Test-optional in 2026: which colleges require the SAT again, and what to do if your list is mixed
Parents ask me whether the SAT still matters, and the answer in September 2026 is: it depends on the list, and the list has changed a lot in two years. Here is where things stand, what the policy words mean, and how I would decide for a mixed list. Policies move every admissions cycle, so treat this as a snapshot with a date on it and check each school’s own page before you rely on it.
Who requires scores for students applying this year
For the 2026–27 application cycle, meaning students starting college in fall 2027, Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, Brown, Cornell, Penn, MIT, Caltech and Stanford all require an SAT or ACT score. Princeton and Columbia have announced they will require scores from the following cycle, which makes this the last year an Ivy League application can go in without one. Georgetown never stopped requiring them.
Among public universities, the Florida and Georgia state systems require scores, and Auburn, Alabama and LSU are phasing requirements in for fall 2027, Auburn for every applicant regardless of GPA. Purdue and the University of Texas at Austin reinstated requirements earlier.
The University of California campuses are the opposite case: test-blind. A score is not considered at all, even if you send it.
Across the top hundred, one tracker counts eighteen schools requiring scores, seventy-four test-optional, six test-blind and two test-flexible for this cycle. So the headline is not “everyone requires the SAT again”. It is that the most selective schools do, the trend is in one direction, and a family with a mixed list cannot plan around not testing.
The four words
- Required. You must submit a score to be considered.
- Optional. You choose whether to send one. If you send it, it is read.
- Blind. Scores are not read even if sent. Do not spend time on the decision.
- Flexible. A score is required but another test can stand in, such as an AP or IB result, for instance. Yale uses this model.
The word that causes trouble is optional, because it sounds like a statement about importance and it is not one. It is a statement about who decides.
What optional means in practice
At a test-optional school, a score is a piece of evidence you can add or withhold. So the question is not “does this school care about the SAT” but “would this score help my file”. That has a fairly mechanical answer.
Every college publishes the middle fifty percent of scores for its admitted students, the range from the 25th to the 75th percentile. It is in the school’s Common Data Set and usually on its admissions page. At or above the middle of that range, send it. A score there confirms the transcript and removes a question. Below the 25th percentile, generally do not, and let the rest of the application carry the file. In between is a judgment call, and it leans toward sending for a student whose grades are strong, because a score in range shows the grades were not inflated.
What the years since 2020 showed is that at many selective optional schools, most admitted students did submit a score. Optional did not mean irrelevant. It meant the students with good scores sent them.
If the list is mixed
Take the test. That is the decision, and it is why I do not think test-optional changed much for a serious applicant. One required school on a list of ten means a score has to exist, and once it exists the optional schools become a school-by-school decision made in about five minutes each with the ranges in front of you.
The order of operations I would use:
- Find out which schools on the list require a score. Their admissions pages, this year’s version. Do not trust a list from last spring, including this one, without checking.
- If any do, plan the test properly: work backward from the test date rather than forward from now.
- Once there is a real score, put it against each optional school’s middle fifty and decide one at a time.
- Ignore the blind schools for this purpose. Nothing you do with the test changes their read.
The Ohio wrinkle
Every Ohio junior takes a state-funded ACT or SAT during the school day, so an Ohio student has a score whether they planned to or not. That is useful, since it is a real, timed, official test, but it is also a score the student did not choose the date of, and it lands in the spring of junior year, which is late to be finding out that it is not where it needs to be. For an Ohio family the question is rarely whether there will be a score; it is whether the school-day one is the one you want to send.
What I would not do
I would not skip the test on the strength of a school being optional this year. The list of schools that require scores has grown every cycle since 2022, and a student applying in 2027 or 2028 should expect it to be longer still. A score in hand is an option; a missing one is a constraint.
Policy details above are as of September 2026, drawn from the school announcements as summarized by The College Investor, Dewey Smart’s policy tracker, and Crimson Education. Confirm any individual school on its own admissions page.