Harvard said Thursday that it will require applicants for fall 2025 to send in numbers from standardized tests.
It’s a sudden change from the old strategy, which said that admissions would not require tests until the class of 2030.
The policy of not having to take tests began during the COVID-19 outbreak.
This is to let you know that starting with next year’s admissions cycle, Harvard College will need you to send in scores from standardized tests, said Hopi Hoekstra, Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. “The college will accept either the SAT or the ACT as proof of test-taking skills.” If those tests are unavailable, one can substitute them with a different set of controlled tests.
According to a 2023 study by Raj Chetty, David Deming, and John Friedman, all professors of economics at Brown University, and Raj Chetty, professor of public economics at Ackman, test scores can identify intelligent students at high schools with limited resources.
“Critics correctly note that standardized tests are not an unbiased measure of students’ qualifications, as students from higher-income families often have greater access to test prep and other resources,” Chetty wrote in a statement. “But the numbers show that other tests, like essays, recommendation letters, and extracurricular activities, are even more likely to be biased in this way.” Taking standardized tests into account is likely to make Harvard’s admissions process more merit-based and increase the number of students from low-income families.
Yale University once again used standardized tests for admission in February. People thought that those kinds of tests would make it harder for kids from low-income families to get into college.
But when Yale brought them back, Jeremiah Quinlan, who is in charge of undergraduate admissions at Yale, said that using test scores again could help those candidates.
Quinlan says the study “strongly suggests” that making all applicants get scores helps people from poor backgrounds.
For the class of 2029, which would be fall 2025 admission, Dartmouth and Brown have also gone back to needing test scores for admission.
Standardized tests are once again required for applicants to Harvard’s Class of 2029, but applicants have only six chances to take the tests before the January 1 cutoff for applications.
