After Dartmouth, MIT & Yale, Brown University Reintroduces Test Requirement

Brown University has joined Yale, Dartmouth, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in reinstating standardized testing requirement for the Class of 2029, starting in the 2025/26 academic year.

Brown's decision comes after months of analysis and reviews by the Ad Hoc Committee on Admissions Policies regarding the university’s admission practices, Erudera.com reports.

“Starting with next year’s application cycle (effective for the Class of 2029), Brown will reinstate the requirement that applicants for first-year admission submit standardized tests scores (the SAT or ACT, except in the rare circumstance when these tests are not available to a student),” Brown explains.

The committee's first suggestions were to reintroduce a requirement for first-year applicants to submit test results while increasing the outreach on the university’s “testing in context” approach.

Brown’s Provost Francis Doyle said that based on the analysis, SAT and ACT scores are key indicators in predicting students’ ability to perform well during their academic journey at Brown.

In addition to the testing requirement, the university has accepted the committee’s recommendation to maintain its Early Decision option - a binding agreement - and not make any adjustment to its current practices for applicants with family connections, including “legacies” and children of faculty and staff.

President Christina Paxson said the decision on the testing requirement and the Early Decision option reflect Brown’s commitment to cultivating diversity and inclusion as core values for academic excellence.

“The decisions we have reached regarding Early Decision and standardized test requirements remain true to these values, and continuing to examine family connections is the right decision for the complicated questions this issue raises for our community,” Paxson said.

Brown University stopped requiring undergraduate applicants to submit standardized test scores in 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

When deciding whether to keep the Early Decision option, the committee noted that it should remain because it is attractive to students and contributes to a diverse student body’s enrollment.

A total of 6,244 early decision applications were submitted to Brown University for the Class of 2028. Of this pool, which was the largest in the school’s history, Brown accepted 898 students.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology was one of the first higher education institutions to reinstate its SAT/ACT requirement after reviewing the performance of applicants during the past 15 years.

Last month, both Dartmouth College and Yale University decided to end the test-optional policy, announcing that undergraduate applicants must submit test scores when applying.

What has changed in Yale’s policy this year is the list of tests which has expanded, meaning the institution will for the first time, accept scores from advanced Placement (AP) or International Baccalaureate (IB) exams as well.

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