The SAT and ACT, once essential for college admissions, are no longer required by over 2,000 U.S. four-year colleges, according to FairTest. This shift toward test-optional policies gained momentum after COVID-19 made testing difficult. Before the pandemic, around 1,000 schools were already test-optional. Today, the 2,000 test-optional schools represent the majority of four-year colleges in the U.S., which had 2,637 institutions in 2021.
