If you were counting on skipping the SAT or ACT, the ground has shifted. The test-optional policies that spread during the pandemic are being rolled back at the most selective schools, and the Ivy League is most of the way through the reversal.

Where the Ivies stand right now

For the 2026-2027 application cycle, six of the eight Ivy League schools have reinstated a standardized-testing requirement: Harvard, Yale, Brown, Cornell, Dartmouth, and Penn. Each carries its own exceptions, so read the policy rather than the headline. Dartmouth accepts AP, IB, A-level or qualifying national exam results from applicants at school outside the US; Harvard allows alternatives where SAT and ACT access is genuinely unavailable; Penn offers a hardship waiver. Columbia and Princeton are still test-optional for this cycle, and Princeton says applicants who do not submit scores are not disadvantaged. Both Columbia and Princeton have announced they will require scores starting with the 2027-2028 cycle, which would make all eight Ivies test-required.

Policies change from year to year and school to school, so check each college's admissions page before you apply. But the direction is not subtle: the default at highly selective schools is shifting from optional back to required.

Why it reversed

Several of these schools reviewed data from the test-optional years and found that students who submitted scores tended to do better academically, and that scores helped them identify strong applicants from high schools they did not know well. That evidence is the reason most of them give for going back to requiring tests.

How to plan your applications now

• Assume you will need a score. At selective schools, test-optional is no longer a safe thing to plan around. If even one school on your list requires a score, and increasingly they do, you are taking the test.
• A good score can help even where it is optional. A strong score is one more piece of evidence you can add, and at the most competitive schools many applicants still choose to submit one. Some schools, Princeton among them, say applicants without scores are not disadvantaged, so weigh it school by school rather than assuming.
• Do not wait to decide. The students who get hurt are the ones who assumed they could skip it, then found a required school late and had no score and no time. Build a score first, then choose where to send it.

How to build a score worth submitting

• Start with an honest baseline. Take one full-length, timed practice test under real conditions and see where you actually stand, not where you hope you stand.
• Set a target from the schools on your list. Look up the middle 50 percent score range for admitted students and aim for the top of it.
• Practice the patterns, not just more questions. Most points are lost to a small set of repeatable traps and setup errors. Find yours and drill them until they stop catching you.
• Rehearse the real format. The SAT is now digital and adaptive, and the ACT is shorter. Practice that matches each exam's real format transfers; loose problem sets do not.

Plan as though a score is required

Test-optional is ending where it matters most. The safe assumption for a selective-school applicant is that you will need a score, so start early, aim at the range your schools actually admit, and practice the way the real exam works. If you want a free baseline and full-length practice for both the SAT and ACT, you can start without signing up.