Ending Reliance on Standardized Tests to Accelerate Equity in UC Admissions

Dear Chair Perez, Vice Chair Estolano, and President Napolitano:

The undersigned educational equity, civil rights organizations, and K-12 organizations and leaders urge you to take the historic and bold step to eliminate the University of California’s (UC) reliance on standardized tests in eligibility and admission decisions. This change would further align UC practices with its mission of enrolling students that reflect the diversity of the state.

For decades, eligibility and admissions policies requiring standardized tests have given affluent, overrepresented students preferential treatment in college access. The use of standardized tests in current admissions policies yield more wealthy and white freshman cohorts. While those privileged students fill the coveted, at-capacity seats across the UC campuses, highly capable, low-income, Black, Latinx, Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander (AANAPI), and other historically underserved and underrepresented students are too often denied access to our state’s premier research institutions.

We applaud President Janet Napolitano for her charge to the Task Force to examine whether the UC and its students are best served by the current use of standardized testing in admission decisions.