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A University of California committee will formally consider whether to require standardized exams such as the SAT and ACT in freshman admissions, UC’s Academic Senate announced Thursday.
UC’s Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools, the committee that oversees undergraduate admissions matters, is creating a faculty work group that will examine the potential advantages and disadvantages of using SAT and ACT scores in admissions. They will also investigate the possibility of using 11th grade Smarter Balanced scores. The Smarter Balanced assessment is California’s annual exam administered in grades 3-8 and 11.
The committee will consist mostly of faculty but will also include representatives from UC’s systemwide president’s office and the California State Board of Education, plus two additional UC staff members with relevant expertise, such as a campus-level admissions director.
Any proposed changes would have to be approved by UC’s Board of Regents.
The review comes as some UC faculty have complained that too many first-year students are unprepared for college-level math. More than 1,400 faculty have signed an open letter calling for UC to reinstate the SAT and ACT as an admissions requirement for students in science, technology, engineering and math programs.
UC in 2020 stopped requiring the SAT and ACT in admissions. Calls to reinstate the tests are not unanimous among faculty. Other faculty members are against the idea, saying that the exams are biased against low-income students and that it’s up to high schools to better prepare students.
“I know we want every student admitted to UC to make the most of their college education. Our responsibility is to ensure that our policies and practices make that possible,” Academic Senate Chair Ahmet Palazoglu wrote in a letter Thursday to Senate faculty.
