Dartmouth Reinstates The SAT, Striking A Blow For Fairness And Merit

Dartmouth College announced this week that it’ll be reinstating its SAT requirement, starting with students applying for fall 2025 admission. That makes it the first Ivy League institution to do so after all eight dropped their requirements in response to the pandemic and concerns about equity. Those institutions were in good company, with most of the nation’s selective colleges either waiving admissions tests or going “test-optional” in recent years.

Against that backdrop, Dartmouth’s decision (which follows a similar move by MIT last year) is a heartening development. Especially amidst rampant high school grade inflation, suspect campus practices, and the flagrant abuse of letters and essays by those who know how the game works, tests like the SAT or ACT can operate as a much-needed reality check. As Dartmouth president Sian Beilock explained in an email to the campus community, the decision reflected a faculty study which concluded that “standardized test scores are an important predictor of a student’s success in Dartmouth’s curriculum” whatever the “student’s background or family income.”