Connecticut parents: Great article by David Blobaum, national education expert

Relevant excerpt – published in The Hill:

According to a 2025 report by faculty at the University of California, San Diego, a math placement exam for freshmen found that a quarter of those who tested below middle-school level had perfect 4.0 GPAs in their high school math classes. Inflated grades are worse than useless — they lie.

Colleges do have one standardized, authenticated measure of academic preparedness: SAT and ACT scores. Yet most colleges have stayed test-optional since the COVID shutdowns. The truest measure of what people value is what they do, not what they say, and by that measure most colleges have not cared much about authenticity at all.

But that is starting to change. Every Ivy League school has now announced a return to test-required admissions. Columbia, which had pledged to remain permanently test-optional, was the last holdout — it recently reversed course.

The case for using the scores is strong. A 2024 Opportunity Insights study of Ivy-plus colleges (the eight Ivies plus schools like the University of Chicago, Duke, MIT and Stanford) found that SAT and ACT scores are 3.9 times as predictive of first-year college grades as high school GPA. It made no sense to ignore a measure of the very preparedness colleges claim to want. It still makes no sense, especially when colleges say they prefer the authentic applicant to the curated one.

Students have also noticed. For the first time since before the pandemic, more applicants reported an SAT or ACT score through the Common App than did not. Those submitting test scores grew 10 percent over last year; those not submitting scores declined by 6 percent. Families are no longer taking test-optional colleges at their word. They have worked out the obvious: If a high score can help, then withholding a score can hurt.