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A University of California, Los Angeles, professor told Digital on Thursday that the university system’s “test-blind” admissions policy failed to eliminate racial disparities in standardized testing as intended.
“That was obviously the motive. The UC Regents were very clear,” said Gabriel Rossman, a sociology professor at UCLA. “They did get rid of the SAT because they thought it had a disparate impact by race.”
More than 3,000 faculty members across the University of California system have backed open letters urging the system to reinstate the SAT and ACT in undergraduate admissions. Former UC President Janet Napolitano led the effort in 2020 to phase out the standardized tests, citing equity concerns.
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In response to growing faculty feedback, the University of California’s Academic Council directed the Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools (BOARS) on July 22 to oversee a faculty-led, evidence-based review of standardized testing in undergraduate admissions.
Rossman’s comments came after he co-authored an open letter with non-STEM colleagues, following a similar effort led by math and science faculty demanding that state officials restore the exams.
“We are University of California faculty from the social sciences, humanities, arts, business, law, education, and other non-STEM fields,” the non-STEM letter reads. “We are writing to endorse our STEM colleagues’ earlier open letter regarding the math component of SAT/ACT and argue for also using the verbal reasoning component of SAT/ACT in undergraduate admissions.”
The non-STEM faculty noted that while they supported the STEM letter’s conclusions, they did not initially sign it because it was specifically framed around math preparation.
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Rossman told Digital that the test-blind policy has proven counterproductive to its original mission.
“One of the ironies of this is they got rid of the SAT in order to promote equity in enrollment,” Rossman said. “The UC freshman class had been diversifying for the previous 20 years, and then it leveled off in 2020. In particular, the big change was the ratio of Latino students versus Anglo students. The numbers of Black and Asian students didn’t change by nearly as much.”
An analysis by The Oakland Report, a regional media outlet covering Bay Area policy, similarly noted that eliminating test scores stripped admissions officers of a key metric for identifying high-achieving applicants from under-resourced schools.
“Removing test scores from the admissions process weakened UC’s ability to evaluate academic readiness while ignoring the real causes of racial disparity,” the analysis argued.
The push from non-STEM faculty follows a recent op-ed in The San Francisco Standard by UC Berkeley mathematics professor Zvezdelina Stankova, who warned of a sharp decline in incoming student preparation under test-blind policies.
Neetu Arnold, a Paulson Policy Analyst at the Manhattan Institute, told Digital she is concerned about losing an objective metric and the “misallocation of talent.”
“I actually think standardized tests are a lot more accessible for working-class students,” she said. “It’s much easier to go to the library to pick up some prep books and to really put in the work than investing in really expensive extracurricular activities.”
Stankova cited university diagnostic data showing a significant drop in foundational math readiness after UC stopped considering standardized tests. From 2018 to 2020, 71% of roughly 2,200 tested Calculus I students were deemed ready or nearly ready, while just 0.14% placed below basic algebra. By contrast, among roughly 2,800 students tested from 2021 to 2023 under a revised diagnostic, only 51% were deemed ready or nearly ready. That figure dropped to 44% in 2023, with 17% failing to answer a single question correctly across eight basic topics.
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Thousands of faculty members across the 10 University of California campuses have signed open letters urging the university system to reinstate the SAT and ACT in admissions. (Thomas A. Ferrara/Newsday RM via Getty Images)
In a statement to Digital, Stankova praised her colleagues across the UC system for raising awareness about academic preparation.
“On behalf of the authors of the open letters, I would like to thank the thousands of UC faculty and people from around the world who have written to us in support of this initiative,” Stankova said, emphasizing that student preparation in math and English is critical to the future of the university.
“We urge all UC faculty across the 10 campuses to work with their own campus admissions committees and Senate bodies this year to help pass the incoming recommendation from BOARS, which we hope will be to reinstate the SAT/ACT, and to further work toward faculty oversight of admissions procedures,” Stankova added. “Without that, any admissions criteria can be ignored or even counted against the applicant. Let us all make sure that UC admissions works to select based on a holistic approach that incorporates academic merit as a significant part of that process.”
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The Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
