America's Most Controversial Exam Turns 100 With Its Debates Still Raging

A Century of Testing — and Controversy

One hundred years ago today, on June 23, 1926, about 8,000 high school students across the United States took the first Scholastic Aptitude Test, known today as the SAT. What began as a relatively obscure academic exercise has since grown into one of the most debated rituals in American education — and the century mark arrives not with a party, but with serious questions about whether the test should exist at all.

The exam's origins are as complicated as its legacy. The SAT was based on the Army's IQ test administered during World War I and was developed by Carl Brigham, a psychology professor at Princeton University and a fervent advocate of the eugenics movement. Brigham claimed the test measured innate intelligence, but his motivations were far darker. During the early 20th century, a eugenics movement was sweeping the country, and Brigham bought into the notion that some races were superior to others — he was particularly focused on the influx of what he called "inferior" white immigrants coming into the country.

Remarkably, Brigham eventually reversed course. His original findings were so tainted by racism that Brigham himself eventually accepted it, disavowing his previous analysis in a paper published in 1930 — admitting both his grievous bigoted error and that SAT scores don't simply reflect some innate intelligence, but are influenced by all kinds of other variables. The damage, however, had already been done.

From 8,000 Students to 2 Million

Despite its troubled roots, the SAT became a cornerstone of American higher education. Ivy League schools became the first to require applicants to submit scores in the 1930s, and many others followed suit, swelling the test-taking population to roughly half a million by 1957. That test looked very different than the one about 2 million high school students now take each year. The current SAT asks students to answer 98 questions — 54 in reading and writing and 44 in math — in 134 minutes total, while in 1926, the test was much faster paced, with 315 questions in just 97 minutes.

The test has been overhauled repeatedly to reflect changing educational priorities. The College Board "recentered" scores in 1994 to reflect changes to the test and the fact that many more students from varying academic backgrounds were taking it. Several changes in 2016 — including eliminating the penalty for wrong answers — mean that SAT scores beginning that year are not directly comparable with those from prior years. The most recent transformation has been the shift to a fully digital format, which is now standard.

The Test-Optional Revolution

The SAT's 100th birthday comes at a moment of genuine institutional uncertainty. The COVID-19 pandemic triggered a seismic shift in how colleges view standardized testing, with hundreds of schools suspending requirements during campus closures. That shift stuck. Around 80% of four-year institutions no longer require SAT scores for admission — a dramatic transformation from just a decade ago. And yet, over 2 million students took the SAT last year, the most since 2020, suggesting the test still carries enormous weight in the minds of students and families, even when it isn't strictly required.

Critics argue that the test's core problem — its correlation with wealth — has never been solved. Higher-income students have historically performed better, raising persistent questions about whether the SAT measures academic potential or simply the ability to afford preparation. The College Board has undertaken decades of revision and refinement to correct racial biases, but racial disparities remain, and educational institutions across the country are taking second and third looks at how much emphasis to place on test scores during the admissions process.

What the Next 100 Years Might Look Like

Notably, the SAT's centenary will not be celebrated. The Educational Testing Service, which administered the test for 77 years, has effectively relegated the SAT to research and archival spaces on its website, and the College Board gives no indication that a centenary is approaching. The silence speaks volumes about just how unresolved the test's place in American life remains.

The SAT has outlasted nearly every prediction of its demise — surviving civil rights challenges, the pandemic, and the test-optional movement. Brigham himself ultimately realized that SAT scores do not measure innate ability passed through genes, but are instead a "composite including schooling, family background, familiarity with English, and everything else relevant and irrelevant." A century later, that admission sits at the heart of every debate about the test's future. Whether colleges choose to use it, ignore it, or eventually abandon it altogether, the SAT's first hundred years have permanently shaped who gets into American universities — and who doesn't.