 2020, there’s no comparable applicant group on which to validate today’s tests. “In the absence of sound data,” Stryker wrote, the testing work group “will have little to do but debate the politics of testing.”
Timing concerns. The abrupt reversal — announced Friday, with the regents meeting Monday — left little time for coordination. Stryker expressed concern that regents would be “surprised that what they read in the newspapers about the testing debate is no longer true.”
The Smarter Balanced wildcard. BOARS had been exploring an alternative approach: using California’s 11th-grade Smarter Balanced Assessment (already administered to all public school juniors) for California residents, and SAT/ACT only for out-of-state and international applicants. Research presented at the March 2026 BOARS meeting showed that Smarter Balanced scores, combined with GPA, predict college performance comparably to the SAT. This middle-ground approach might have complicated the politics of the working groups.
UC Is Now the Outlier
While UC deliberates, the rest of elite higher education has moved decisively back toward testing:
| School | Policy (2026-27 Cycle) |
|---|---|
| Harvard | Test-required |
| MIT | Test-required |
| Yale | Test-flexible (scores required, but AP/IB can substitute) |
| Princeton | Test-required (Fall 2028) |
| Columbia | Test-required (Fall 2028) |
| Brown | Test-required |
| Dartmouth | Test-required |
| Cornell | Test-required (Fall 2026) |
| Stanford | Test-required |
| Caltech | Test-required |
| UPenn | Test-required |
| UC System | Test-blind (scores not considered at all) |
UC doesn’t just stand apart — it stands alone among elite institutions in refusing to even consider test scores. Most other schools went from test-optional to test-required. UC went from test-required to test-blind, meaning scores submitted by applicants are used only for course placement after enrollment, never in admissions decisions.
What This Means for UC Applicants Right Now
If you’re applying to UC in the next two cycles, here’s the bottom line:
Nothing has changed for you. UC remains fully test-blind. Your SAT/ACT scores will not be considered in admissions, regardless of how strong they are. Focus on your GPA, extracurriculars, essays, and the A-G course requirements.
The faculty fight isn’t over. Stankova and colleagues have written to the UC Board of Regents asking them to “publicly commit to place a restoration of the SAT/ACT on the September 2026 agenda as an action item,” effective for Fall 2027. Stryker, the BOARS member, said he “cannot imagine they will not address the issues that prompted the road map later this year.”
The Smarter Balanced angle is worth watching. If UC does eventually move on testing, it might not be the SAT or ACT at all. The state’s own 11th-grade assessment could become the standardized measure — which would be unprecedented for a major university system.
Your math preparation still matters — a lot. Whether or not UC brings back testing, the data is clear: students who arrive underprepared in math struggle in STEM courses. If you’re planning a STEM major at any UC campus, invest in genuine math fluency, not just test scores.
The Uncomfortable Truth
This debate exposes a fundamental tension in American higher education: equity and academic rigor are pulling in opposite directions.
The test-blind policy was designed to open doors for students who couldn’t afford test prep. But the UCSD data suggests that some of those students walked through those doors and into classrooms they weren’t prepared for — not because they weren’t capable, but because no one flagged the preparation gap before they enrolled.
As Stankova put it: “You give them an entrance ticket to a great university system like UC, only that they fail. How is that diversity?”
The counter-argument is equally powerful: standardized tests correlate with wealth and race, and using them as gatekeepers perpetuates inequality in a system that’s supposed to be a meritocratic ladder.
There’s no clean answer. But with 3,000 professors signing their names to a demand for change — and UC’s own data showing a crisis in student readiness — the question isn’t whether something will give. It’s when, and how.
For now, BOARS has punted. The regents meet this week without the SAT on the agenda. The next move may come in September 2026 — or it may not come at all.
One thing is certain: the students arriving at UC this fall will walk into the same classrooms, face the same diagnostic exams, and some will discover the same painful gap between their high school grades and their actual preparation. Whether UC decides to measure that gap before or after admission is the question that 3,000 professors want answered.
Sources
- Daily Californian: “UC withdraws current plan to revisit SAT/ACT requirements” (July 13, 2026)
- Los Angeles Times: “UC abruptly suspends plan to reconsider SAT in admissions” (July 13, 2026)
- Los Angeles Times: “Citing ‘severe’ math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests” (May 27, 2026)
- Ask Ms. Sun: “Is UC Bringing Back the SAT?” (Updated July 13, 2026)
- UC San Diego Senate-Administration Workgroup Report (November 6, 2025)
- EdSource: “UC committee to consider bringing back SAT, ACT requirement” (June 2026)
- UC Academic Senate BOARS Roadmap (June 5, 2026)
- Forbes: “U. of California Will Consider Reinstating An Admission Test Requirement” (June 13, 2026)