Test-optional admissions is often cited as a boon for equity. Yet new research from the National Bureau of Economic Research reinforces the case that it can hurt high-achieving students from less-advantaged backgrounds and first-generation applicants (whose chances of admission were 3.6 times higher and 2.4 times higher, respectively, when submitting test scores).
Additionally, test-optional admissions diminishes the primary purpose of higher education: the pursuit of educational excellence. UNC Chapel Hill is not only one of the best public universities in the US, it is quite simply one of the best universities in the US. But excellence is not a fixed trait for any person or institution. To be maintained or improved, it needs to be habitually exercised. UNC Chapel Hill and the UNC System more broadly still have time to return to their habit of excellence, but the clock is ticking.
Consider that top colleges are returning to requiring SAT and ACT scores in admissions (Harvard, Stanford, Yale, MIT, Caltech, Cornell, Dartmouth, Brown, Johns Hopkins, Carnegie Mellon, Georgetown, etc). Many other top state flagship universities have done the same, including University of Georgia, University of Florida, Georgia Tech, University of Tennessee, and University of Texas-Austin.
Why have they done so? Because SAT and ACT scores are, according to the latest research, 3.9-times better at predicting success in college than are high school grades — in part because high school grades have become so inflated. The average high school GPA of a student going to a 4-year university is an A-average, so A’s have literally become average. UNC-Chapel Hill is no exception: 95% of students who enrolled there last year had a 4.0 high school GPA.
There is no longer enough variance in inflated GPAs to pick the most-prepared students, so standardized test scores (which evaluate students on the fundamental knowledge and skills demonstrated to help students excel in college and which all students can improve upon) are valuable parts of the puzzle to help understand an applicant and his or her academic preparedness.
Here are just a few quotes from leaders at top school on what they’ve found:
“SAT and ACT tests are better predictors of Harvard grades than high school grades,” said Harvard Admissions Website (2025).
“Test scores are the single largest predictor of a student’s academic performance at Yale. And this is true overall for years. And it’s true even when we control for every other available variable that we can,” said Mark Dunn, assistant director of Admissions at Yale, on the Yale Admissions Podcast (2024).
“Standardized test scores are a much better predictor of academic success than high school grades,” said Christina Paxson, president of Brown University, quoted by The New York Times (2024).
In fact, in 2013, The New York Times quoted the dean of admissions at the time, Janet Rapeleye, saying that ““For [Princeton], more information is always better… If [applicants] submit both [SAT and ACT scores], that generally gives us a little more information.”
Outside the Ivy League, Ohio State, Auburn University, and Purdue at least inform applicants that they value test scores and recommend or expect test scores to be sent.
So why doesn’t the UNC System, and specifically its exemplary flagship university, require or even recommend test scores when they provide such helpful information? While there are some on the UNC Board of Governors that want to return to prioritizing educational excellence, others are clinging to COVID-era policies that ushered in test-optional admissions. But, it is the COVID-era policies that have led us to a 30-year low in academic preparedness, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress.
By letting students withhold low test scores (students don’t withhold high scores), UNC is essentially pretending that it doesn’t know that those scores are low when they’re not submitted. Why try to deceive themselves? Dartmouth found that disadvantaged students were withholding low scores that were still high enough, given the students’ circumstances, that the lower scores still would have helped those disadvantaged students gain admission. The confusion of test-optional admissions and withholding of relevant information run counter to common sense.
Instead of making headlines for leading other flagships in a return back to academic merit, the UNC System is instead making headlines about using artificial intelligence to evaluate students’ application essays. A holistic approach to admissions makes sense: students should be more than their grades and test scores and be understood within the context of their particular opportunities. Using AI to assess grammar and writing quality (when an applicant’s essay may very well have been corrected by AI and/or by a paid essay editor) to evaluate applicants is a further step away from valuing verifiable academic preparedness.
The UNC System is second to none and its flagship, UNC-Chapel Hill, is a shining beacon of educational excellence. Let it remain so. Bring back merit.