UC Berkeley mathematicians reignite national conversation on college admissions and SAT/ACT scores

June 11, 2026

by Alexander Rony

Five UC Berkeley faculty members have launched an open letter urging the University of California to reinstate SAT or ACT math scores for applicants to STEM majors, arguing that campuses need a clearer way to assess whether students are prepared for college-level quantitative work.

The effort has drawn more than 1,450 faculty signatures as of June 11 and pushed a long-running admissions debate back into public view. Its authors say the issue is not whether admitted students are talented, but whether UC’s test-free admissions system gives campuses enough information to place STEM students where they can realistically succeed.

Still, when the professors issued a call to action in the form of an open letter, they were surprised by how fast their peers responded. In just a few days, more than 1,000 UC faculty members had endorsed the letter. The effort has since been covered in major media outlets, including the Atlantic, CBS News, CNN, Fox News, the Los Angeles Times, and NPR.

“I definitely did not expect what happened,” said Zvezdelina Stankova, a professor of mathematics at UC Berkeley. “The issues in the letter have been ripening for years, so you’re seeing an outburst of faculty concern.”

“At first, I thought it would be a quick affair, but for the last three weeks, it has been like a full-time job,” said Svetlana Jitomirskaya, another Berkeley math professor who has been handling media requests, organizing responses to questions, and meeting with various committees.

Stankova and Jitomirskaya are two of the five professors — four in math, one in law — who led the open letter. All were motivated by what they describe as an observable decline in the lowest quartile’s math skills. The letter started spreading through math departments, then moved to related fields in science and engineering before breaking through into areas like business, social science, and the humanities.

Stankova noticed a stark difference when she returned to teaching an introductory calculus class in spring 2023.

Two women in front of chalkboards filled with mathematical formulas

ZVEZDELINA STANKOVA (LEFT) AND SVETLANA JITOMIRSKAYA (RIGHT)

Jitomirskaya's photo by Brittany Hosea-Small

“That semester was an eye-opener in many respects,” said Stankova. “I saw the bottom third falling off in their math preparedness. They just could not cope.”

A fall 2023 linear algebra course confirmed her suspicions. She found herself spending more time reiterating what should have been familiar concepts. Fewer students showed up for lectures, and a surprising number of those missing students weren’t watching the recordings either.

Some of these changes coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic, but professors warn that the trends persist. Technology has proven to be a double-edged sword. Students have immediate access to more information than ever, but they also have shorter attention spans, and many have become overly reliant on artificial intelligence.

Stankova and other professors had been discussing these dynamics when, in November of last year, UC San Diego released a sobering report showing that one in 12 incoming students tested below middle school math standards. The open letter grew out of a desire to show that UC San Diego’s experience was not an isolated case, but a systemic challenge requiring urgent intervention.

“It’s not a concern, it’s a crisis,” said Stankova. “One of our co-authors described it like a car going down the hill, and the brakes are off. What are you going to do? You’re not going to stop and create a committee to study the mechanics of the car — you’re going to pull the emergency brake, then rethink what’s going on.”

$Three bar charts showing proficiency levels of assessed students in Fall 2021, Fall 2022, and Fall 2023. Each chart shows high percentages of students on the extremes, with fewer students each year who are proficient in all eight categories.$

UC Berkeley data on incoming Calculus I students from the Mathematical Diagnostic Testing Project (MDTP). Students were assessed on their proficiency in eight math topics.

The issues in the letter have been ripening for years, so you’re seeing an outburst of faculty concern.

Zvezdelina Stankova

Not every student is struggling — Jitomirskaya praised the undergraduates in her graduate-level courses — but a large group certainly has fallen behind. The letter’s co-authors examined diagnostic assessments of incoming Calculus I students from 2021 to 2023. They found a U-shaped curve, with clusters at both extremes: proficient in all topics, or proficient in none.

Students’ divergent levels of mathematical proficiency have created polarized courses, where instructors have a difficult time teaching the full course material while simultaneously bringing many students up to a starting baseline. A few students have even required refreshers on adding fractions with different denominators.

The 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress provides further corroboration of the professors’ experiences with bifurcated cohorts. “The Nation’s Report Card” found that 45 percent of 12th grade students fell into the “below basic” category for math, worse than any previous assessment. Scores declined across all percentiles except the highest-performing students in the top 10 percent. The achievement gap between the highest- and lowest-performing 12th-grade math students is wider than ever.

The Department of Mathematics is doing all it can to help. In 2020, Professor Alexander Paulin and former lecturer Kelli Talaska devised an intervention: a summer, online pre-calculus course offered to all incoming students. Around 2,000 students signed up for the initial pilot. That one course evolved into the summer and fall course, “Foundations of Lower Division Mathematics.”

