The University of Notre Dame will require SAT or ACT scores from undergraduate applicants beginning with the 2027-28 admissions cycle, the university announced on September 9. The requirement covers first-year and transfer applicants seeking to enroll in Fall 2028, which puts today’s high school juniors in the first affected class. Students applying this fall for Fall 2027 enrollment stay under the current test-optional rules.
Micki Kidder, Notre Dame’s vice president for undergraduate enrollment, described a score as one input rather than a gate: “A test score, evaluated in full context of an applicant’s circumstances, is an additional measure to aid us in that process.”
Applicants who face financial hardship, a lack of testing access, or a natural disaster can request a waiver without penalty. With the change, Notre Dame joins a growing number of selective schools that have already reversed course.
Would you like to save this?
We'll email this article to you, so you can come back to it later!
Why It Matters
Notre Dame’s stated reasoning is different than other schools ending test optional policies. The school argued that a required score helps surface prepared applicants from high schools it doesn’t know well: first-generation students, Pell-eligible applicants, and students from rural districts among them.
Volume is another factor. Colleges took in a record 10.8 million applications last cycle with a declining number of students actually seeking admission, which leaves admissions offices with more applications per seat and less time on each one.
A four-digit number is a cheap signal that can help schools weed through the stacks of applications.
The Evidence Schools Keep Citing
Brown produced the most-quoted version of the case. Provost Francis J. Doyle III, who co-chaired the university’s ad hoc committee on admissions policies, said that “SAT and ACT scores are among the key indicators that help predict a student’s ability to succeed and thrive in Brown’s demanding academic environment.”
The committee’s own summary was blunter, finding that academic outcomes: “whether measured by the fraction of grades that are high or by the fraction of students who struggle academically — are strongly correlated with test scores.” That relationship held across every demographic subgroup it studied, which is the finding driving the end of test-optional policies at peer institutions.
Other schools have run the same math and ended in the same place. Dartmouth’s faculty analysis found SAT scores explained about 22% of the variation in first-year GPA, against roughly 9% for high school GPA alone. Cornell reported that score submitters made up 24% of its applicant pool but half of its admitted students. At UT-Austin, submitters posted first-fall GPAs 0.86 grade points higher than classmates who applied without a score. That was a gap large enough that the flagship restored its requirement ahead of most of its peers.
The Reversal Is Accelerating
Holdouts are getting rarer, and every Ivy League school now requires scores:
- Dartmouth moved first in February 2024, with Brown following a month later and Harvard in April.
- Columbia’s June 2026 announcement completed the Ivy sweep, effective for Fall 2028 enrollment.
- Yale tightened its policy in May 2026, dropping the AP and IB substitutions it had allowed and narrowing the requirement to the SAT or ACT for the class of 2031.
- Princeton picked the 2027-28 cycle, the same one Notre Dame just chose.
- Public flagships including Ohio State, Auburn and Alabama have set requirements landing between 2026 and 2028.
- Vanderbilt, Claremont McKenna and Carnegie Mellon keep the private-college list growing.
How This Connects
For families applying to a selective college, taking a test should be part of the process. About 95% of colleges still don’t require scores, yet most applicants submitted them anyway last cycle for the first time since 2019, which suggests “optional” had already come to mean “expected” at competitive schools.
Notre Dame’s requirement first impacts in the 2027-28 cycle, so the earliest read on its effect comes with Fall 2028 applications. Thse students will need to take a test this year, apply next fall, and see how enrollment shakes out in fall 2028.
The bigger open question sits in California, where faculty have pushed to restore the SAT at the largest system that went test-free. Watch too whether alternatives such as the Classic Learning Test gain ground as more schools demand a number.
Editor: Colin Graves
Robert Farrington is the founder of The College Investor and is widely recognized as one of the nation’s leading voices on student loan debt and saving for college. He holds an MBA from UC San Diego Rady School of Management and has spent over 15 years researching, writing, and advising on student loans, 529 plans, financial aid programs, and saving and investing for young professionals.
Robert has been featured in the The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, NBC News, and Forbes, where he has been a regular personal finance contributor for over a decade. His work combines both professional expertise and personal experience – he successfully navigated his own student loan repayment journey and has helped thousands of readers do the same.
He is committed to making the intersection of personal finance and education transparent and accessible. You can learn more about Robert on the About Page or on his personal site RobertFarrington.com.