Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM

More than 600 University of California faculty members, led by mathematicians at UC Berkeley, are asking the system to reinstate standardized testing for science, technology, engineering and mathematics applicants. Their open letter says six years of test-free admissions has not reliably assessed readiness, and that professors often reteach middle-school mathematics to first-year students.

What the letter asks for

The faculty want SAT or ACT exams required again for STEM applicants from fall 2027, and formal oversight by professors of readiness standards in those majors. They describe gaps "so severe that instructors must reteach middle-school mathematics while simultaneously teaching the material students need for sciences, engineering, economics, and other quantitatively demanding fields."

As evidence they cite their own campuses: from fall 2021 to fall 2023, at least 20% of Berkeley first-semester calculus students who took a diagnostic exam showed deficits. "Basic mathematical fluency is analogous to literacy; without it, success in university-level STEM becomes structurally unattainable for students," they wrote.

A 2020 decision under scrutiny

UC drew national attention in May 2020, when its regents voted unanimously to suspend SAT and ACT requirements and eliminate them by 2025, citing concerns that the tests were biased against students of color and those from lower-income families. The vote went against the system's own Standardized Testing Task Force, which found that test scores predicted college performance better than high school grades.

Pressure inside the system

In November, a UC San Diego Academic Senate work group reported a roughly thirty-fold increase between 2020 and 2025 in first-year students whose math skills tested below high school level, with 70% of them below middle-school levels.

Zvezda Stankova, a Berkeley mathematics teaching professor and a lead organizer, traces the letter to a spring 2023 calculus II course that stood out in nearly 30 years of teaching. "The bottom was taken out, and there were 25 to 30% of the students who were in free fall," she said, arguing that the SAT gives underrepresented students a clear entry ticket.

Not everyone agrees. A September 2025 report by Saul Geiser of the Berkeley Center for Studies in Higher Education called the SAT "a poor fit for America's public universities," arguing that high school GPA predicts first-year success better once income and race are controlled.

Any change to UC admissions must pass the Academic Senate's admissions board before reaching the Board of Regents, whose March 6 minutes show tentative interest in requiring 11th-grade state assessment scores and SAT or ACT results in future. UC leadership has not endorsed the letter.