Here’s a number that shouldn’t be possible: approximately 132 students with straight A’s in their high school math classes are now in remedial math courses at UC San Diego (courses that cover elementary and middle school material).
How does a top math student end up relearning fractions? A newly released report from UC San Diego by the Senate-Administration Workgroup on Admission documents a series of changes that may have contributed to this dilemma. The elimination of standardized testing, intended to support disadvantaged students, may have ultimately harmed them more than other groups of students.
The Problem That Multiplied
Between 2020 and 2025, the percentage of incoming UCSD freshmen unable to demonstrate middle-school-level math proficiency increased from about 1% to 12%—that’s 916 students in the incoming class. This was an unexpected situation, given that 94% of incoming students had taken math beyond the minimum requirements: 42% had completed calculus or precalculus, and another 44% had taken statistics. The issue isn’t a lack of strong transcripts; it’s that those transcripts don’t reflect actual preparation. As a result, the rapid increase in the need for remedial classes has caused a strain on support resources for these students and has led UCSD to begin rethinking the college admissions process.
Three Key Changes
The authors of the report identified three changes that could explain the increase in the need for remedial support: COVID-related learning loss, dramatic grade inflation, and the elimination of standardized testing from UC admissions in 2020.
Each change made sense at the time. The pandemic led to disruptions in the education system that predominantly affected low-income populations. Students were struggling with online learning during the pandemic, so teachers showed leniency. And standardized tests seemed to disadvantage low-income students, so removing those tests from the admissions process seemed equitable.
Together, these changes created a perfect storm in which the information colleges needed to assess college readiness effectively vanished… just as the reliability of grades was eroding. Which brings us to an uncomfortable question at the heart of this report.
Did Removing Standardized Testing Harm Disadvantaged Students?
The test-optional admissions narrative promised that eliminating standardized tests would help disadvantaged students the most. While UC San Diego has drastically increased enrollment from under-resourced schools, students from these schools represented 53% of those in remedial math and yet made up only about 20% of incoming students. And while these courses are meant to build a foundation that these students lack, many students unfortunately never catch up. In required college calculus courses, for example, 24-52% of students who began in remedial math earned D’s, F’s, or withdrew from an advanced math course required by their major. Additionally, over half of engineering majors who were in remedial courses failed or withdrew from advanced calculus. The report states plainly: “Indeed, there are data that show that few, if any, students who place into Math 2 (remedial math) have successfully completed an engineering degree.”
Imagine this: a student from a disadvantaged background arrives excited to become an engineer. Their transcript shows they have taken calculus, and maybe even achieved a 4.0 GPA. They spend several quarters catching up while their peers advance. As they catch up, college costs mount. The engineering degree that they came for becomes effectively unreachable.
The equity that the narrative promised may in fact be missing, which invites new questions. Do universities have the resources and nimbleness to support an increase in remedial math students? Is there a better way to select youth who are most likely to succeed from target populations? Is it more equitable to use an established, standardized metric like the SAT in admissions after all?
The report shows that the single best predictor of math placement—better than GPA, better than courses taken—has been SAT math scores for over two decades. Before 2020, a talented student from an under-resourced high school could demonstrate readiness through a strong test score. After 2020, this same student could be lost in the shuffle, continuing to fall through the cracks as their high GPA becomes not the exception but the norm.
The Uncomfortable Truth
The report makes a controversial recommendation: UCSD should consider returning to standardized testing. MIT and several other elite universities have already done so, finding that test scores provide crucial information that can’t be gleaned from transcripts alone. To the surprise of many, test scores are especially useful for identifying talented students from under-resourced backgrounds.
The irony is sharp. The tool that was supposed to be a barrier to equity may in fact be essential for it. Without test scores, admissions officers fell back on proxies—school reputation, essay sophistication, application polish—that all favor wealthier students. Meanwhile, talented students from struggling schools lost a vital way to prove their abilities, and underprepared students from those same schools were admitted to universities where they would likely fail. As the report notes, “admitting large numbers of underprepared students risks harming those students and straining limited instructional resources.”
What Happens Next
Several universities have already reinstated test requirements, and many other universities are still examining the repercussions of remaining test-optional or test-blind. UCSD candidly seeks to understand which metrics are best to meet their equity goals. The question isn’t whether the SAT and ACT are perfect. They’re not. The question is whether removing them made things better or worse for the students these policies were meant to help.
Based on what’s happening at UCSD, the answer seems increasingly clear: the reintroduction of standardized testing into the admissions process is probably a logical next step. And for the students discovering that their straight-A transcripts didn’t prepare them for their math-intensive majors—that answer matters a lot more than any abstract admissions philosophy, however noble. Hopefully, the results of the UCSD study can inform decisions about the use of standardized testing at the school, at the other California state schools, and in the college landscape as a whole.
Written by Ricardo Moreno.
Edited by the NTPA Blog Committee.
Last Updated on December 7, 2025 by NTPA Admin