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The return of standardized testing requirements drove down the size of Harvard’s application pool this year — but it’s not clear how the change will affect the profile of future freshman classes.

The 11 percent drop in Harvard applications — 47,893 for seats in the Class of 2029, compared to 54,008 for the previous year’s class — was similar to decreases at other highly selective institutions that reinstated testing requirements for last year’s admissions cycle. Dartmouth College saw a similar decrease, and Yale and Brown University saw application volume decrease by roughly 12.5 percent.

But other highly selective universities that did not reinstate standardized testing requirements did not see similar decreases in applicants this cycle. Institutions such as Princeton University, Columbia University, and Duke University – which all continue to be test optional – saw record-high applications this admissions cycle.

Though Harvard’s application pool last year was smaller than any since the school adopted its test optional policy at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, it remained substantially larger than it was pre-pandemic.

Brian Taylor, a managing partner at the admissions consultancy Ivy Coach, said the drop was likely caused in part by a decrease in applications by students who thought they would have a better shot at an acceptance letter without submitting scores.

“We call them squeakers — students who thought they could squeak in during these years of test optional without test scores, and some of them could,” Taylor said.

Jay R. Rosner, executive director of the Princeton Review Foundation, said testing requirements likely dissuade prospective applicants with scores below a school’s typical range, but research is scant on what exactly deters students from taking standardized tests or submitting scores.

A Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment for this article.

At some test-optional universities, submitting scores gave applicants a boost in the admissions process. Harvard has never publicly stated whether its admissions office held a preference for students who submitted scores, but an archived version of its admissions website advised prospective applicants that “anything that might give a more complete or positive picture of an applicant can be helpful.”

Nearly three-quarters of students admitted to Harvard’s Class of 2028 submitted SAT or ACT scores, but Harvard does not release data on the percentage of its applicant pool that sends in scores.

Harvard’s return to standardized testing, which reversed an earlier decision to maintain its test optional policy through the Class of 2030 admissions cycle, was driven by a growing perception that omitting test scores meant admissions officers lacked a useful data point for determining which applicants were qualified.

When she announced Harvard’s return to the testing requirement in spring 2024, FAS Dean Hopi E. Hoekstra wrote that “more information, especially such strongly predictive information, is valuable for identifying talent from across the socioeconomic range.”

Harvard’s reversal waded into a long-running debate over exactly how useful standardized test scores are in predicting students’ performance in college. A 2023 paper — written by a University of North Carolina economist and two researchers at the College Board, which administers the SAT — found that students across 50 colleges who chose not to submit standardized test scores generally had lower grade point averages in their first year of college.

And 2023 paper by Harvard Kennedy School professor David J. Deming — now the College’s dean — Harvard economics professor Raj Chetty ’00, and Brown University professor John N. Friedman ’02 found that SAT and ACT scores, unlike students’ high school grades, were “highly predictive of post-college success.”

Harvard cited the paper in its decision to return to testing requirements.

But other studies, using different measurements, have suggested that colleges should emphasize grades over test scores. A 2025 paper by University of California Berkeley researcher Saul Geiser found that high school GPA was a better indicator than standardized testing of success in students’ first year of college.

When universities switched to test-optional admissions, a growing trend even before the pandemic, many described the change as a way to level the playing field. Taking the SAT or the ACT currently costs $68 a sitting, though low-income students may receive fee waivers, and some high school students pay for pricey tutoring programs.

Vinay Harpalani, a law professor at the University of New Mexico who has studied affirmative action in college admissions, said that standardized test scores tend to favor higher-income applicants.

“Typically, there’s a correlation between standardized test scores and socioeconomic status,” Harpalani said. “Obviously the kids with more resources can prepare more for the test.”

But other scholars say test scores make the admissions process more fair for applicants by reducing emphasis on personal statements and pricey extracurriculars.

“Not everyone can hire an expensive college coach to help them craft a personal essay,” Deming wrote in an April 2024 statement to The Crimson. “But everyone has the chance to ace the SAT or the ACT.”

Harvard officials have maintained that considering test scores allows the College’s admissions office to spot applicants from disadvantaged backgrounds.

“When we consider scores in the context of a student’s background and circumstances, they can help us identify talent and potential that might otherwise be missed,” Hoekstra said in an interview with the Harvard Gazette, a University-run publication, published last week.

Harvard’s policy change did not appear to immediately impact the income profile of its student body. This year, 21 percent of Harvard freshmen are eligible for Pell grants, federal awards that support low-income students — roughly the same as the percentage in the previous class.

Julie J. Park, an expert consultant for Harvard during the 2023 SFFA v. Harvard case and a higher education professor at the University of Maryland, said she was doubtful that returning to test requirements would create a boost for low-income students — and worried that required testing could make it harder for universities to build racially diverse classes.

Park pointed to the example of MIT, which reinstituted standardized testing requirements two years before Harvard and saw a 9 percentage point drop in Black, Hispanic, and Native American and Pacific Islander enrollment between the Class of 2027 to 2028 — from 25 percent to 16 percent.

For the second year in a row, Harvard saw a decrease in the proportion of underrepresented minority students enrolled in its freshman class this cycle. But it’s not clear whether the change is related to test requirements: Black and Hispanic enrollment at Harvard and other colleges has been in flux as they adjust to the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling against race-conscious admissions.

Rosner said test scores alone are not a definitive indication of which students will thrive after receiving their acceptance letters.

“You can’t make an assumption of qualification or merit based on a test score,” he said. “So, there’ll be false positives and false negatives with admitted students without test scores — some students will flourish, and, you know, become campus leaders, and other students will not flourish.”

—Staff writer Cassidy M. Cheng can be reached at cassidy.cheng@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @cassidy_cheng28.

—Staff writer Elias M. Valencia can be reached at elias.valencia@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @eliasmvalencia.