““Between 2020 and 2025, the number of UC San Diego freshmen whose math skills fall below middle-school level increased nearly thirtyfold.”
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The Report That Changes Everything
In November 2025, UC San Diego quietly released one of the most consequential admissions reports in years: the Senate–Administration Workgroup on Admissions Final Report.
Its findings were blunt:
“Over the past five years, UC San Diego has experienced a steep decline in the academic preparation of its entering first-year students — particularly in mathematics, but also in writing and language skills.”
That decline, the report says, wasn’t random. It coincided with the elimination of standardized testing and widespread grade inflation.
Between 2020 and 2025, the number of students whose math skills “fall below middle-school level” increased nearly thirtyfold, reaching “roughly one in eight members of the entering cohort.”
That’s one in eight freshmen arriving on campus unable to do middle-school math.
How We Got Here
In 2020, the UC Board of Regents voted to remove the SAT and ACT from admissions — a move that, as the report notes, went against the advice of the Academic Senate’s Standardized Testing Task Force (STTF).
“The elimination of standardized testing resulted in more reliance on high school grades even though the STTF report notes the worrisome trend of grade inflation in many schools that had already been substantial in 2020.”
Once the tests disappeared, UC relied almost entirely on transcripts — just as the pandemic was forcing teachers to ease grading standards. The combination created what UC San Diego calls “a mismatch between students’ course level/grades and their actual levels of preparation.”
When Straight-A Students Can’t Pass Algebra
UC San Diego’s analysis revealed that grades had become nearly meaningless as predictors of readiness.
“The correlation between the average math grade and the placement result is only around 0.25 on a scale of 0 to 1.”
And most stunning:
“In 2024, over 25% of the students in (middle school level remedial) Math 2 had a math grade average of 4.0.”
That means a quarter of students who needed remedial math — covering material below Algebra I — had straight-A transcripts in high school math.
Without standardized testing, admissions officers had no reliable benchmark to tell which students were actually ready for college-level work.
The Consequences
To catch up, UC San Diego had to invent two new remedial courses — Math 2 and Math 3B — covering everything from elementary arithmetic through Algebra II.
“No other UC campus offers a course equivalent to Math 2, which remediates elementary and middle school math.”
The report notes that “few, if any students who place into Math 2 have successfully completed an engineering degree.”
And because so many students needed these classes, UC San Diego warned that instructional resources were being stretched thin:
“Admitting large numbers of underprepared students risks harming those students and straining limited instructional resources.”
Who Gets Hurt Without Standards
Ironically, dropping the SAT and ACT — a policy meant to promote equity — ended up hurting the very students it was designed to help.
UC San Diego led all campuses in enrolling students from under-resourced “LCFF+ high schools,” but the academic gaps were wide:
“While in 2021–2022 only one in eight LCFF+ students required Math 2/3B placement, by 2025–2026 that number had risen to one in three.”
The report is candid:
“Admitting large numbers of students who are profoundly underprepared risks harming the very students we hope to support, by setting them up for failure.”
And it adds:
“We can only help so many students, and only when the gaps they need to overcome are within reach.”
In other words, access without preparation isn’t opportunity — it’s frustration.
The Call to Re-Examine Testing
By late 2025, the workgroup had seen enough. Their final recommendation is unmistakable:
“UC San Diego’s representative on BOARS should advocate for a systemwide reexamination of standardized testing, as many peer institutions have already done.”
They also urged the system to:
“Investigate disparities in high school grading standards and develop a UC-wide response to ensure fair and reliable admissions evaluation.”
The goal isn’t to make tests the only measure, but to restore a common benchmark of readiness — something objective, comparable, and fair.
Why Merit Still Matters
This debate isn’t about nostalgia for bubble sheets. It’s about what happens when you remove all common standards and call it fairness.
As UC San Diego admits:
“We face enormous uncertainty when judging the math skills of our applicants.”
That uncertainty hurts everyone — top students lose a chance to stand out, and underprepared students lose the feedback they need to improve.
Reinstating standardized testing wouldn’t replace holistic review; it would restore balance between equity and excellence, between opportunity and readiness.
Final Thoughts
The SAT and ACT aren’t perfect. But as the UC San Diego report makes clear, eliminating them didn’t make admissions more just — it made them more random.
A merit-based system doesn’t punish students; it measures their starting point, so educators can meet them where they are.
Re-introducing standardized testing in California’s public universities isn’t about turning back the clock. It’s about turning back toward truth — the truth about where students stand, what they need, and what real fairness looks like.