The College has reinstated the standardized testing requirement for undergraduate admissions, ending the test-optional policy adopted during the pandemic. The new policy goes into effect with applicants to the class of 2029. 

Research, conducted in part by four Dartmouth professors, indicates the SAT and ACT tests can help identify “students from less-resourced backgrounds who would succeed at Dartmouth but might otherwise be missed in a test-optional environment,” according to a February statement from President Sian Beilock. 

The faculty team charged by Beilock to “follow the evidence” included economics professors Elizabeth Cascio, Doug Staiger,and Bruce Sacerdote ’97, and sociology professor Michele Tine.They reported four major findings:

• SAT and ACT scores are highly predictive of academic achievement at Dartmouth.
• The SAT is a strong predictor of academic success at Dartmouth for all subgroups.
• A test-optional policy is likely a barrier to Dartmouth identifying less-advantaged students who would succeed at Dartmouth for three reasons: Without a common test score metric for all applicants, admissions must rely on other factors that may be biased against low-income students; lower-income and international students are more likely to be from high schools where admissions has less data to interpret a transcript; and some less-advantaged students don’t submit test scores that would be a positive signal to admissions.
• Test-optional policies do not necessarily increase the proportion of less-advantaged students in the applicant pool. (Beilock has acknowledged that Dartmouth needs to improve the economic diversity of the student body.)

Elsewhere, Yale and Brown have also reinstated testing as an admissions requirement. Columbia University has indicated that it will not. Other Ivy schools plan to remain test-optional for at least another year.