https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opini...needs-sat/

But now, many of these colleges are crawling back to their pre-pandemic practice of requiring standardized test scores from applicants, and some of them quite abruptly. Yale, Dartmouth, and MIT each restored the test requirement for the class of 2029 earlier this year, and Harvard joined them this past week. In doing so, the institutions essentially admitted that the short-lived practice of test-optional admissions had led to the college admitting students who were not prepared to attend a university that required a certain degree of academic ability.

“"...More information, especially such strongly predictive information, is valuable for identifying talent from across the socioeconomic range,” Harvard Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Hopi Hoekstra said in a statement. “With this change, we hope to strengthen our ability to identify these promising students.”

It is an encouraging sign to see institutions once again recognize that the SAT and the ACT are useful sorting tools for determining whether or not students will succeed in college. Without the test requirement, universities placed themselves in a difficult position of having a higher dropout rate.

Dartmouth admitted as much. In their statement announcing the return of the test requirement, college President Sian Leah Beilock said, “Standardized test scores are an important predictor of a student’s success in Dartmouth’s curriculum, and this is true regardless of a student’s background or family income....""

Surprise, surprise. Texas discovered that students who submitted optional test scores had nearly a full point better GPA.

Yet another example of stupid is as stupid does

The administrators of these colleges are supposed to be intelligent people yet they allow themselves to be badgered and bullied into whatever brain dead notions the left comes up with.

I thought the SAT was considered racists by those same schools. Anyway, my guess is recent admitted classes aren't as up to par as previous and that can hurt a school's long term reputation. The elite schools can't have that so hence they are reinstating the requirement.