Columbia Completes Ivy League Return to Testing, Announces SAT/ACT Requirement for 2027-28

Columbia University has announced it will reinstate mandatory SAT or ACT testing requirements for undergraduate applicants, becoming the final Ivy League institution to abandon its test-optional policy and completing a sweeping reversal across elite higher education. The university confirmed that Columbia College and Columbia Engineering will require standardized test scores beginning with applications submitted in August 2027 for the 2027-28 admissions cycle, according to the Columbia Spectator and university admissions pages.

The June 2026 announcement marks the end of the test-optional era for the Ivy League, which began during the COVID-19 pandemic. While Columbia will remain test-optional for the upcoming 2026-2027 admissions cycle, its decision to reinstate testing requirements for the following year means all eight Ivy League schools will once again require standardized test scores. This follows similar reinstatements by Brown, Dartmouth, Harvard, Yale, Cornell, Princeton, and the University of Pennsylvania over the past two years.

The policy shift reflects a broader trend among highly selective institutions that has seen MIT, Caltech, Georgetown, and entire public university systems like the University System of Georgia also return to testing requirements. Columbia's announcement, reported by Higher Ed Dive and confirmed on the university's admissions website, positions the school as the last holdout among its Ivy peers to make the change. The decision comes as research from institutions like MIT has suggested standardized tests help assess academic preparedness more equitably than high school grades alone, which can vary significantly across different educational contexts.