It’s one of those “good news / bad news” days for all potential fall 2025 Dartmouth University applicants. The good news is you are once again going to be judged at least somewhat on your quantifiable intellectual merits. (Yay! Unless you’re stupid! In which case — dang!) The bad news is that this means you can’t get away with hiding that lame SAT score and applying “early decision” anymore to lock in a first-mover advantage. For the Ivy League university is formally reinstating standardized-testing requirements for all applicants to the class of 2029 after a four-year interregnum of test-free applications. It seemed at the time rather obviously like a dangerous experiment in admitting a wildly underqualified and unprepared student body — very much the equivalent of surfing the internet without a firewall, exploring a BSL-4 biolab in Wuhan without a hazmat suit, or cruising the French Quarter without French letters. It turns out that after four years of this, Dartmouth agrees, and it has decided to protect itself again.

Dartmouth first “temporarily suspended” its SAT/ACT application requirement back in June 2020, during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. I use scare quotes around the phrase “temporarily suspended” because it was understood at the time to be an act of educational activism made possible by the societal dislocation of Covid — a pilot program whereby Dartmouth could finally access a greater pool of minority applicants. (Yes, folks: It was a DEI initiative at its core.) The chronic underperformance of minority groups in standardized testing has plagued America for decades, but it has dramatically worsened in recent years; here was a way perhaps to — under the guise of a temporary Covid provision — level the playing field. (Last year, in a poorly timed effort to hop onto a stalling bandwagon, Columbia University announced that it was abolishing the SAT/ACT requirement permanently; the law school, tellingly, instead floated the idea of requiring a “video application.” Either way, it’s rather obvious what goal they’re working toward.)

If for nothing more than black comedy, it would be fun to believe that the reason Dartmouth reinstated its standardized-testing requirement is that, having dispensed with the only neutral metric universities have to gauge applicants with, student quality precipitously dropped off a cliff. (Imagine some grey-templed guy with suspenders shaking his head disgustedly as he tosses yet another simpering “Dartmouth ’26” résumé into the trash can.) In all probability, however, what Dartmouth saw was something far worse: Even more rich white people were being admitted.

The cruelest joke about removing the standardized-testing requirement for elite colleges is that the policy — designed specifically as a way to increase minority enrollment — achieves the exact opposite of what colleges intend. Rich and privileged mediocrities used to have their parents donate to secure admission to elite schools. Now, in an era of exponentially increased competition for admission, the rich simply hire six-figure “college counselors” who stage-manage a child’s entire life down to the em dashes in their admissions essays. The one thing those parents and pros cannot do is walk into a testing room and take a child’s exam for them. (Well, not legally, at least; Lord only knows what some parents get up to.)

And the glorious irony of Dartmouth’s failed experiment is that it was these children — the least impressive of all, spoiled children of privilege without any real intellectual ability — who won big from Dartmouth’s woke move. My guess is that these types got in and accepted offers in disproportionate numbers . . . because all the other elite schools that still required an SAT score rejected them instantly. (Another big win for restorative justice!)

The beauty of standardized testing is that — no matter how many tutors paid for or practice tests taken — it ultimately tells real truths about the undeniable natural abilities of humans beyond the crude and forever visible markers of race and class. Tests are the great equalizer, the proof that while education is subject to class and privilege, intelligence respects no boundaries. I can do no better than to quote the editors of National Review on this subject:

Clinical studies have shown that standardized testing does exactly what you expected it would: It identifies intellectually gifted children from all strata of society, but even more crucially allows talented children from disadvantaged backgrounds (whether economic or minority) to shine in a way their local educational opportunities (or a chaotic home life) might never have permitted. It forms the essence of what any just conception of America as a so-called meritocracy was supposed to be about: You might have gone to Phillips Exeter Academy and had the best SAT tutors available to you — but this kid over here living above his parents’ corner store and studying when he doesn’t have to mind the shop? He took it once and scored a 1590.

So I, for one, applaud Dartmouth’s restoration of the SAT/ACT requirement for applicants, even if I wish I could believe that it was doing it because it feared that it was producing freshmen of lower intellectual caliber. Instead, you can bet that the real reason is that the policy was allowing too many rich kids who only looked good “on paper” to slip through the cracks. So now I suppose it’s back to the drawing board for the school’s DEI and admissions offices, working diligently to find a more effective way to discriminate.