UC faculty push to restore SAT, ACT requirements amid math crisis

More than 1,500 University of California faculty members have signed open letters calling on the UC system to restore standardized testing requirements for undergraduate admissions, citing a steep decline in incoming student math readiness.

The push began with five UC Berkeley professors, four in mathematics and one in law, who circulated an open letter urging the UC Regents and Academic Senate leadership to make SAT and ACT math scores a requirement for STEM major applicants, effective with the 2027 admissions cycle. More than 1,000 faculty signed within days. A separate letter signed by over 400 humanities and social science professors followed, calling for the restoration of verbal reasoning requirements as well.

The letters point to a fall 2025 UC San Diego Academic Senate report documenting a roughly 30-fold rise between 2020 and 2025 in incoming students whose math skills fell below high school level, with 70% of those students testing below middle school standards. Diagnostic testing at UC Berkeley found that 20% to 30% of first-semester calculus students over three consecutive years showed severe preparation deficits.

“It’s not a concern, it’s a crisis,” said Zvezdelina Stankova, a UC Berkeley mathematics professor and one of the five co-authors of the STEM letter. “One of our co-authors described it like a car going down the hill, and the brakes are off.”

In response, the UC Academic Senate’s Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools (BOARS) announced Thursday that it will convene one work group to review whether to reinstate standardized testing and another to examine the UC system’s A-G course requirements. Both groups must report by May 15, 2027. Any change to admissions policy would require UC Board of Regents approval, with reinstatement taking effect no earlier than fall 2028.

UC Academic Senate Chair Ahmet Palazoglu said the review would follow a “deliberate, evidence-based” approach. Meanwhile, UC President James Milliken noted that the issue ranks among the most pressing on the university’s agenda. “It’s important that UC gets this right,” he said. UC Berkeley law professor Chris Hoofnagle, who signed both letters, said the Senate’s plan comes “about two years too late.”

The issue impacts Asian American and Pacific Islander communities, which are heavily represented among UC applicants. For AAPI students from working-class immigrant families who may lack access to competitive extracurriculars or college counseling, standardized tests have often been seen as a leveling metric, measuring academic readiness independent of school resources. A return to testing requirements could benefit high-achieving AAPI applicants from under-resourced schools who are currently evaluated against less objective criteria.

The UC Board of Regents is scheduled to receive an update on the review in July.