“It’s a bit of a long game,” said Paulin, who recently worked with the University of California’s Office of the President to adapt his course for high schoolers. “Students aren’t going to suddenly rocket from D’s to A-pluses in the course of their first semester. It comes later. I’ve had a lot of students who, at the start of the year, are blown out of the water by Calculus I. By the end of the year in Calculus II, they’re one of the best students in the class. It’s not unusual.”

Stankova differentiates mathematical aptitude from readiness. All her students did something amazing to get into UC Berkeley. They are bright and hard-working, but many started college far behind their peers, and it’s difficult to catch up on several years of missed education while maintaining a full course load.

$Two math problems covering basic trigonometry and exponents. A plurality (but minority) of students selected the correct answer.$

Sample problems from the MDTP tests and the percentage of incoming Calculus I students who correctly answered the green-shaded response.

Advocates for broader access argue that the UC system should remove barriers to lucrative STEM fields and give students the opportunity to prove themselves. After all, everyone admitted to UC Berkeley had to prove themselves academically. The average first-year student in fall 2024 had a weighted high school GPA between 4.31 and 4.65.

A September 2025 report by Saul Geiser of UC Berkeley’s Center for Studies in Higher Education argued that high school GPA is a stronger predictor of first-year outcomes than standardized tests. Furthermore, Geiser showed that admissions systems built around SAT and ACT scores put high-GPA students from less privileged backgrounds at a disadvantage.

How UC Berkeley is closing the math readiness gap

March 30, 2026

We want every student to succeed, and for that, they need to be matched with a suitable program.

Zvezdelina Stankova

Stankova countered these arguments by pointing to a report appended to the open letter. UC Berkeley used the CSU/UC Mathematical Diagnostic Testing Project to assess students entering calculus courses for their proficiency in eight topics. Of the 31 percent of students entering Calculus I in fall 2023 who took the diagnostic test and passed zero to two topics, 46 percent withdrew or received a D or F in the class. Essentially a coin flip, lamented Stankova.

Students who didn't take the diagnostic test were even less likely to pass the course than their peers diagnosed with severe preparation gaps. Stankova argued that this demonstrated the need for more data — like SAT and ACT scores — to understand incoming students’ math readiness and direct them to appropriate courses and resources.

She worried that the current situation causes students undue stress and increases the likelihood of dropping their dream majors, disrupting and cancelling degree completion altogether.

“The faculty deeply care about the students,” said Stankova. “We would not be doing this if we didn't care. We want every student to succeed, and for that, they need to be matched with a suitable program. If a student gets a ticket to a wonderful education at a UC campus only to fail their first class, that derails them. That is a financial burden on the state, on the parents, and on the student.”

Martin Olsson, the chair of the Department of Mathematics, agreed.

“I feel responsible at some level for all the students in our classes,” said Olsson, who signed the open letter. “Growth is not easy. We want students to push their boundaries and realize that they can do much more than they thought they could, but there is a point at which that becomes survival for the students, and that is a tragedy. That weighs on me.”

No professor feels that standardized test scores should be the only metrics for assessing applicant quality. They want a holistic approach that values the entire candidate. Other admissions factors can and should feed into that, but every metric has its downside and its bias.

Grades can be inflated and often vary wildly by school. Essays can now be ghostwritten by AI tools. Well-off parents can send their kids to tutors and enroll them in expensive extracurricular activities. SAT and ACT scores aren’t perfect either, but they add critical, objective context. They also offer a clear goal for high school students to focus on amid multifaceted admissions processes.

There are many debates over standardized tests and what they actually measure. Math professors bemoaned how politicized the discussion has become. Some opinion pieces framed the open letter as a rebuke of equitable policies and “woke” politics, which was not the authors’ intent.

“This is not a political matter,” Stankova insisted. “It is an educational matter.”

Likewise, professors did not want to blame individual teachers for structural problems.

“My experience with K-12 teachers is that they’re absolute heroes,” said Olsson.

The chair of the UC Academic Senate announced on Thursday that their Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools will review the UC system’s admissions policy on standardized test scores, a process that will take some time. If the UC Board of Regents ultimately does vote to reinstate SAT and ACT scores, implementation will fall to each campus, and there are many differing opinions on how that should be handled. It could take years for students to be admitted under a new system.

Two men smiling in side-by-side outdoor photos

ALEXANDER PAULIN (LEFT) AND MARTIN OLSSON (RIGHT)

Olsson's photo by George Bergman

Even if the open letter proves to be a turning point in this debate, it won’t be the closing argument.

Olsson struck a hopeful tone.

“At the end of the day, everyone involved is focused on how to best support students,” said Olsson, “even people who disagree strongly on these issues.”

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