Students at Torrey Pines High School and Canyon Crest Academy applying to University of California STEM programs could face standardized testing requirements again as early as fall 2028 if the UC system acts on a growing push from faculty and local school boards.

The San Dieguito Union High School District board voted unanimously on Thursday, Aug. 6, to pass a resolution urging the UC system to reinstate SAT and ACT requirements for STEM major applicants. The vote came after five UC San Diego professors testified that dropping the tests in 2020 has left incoming freshmen dangerously unprepared.

A UC San Diego study published in November 2025 found the number of students with math skills below high school level increased nearly 30-fold over five years. By fall 2025, 921 UCSD freshmen enrolled in remedial math, representing 11.8% of the incoming class. A quarter of those students had earned straight A's in high school math.

"Removing the SAT does not remove competition or demographic advantages; it just redirects the arms race," Kyle Handley, a UCSD economics professor and parent of children at Del Mar Heights and Earl Warren schools, told the board. "Take away test scores and the effort shifts to more AP courses, more extracurriculars and squeezing every possible tenth of a point out of GPA. The remaining signals become more inflated and less informative."

Trustees Michael Allman and Phan Anderson drafted the resolution, which the board first considered at its June 17 meeting before continuing it to August. By July, more than 2,300 UC faculty members had signed an open letter to the UC Board of Regents calling for the SAT/ACT math requirement's return, including seven of nine UC mathematics department chairs and 73 STEM department chairs, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune.

UCSD archaeology professor Geoffrey Braswell said at the meeting that math is only half the problem, noting too many admitted students cannot read or write at the college or high school level. UCSD economics professor Marc Muendler, in a letter read into the record by Rancho Santa Fe School District trustee Kate Butler, warned the university is "setting these admitted but underprepared students up for failure."

Board Vice President Rimga Viskanta proposed language acknowledging that test scores "correlate strongly with family income and can reflect uneven access to test preparation." But Trustee Anderson opposed the income-correlation language, citing its similarity to comments by former Superintendent Cheryl James Ward, who was fired in 2022. Allman agreed to strike the income reference from the final version, keeping only a commitment to expanding test-prep access for all students.

The resolution also calls on other California school districts to adopt similar measures and urges the UC Board of Regents to "go as fast as possible with a thoughtful implementation so that it doesn't affect another graduating class."

The UC's Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools is studying the readiness gap on an expedited timeline, with a report expected by February 2027 and recommendations by June 2027. Any policy change would need UC Regents approval and could not take effect before fall 2028 applicants, meaning students entering college in fall 2029.