The first SAT was given in 1926. Ninety-five years later, the University of California system went test-blind. Now, as the SAT turns 100, a group of UC faculty is pushing to bring it back for STEM majors, pointing to a widening gap in how prepared incoming students are for advanced math.
I understand the concern about math readiness. I don't understand their solution. Reaching for the same tool we used a century ago to fix a problem in 2026 isn't the creative thinking I'd expect from a UC faculty. Since the UC system went test-blind in 2021, we've seen driverless cars, large language models, GLP-1s, mRNA vaccines, and civilians traveling to space. We're capable of more inventive answers than "test scores, again."
Here's a more interesting possibility: the students struggling in advanced math aren't missing test prep. They're missing agency. Research backs up the link between student agency and math achievement, and I've seen it play out firsthand. Students who hit real challenges in college but arrive anchored, adaptable, strategically capable, and good at working with others tend to come out the other side just fine, regardless of what their SAT score says about them.
At d.tech, we emphasize skills like adaptability, resilience, and collaboration. Our students exceeded the predicted UC acceptance rate, calculated in a San Francisco Chronicle analysis, by 30 points, posting an actual rate of 78 per 100 applicants and placing d.tech among the top 15 public high schools in California on both measures.
Purposeful identity, adaptability, strategic efficacy, and relational intelligence are not a replacement for math skills, but they might be a better predictor of who's ready to build them. It's a bet d.tech is making school-wide: 97% of our graduates persist in college, seven points above comparable schools.