FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 29, 2026, Livingston, NJ — The Asian American Coalition for Education (AACE), a national leader dedicated to equal education rights and educational excellence, today calls on all four‑year colleges and universities in the United States to restore standardized testing as a major component of their admissions processes.
This call comes amid a growing national shift back toward objective academic measures. Yale University recently announced it will reinstate standardized testing requirements, citing strong evidence that SAT and ACT scores help identify talented students from all backgrounds, including low‑income, first‑generation, and minority applicants. In a parallel development, more than 600 University of California faculty members have signed a public letter urging the UC Board of Regents, the UC Office of the President, and the Academic Senate to require undergraduate STEM applicants to submit SAT or ACT math scores beginning with the 2027–28 admissions cycle.
Following the suspension of testing requirements during COVID‑19, over a dozen selective institutions — including Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, MIT, Brown, Dartmouth, Cornell, Georgetown, Caltech, the University of Texas at Austin, Purdue, Stanford, Georgia Tech, and the University of Wisconsin system — have reinstated standardized testing. Despite this clear trend, most American colleges still maintain test‑optional policies.
Opting out of standardized testing undermines meritocracy, weakens academic excellence, and jeopardizes America’s competitiveness in global technological fields. The United States heavily relies on new immigrants to fill critical STEM and high‑tech roles, and abandoning standardized testing only exacerbates the nation’s STEM talent shortage. Test‑optional policies also harm hardworking students — especially Asian American and low‑income families — who depend on objective academic measures rather than costly extracurricular activities to demonstrate their abilities. The return of standardized testing at leading institutions reflects a broader recognition that test‑optional policies have failed the nation and the hardworking college applicants who deserve merit‑based admissions.
AACE has been a national leader in advocating for the restoration of standardized testing. In his congressional testimony on September 28, 2023, AACE President Yukong Zhao strongly recommended reinstating standardized testing to ensure fairness, transparency, and equal opportunity for all students. The Second National Conference on Equal Education Rights in 2024 — hosted by AACE and attended by scholars, civil rights leaders, and community organizations — also issued a formal call urging American colleges to restore standardized testing as a core admissions criterion.
“The recent decisions by Yale and the public call from hundreds of UC faculty confirm what decades of research have shown: standardized tests are among the most reliable, fair, and predictive tools for evaluating academic potential,” said Yukong Zhao, President of AACE. “AACE urges all four‑year colleges — public and private — to follow the evidence and restore standardized testing. America’s future depends on a fair, merit‑based education system that rewards hard work, talent, and achievement.”
Asian American Coalition for Education
MEDIA CONTACTS: Sam Yan, telephone: 703-470-3292; email: samuelyan@msn.com.
About the AACE: www.asianamericanforeducation.org
Asian American Coalition for Education (AACE) is a non-political, nonprofit, grassroots national alliance with over 300 partnering organizations nationwide. Since 2015, AACE have been mobilizing Asian communities to stand firmly behind SFFA in its lawsuits against Harvard and UNC. AACE helped expose the Ivy League college’s anti-Asian discrimination on the national stage. Over the last nine years, AACE teamed up with over 360 Asian American organizations, organized the Boston Rally in 2018 and “Equal Education for All” rally in 2022, encouraged Asian American students to join SFFA’s lawsuits, and filed five amicus briefs. Besides supporting SFFA, we have advanced the cause of equal education rights for the Asian-American community in many other areas, including federal adoption of AACE policy recommendation on college admissions in July 2018, federal lawsuit against Yale University in 2020, support to Asian Americans’ fights for equal education rights in Maryland, New York, Washington, California, Massachusetts and other states. AACE is the proven leader in advocating meritocracy and educational excellence in America.