Johns Hopkins University officials announced Friday that the university will once again require applicants to submit standardized test scores starting in fall 2026, phasing out the test-optional policy adopted in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Hopkins is the latest highly selective university to do away with its test-optional policy, following a year of reversals in which Harvard, Yale, Stanford and the University of Texas at Austin, among many others, did the same.

While most higher ed institutions still don't require standardized test scores -- including some selective universities, including the University of Michigan and Columbia -- the movement to return to testing has been a blow to the test-optional pivot that many predicted would remain after the pandemic.