A shocking portion of colleges no longer require SAT or ACT tests — and profs are begging them to reverse course
New York Post
Overall Assessment
The article adopts a crisis narrative around declining academic standards due to test-optional policies, emphasizing faculty alarm while marginalizing equity concerns. It relies on emotionally charged language and selective data from elite institutions. The framing privileges institutional prestige over educational access, with minimal engagement with opposing perspectives.
"incoming freshmen were increasingly incompetent"
Loaded Labels
Headline & Lead 40/100
The headline and lead emphasize emotional impact over balanced reporting, using hyperbolic language and framing a complex policy shift as a crisis.
✕ Sensationalism: The headline uses emotionally charged language ('shocking portion') to provoke a reaction rather than inform neutrally, which undermines professionalism.
"A shocking portion of colleges no longer require SAT or ACT tests — and profs are begging them to reverse course"
✕ Loaded Adjectives: The use of 'shockingly poor' in the lead frames academic qualifications in a negatively charged way, implying moral or systemic failure.
"students arriving with shockingly poor academic qualifications"
✕ Headline / Body Mismatch: The headline implies a widespread crisis, but the body focuses narrowly on a few elite institutions and specific data from UC schools, overgeneralizing the issue.
"A shocking portion of colleges no longer require SAT or ACT tests — and profs are begging them to reverse course"
Language & Tone 35/100
The article employs emotionally charged language and moralistic framing, undermining objectivity and inviting judgment rather than inquiry.
✕ Loaded Adjectives: Describing student qualifications as 'shockingly poor' injects subjective judgment rather than neutral description.
"students arriving with shockingly poor academic qualifications"
✕ Loaded Labels: Referring to students as 'incompetent' is a value-laden label that dehumanizes and lacks nuance.
"incoming freshmen were increasingly incompetent"
✕ Outrage Appeal: The article frames the situation as a moral failure, inviting reader indignation rather than analysis.
"professors... are begging their schools to bring them back"
✕ Passive-Voice Agency Obfuscation: Phrasing like 'the portion... surged' avoids specifying who conducted the measurement or how data was collected, weakening accountability.
"surged from 0.5% in 2020 to 8.5% in 2025"
Balance 45/100
The article cites credible institutions but lacks balance, privileging faculty concerns while omitting voices from equity advocates or educational researchers.
✕ Single-Source Reporting: Much of the data comes from a single report from UC-San Diego and the Wall Street Journal, without independent verification or broader sampling.
"One report from the University of California-San Diego shows..."
✕ Official Source Bias: The article relies heavily on professors' perspectives without including voices from admissions offices, equity advocates, or affected students.
"About 1,200 professors across math and science departments have signed a letter..."
✓ Proper Attribution: Specific institutions and reports are named, allowing readers to trace claims to sources, which supports credibility.
"One report from the University of California-San Diego shows..."
✓ Viewpoint Diversity: The article briefly notes the original rationale for test-optional policies (fairness), but does not quote or represent advocates of those policies.
"criticism that it favors white and wealthy students while leaving low-wealth minorities behind led many schools..."
Story Angle 40/100
The article frames test-optional policies as a failure leading to academic decline, emphasizing a crisis narrative over systemic or equity-based analysis.
✕ Narrative Framing: The story is framed as a moral decline due to test-optional policies, suggesting a clear 'problem-solution' arc without exploring trade-offs.
"professors are begging their schools to bring them back"
✕ Framing by Emphasis: The article emphasizes declining academic standards while downplaying equity motivations behind test-optional policies.
"We now observe preparation gaps so severe that instructors must re-teach middle school mathematics..."
✕ Conflict Framing: Presents the issue as a battle between professors and administrators, rather than a complex educational policy debate.
"professors are begging their schools to bring them back"
✕ Moral Framing: Portrays the return of testing as a necessary corrective to declining standards, casting it as a moral imperative.
"UC is increasingly unable to provide students with the education needed to become leaders in California’s scientific, technological and economic future"
Completeness 50/100
The article provides some background on test-optional shifts but fails to fully contextualize data or present countervailing evidence or national trends.
✕ Missing Historical Context: While the article mentions pandemic-era changes, it lacks deeper context on long-standing critiques of standardized testing related to race, class, and disability.
✕ Decontextualised Statistics: Cites increases in remedial math needs without explaining how the data was defined or whether it reflects broader national trends.
"from 0.5% in 2020 to 8.5% in 2025"
✕ Cherry-Picking: Focuses on institutions like MIT, Dartmouth, and Yale that reinstated testing, ignoring many others that have maintained or expanded test-optional policies.
"MIT brought it back by 2022 and Dartmouth by 2024"
✓ Contextualisation: Acknowledges the original equity rationale for dropping test requirements, providing some balance to the narrative.
"criticism that it favors white and wealthy students while leaving low-wealth minorities behind"
Education system is failing due to test-optional policies
The article uses emotionally charged language and selective data to frame test-optional admissions as causing academic collapse, emphasizing 'shockingly poor' qualifications and 'incompetent' students. It highlights remedial math needs rising at UC-San Diego and quotes professors 'begging' for change, constructing a narrative of systemic failure.
"students arriving with shockingly poor academic qualifications"
Higher education is in a state of crisis
The article employs crisis framing throughout, using words like 'shocking,' 'begging,' and 'plummeting' to convey urgency. It presents test-optional policies as a rupture from stability, with elite institutions reversing course as if correcting a dangerous experiment.
"professors are begging their schools to bring them back after encountering a startling increase in students lacking basic aptitude"
Test-optional policies are harmful to academic standards
The article frames test-optional policies as directly causing harm to educational quality, citing increased remediation needs and declining classroom standards. It privileges voices of elite STEM professors and selectively highlights institutions that reinstated testing, while downplaying equity motivations.
"incoming freshmen were increasingly incompetent and classroom standards were plummeting"
Academic preparedness is under threat
Students' academic abilities are portrayed as endangered, with data showing a surge in those needing remedial math. The framing emphasizes vulnerability in foundational skills, using terms like 'struggled to do middle school-level math' to suggest a crisis in readiness.
"about 900 incoming freshmen were unable to do high school level-math — up from just 30 with the same problem in 2020"
Equity advocates are framed as adversaries to academic excellence
The equity rationale for test-optional policies is mentioned only briefly and passively, then immediately contrasted with urgent faculty warnings. This positions fairness concerns as opposing academic rigor, implicitly casting equity-driven reforms as hostile to educational quality.
"criticism that it favors white and wealthy students while leaving low-wealth minorities behind led many schools in recent years to make score submissions optional or refuse to look at them altogether"
The article adopts a crisis narrative around declining academic standards due to test-optional policies, emphasizing faculty alarm while marginalizing equity concerns. It relies on emotionally charged language and selective data from elite institutions. The framing privileges institutional prestige over educational access, with minimal engagement with opposing perspectives.
Following the pandemic, many U.S. colleges adopted test-optional policies to promote equity. Recently, some institutions, including MIT and Dartmouth, have reinstated SAT/ACT requirements due to concerns about student readiness. At the University of California, a report shows rising numbers of incoming students needing remedial math, prompting debate among faculty and administrators.
New York Post — Business - Economy
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