Citing ‘severe’ math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM applicants

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More than 600 University of California faculty members, led by mathematicians at UC Berkeley, are calling on the system to reinstate standardized testing requirements for science, technology, engineering and mathematics applicants, saying that six years of test-free admissions has not reliably assessed readiness and professors are often teaching middle school math to incoming students.

Without standardized testing in admissions, professors said they don’t know whether incoming students can handle college-level math. The open letter, addressed to top UC leaders, asks for SAT or ACT exams to be required beginning in fall 2027 and for STEM faculty to be given formal oversight of readiness standards in their majors.

“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,” they warned.

Over three years — from fall 2021 to fall 2023 — the letter said, at least 20% of Berkeley first-semester calculus students who took a diagnostic exam showed deficits. “Basic mathematical fluency is analogous to literacy; without it, success in university-level STEM becomes structurally unattainable for students,” faculty wrote.

The letter lands days before the UC Academic Senate’s Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools is scheduled to discuss system-wide admissions changes, which could be the first step toward a possible return of standardized testing at the nation’s largest public research university system.

UC gained national attention in May 2020 when regents unanimously voted to suspend SAT and ACT testing requirements and eliminate them entirely by 2025. Board members cited concerns the tests were biased against students of color and those from lower-income families — including students who did not have access to prep courses.

At the time, some hailed the vote as a bold and visionary move to expand access and equity.

But the vote went against the UC Academic Senate’s own Standardized Testing Task Force, which said use of test scores could actually boost admission rates for students from disadvantaged backgrounds and school districts. The report also found that test scores are a better predictor of college performance than high school grades, but that UC weighed grades more heavily in admission decisions.

Then in 2020, a California state court judge issued an injunction in a lawsuit brought by students, which forced UC to stop using the scores earlier than planned.

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, campuses across the country also suspended admissions testing requirements, including many of the nation’s most prestigious institutions. The requirement has largely resumed at elite universities.

Harvard, Brown, Dartmouth, the University of Pennsylvania, Stanford and Caltech each restored standardized testing requirements for applicants in 2024 or 2025. USC is test-optional and scores are considered as part of holistic review, but students are not penalized if they do not submit them.

UC’s policy — as well as California State University‘s — permits applicants to submit scores for course placement purposes, but only after admissions decisions have been made.

UC leadership has not formally endorsed the faculty letter on testing, but system leaders said Wednesday that they were listening to the underlying concerns.

Rachel Zaentz, a UC spokesperson, said in a statement that the system “will continue to focus on strengthening instruction, collaboration and support” for math readiness in partnership with K-12 and higher education institutions.

Ahmet Palazoglu, chair of the UC systemwide Academic Senate, said in a statement that he has heard “concerns raised by UC faculty about student preparedness for undergraduate study,” and that he has called on the system-wide admissions board to address “timely topics tied to students’ college readiness and UC’s admission process.”

The board, he said, “is in the process of proposing a roadmap of policy work and partnership building with other state and K-12 education leaders in the next academic year and beyond.”

Fissures have erupted within UC over admissions tests and math readiness. In November, a UC San Diego Academic Senate work group report said it documented a roughly thirty-fold increase between 2020 and 2025 in incoming first-year students whose math skills tested below high school level. The report said 70% of those students fell below middle school levels.

Work group members advocated for a “systemwide reexamination of standardized testing, as many peer institutions have already done.”

Zvezda Stankova, a teaching professor in the Berkeley mathematics department who is one of the letter’s lead organizers, said the impetus to publicly speak out came in part from her own classrooms. She described a challenging spring 2023 calculus II class, which stood out in her nearly 30 years of teaching.

“Something had changed drastically. The bottom was taken out, and there were 25 to 30% of the students who were in free fall. There was nothing you could do for them. They were just not prepared.”

Stankova said her colleagues were bracing for sharp criticism. “Our letter is going to be attacked from all sides,” she said. The math professor argued that the SAT push was in aid of disadvantaged students.

“I don’t see SAT hurting diversity. I actually see it helping it, because you have right now the lack of SATs hurting the underrepresented minorities. You give them a ticket, an entrance ticket to a great university system like UC, only that they fail. How is that diversity?” Stankova said.

Not all see a return to testing as the best path. A September 2025 report by Saul Geiser of the UC Berkeley Center for Studies in Higher Education and a former senior UC admissions official, said the SAT is “a poor fit for America’s public universities.”

Geiser argued that the high school GPA outperforms the SAT in predicting first-year student success once income and race are controlled. He also argued that ranking applicants by SAT scores ends up disadvantaging high-achieving low-income, first-generation and underrepresented minorities.

How prepared are California high school students in math?

California’s aggregate testing data complicate the picture.

Overall, in math, the state’s students are about a quarter-year in instruction behind where they were prior to the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020. A quarter-year of instruction translates to about 45 school days or about nine weeks of the school year.

Statewide, 37.3% of students meet math learning standards in the grades that are tested.

In 11th grade, the most relevant grade relating to college readiness, 30.5% of students met or exceeded math learning standards. Of these, nearly half exceeded the learning standard — marking them as likely to be the best prepared for a college STEM major.

Any change to UC admissions requirements must move through the Academic Senate admissions board committee before going to the Board of Regents. Minutes from the admissions board‘s March 6 meeting show members signaled tentative interest in eventually requiring 11th-grade Smarter Balanced assessment scores for California residents and SAT or ACT scores for nonresidents.

The board plans to submit an initial draft by Sunday and a “final road map” by June 30.

Times staff writer Howard Blume contributed to this report.