The Last Ivy Standing: Columbia’s Case for Remaining Test-Optional
As other highly selective institutions revive standardized testing requirements, Columbia’s decision not to follow aligns with their desired academic environment.
Princeton announced in October that standardized testing will be required again beginning in 2027, leaving Columbia as the last Ivy League school with an indefinite test-optional policy.
Initially, it seemed as though test-optional policies could become a permanent switch in the college landscape. Critics of standardized testing argue it favors more affluent students, which perpetuates inequality and limits diversity. According to them, instead of placing so much focus on standardized testing, universities should assess a student’s GPA as a better measure of overall academic success.
However, multiple studies conducted on highly selective private colleges (the Ivies, Duke, MIT, Stanford, and UChicago) show that there is little correlation between an individual’s high school GPA and college GPA or with their financial success following matriculation. Crucially, these studies show that standardized test scores are the strongest predictor of both a student’s college GPA and advancement beyond college.
While eliminating the standardized testing requirement was supposed to promote racial and economic diversity, shortly after going test-optional, most Ivies reversed course and argued that mandatory standardized testing actually benefits marginalized groups. Yale, Harvard, Dartmouth, Brown, and Cornell all stated that test scores allow socioeconomically disadvantaged students to demonstrate their academic capabilities. Thus, requiring test scores would reduce inequities and improve the diversity of admitted applicants.
Despite all of this evidence and the new policies at all the other Ivies, Columbia remains test-optional. But why?
For one, Columbia’s decision to remain test-optional might signal that the school favors intellectual profile and curricular fit over raw academic scores. Columbia’s key feature, which distinguishes it from the other Ivies and highly selective private institutions, is, of course, the Core Curriculum. The Core ensures that each student completes a traditional liberal arts education upon graduation. The spirit of the Core is rooted in humanities skills such as close reading, analytical thinking, constructive discussion, and argumentative writing—none of which standardized testing does a particularly good job of measuring.
The demands of the Core means Columbia seeks a different type of student than other highly selective institutions. Because it is mandatory, admissions decisions carry a higher curricular risk than peer institutions with more flexible distribution requirements. A student wholly uninterested in the humanities cannot simply avoid these courses. In this sense, Columbia admissions must predict not just academic success, but sustained intellectual interest and participation in the Core.
In my two years on campus, I have noticed that even students pursuing STEM majors have a baseline level of interest in the humanities. The nature of the Core discourages students who utterly abhor the humanities while favoring those interested in a full liberal arts education, regardless of their intended major.
Remaining test-optional, then, potentially allows Columbia to admit students who better align with the philosophy of the Core. A student who excels in a specific humanities area may not produce a top-notch 1500+ SAT score, but would be well-positioned to thrive in Columbia’s discussion and literature-based Core courses. Columbia already gauges an applicant’s aptitude for the Core through their short essay questions: Keeping a test-optional policy enables admissions officers to admit these high-achieving humanities students who demonstrate readiness for the Core by evaluating their overall ‘fit’ for Columbia, rather than their competency as measured by a single test score.
There are tradeoffs to this approach. Again, the research cited by the other Ivy League schools indicates that mandatory testing can benefit socioeconomically disadvantaged students and may better predict academic and career outcomes. However, this is a tradeoff Columbia should be willing to make. The Core is not designed to merely certify academic ability or maximize post-graduate earnings; it is meant to cultivate students as thinkers and communicators through sustained engagement with the humanities.
That mission does not align with every intellectually capable student. By remaining test-optional, Columbia prioritizes admitting students who will fully participate in and benefit from the Core, even if doing so sacrifices some desirable statistical metrics. In an era of STEM dominating higher education, preserving Columbia’s unique intellectual identity is worth the institutional tradeoff.
Ms. Rajan is a sophomore at Columbia College majoring in political science and economics. She is a senior editor for Sundial.
The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Sundial editorial board as a whole or any other members of the staff.