With Princeton University finally reinstating a standardized testing requirement, Columbia remains as the last totally test-optional Ivy League school.

Princeton announced on Thursday that, starting in the 2027 admissions cycle, students will once again be required to submit SAT or ACT scores.

Princeton is coming down on the side of merit, while Columbia seems to be dragging its feet in the name of equity.

But why? We should expect students at our most rigorous institutions to sit through standardized tests, and ace them.

Columbia’s reputation already suffered a big enough ding due to its handling of pro-Palestinian protests. Why dig in its heels on another losing issue?

“[Columbia] are effectively eliminating one of the most important factors for … comparing applicants across different schools and regions,” Command Education CEO and college admissions consultant Chris Rim told The Post. “This will actually make the process less holistic, as well as less rigorous.”

Ivy League universities have taken a hit and don’t hold as much prestige as they once did. Others such as Duke and Emory are up and coming and are viewed by prospective students less as hotbeds of political activism.

Princeton paused standardized testing requirements in 2020 due to COVID-19 and “lack of access to testing centers,” but extended the policy well beyond lockdowns. Now it’s woken up to an obvious reality.

“A review of five years of data from the test-optional period [found] that academic performance at Princeton was stronger for students who chose to submit scores than those who did not,” the admissions office said in a statement.

Well, duh … I could have predicted that five years ago. Tons of peer institutions already realized this. Harvard, Penn and Brown all reinstated testing requirements in the last year or so, citing similar justifications.

Yale currently has a test-flexible policy that considers SAT, ACT, AP, or IB scores — all standardized high school-level tests. Still, kids have to cough up some numbers.

By contrast, Columbia says its own internal review found that its test-optional policy “did not lead to a diminishment [of] academic performance.”

“The University continually reviews and assesses our admissions policies to ensure compliance with the law and alignment with our goal to attract strong students who will advance knowledge and learning at its highest levels and who will be successful in our rigorous undergraduate curriculum,” a spokesperson for the university told The Post.

Yet so many other institutions have concluded just the opposite. MIT reinstated its requirement way back in early 2022. In a data-backed press release, it argued that “tests greatly help us in our efforts to enroll a diverse and talented class.”

It found that low-income students were most likely to forgo submitting strong scores that they thought weren’t good enough, which ended up hurting them in the admissions process.

“There [is] no necessary tradeoff between diversity and merit, as some unfortunately still seem to believe,” dean of admissions Stu Schmill wrote. 

Funnily enough, it’s elites on the left who perpetuated this belief. While the lockdown was a good reason to let kids off the hook for standardized testing, a broader war on measures of excellence was under way in the name of equity. 

“Standardized tests have become the most effective racist weapon ever devised to objectively degrade Black and Brown minds and legally exclude their bodies from prestigious schools,” author of “How to Be an Antiracist” Ibram X. Kendi said in 2020 testimony to a Boston school committee working group.

That same year, Columbia’s Teachers College Press ran op-eds to the tune of “Dismantling White Supremacy Includes Ending Racist Tests like the SAT and ACT.” 

But this goes against the data that have since emerged. As MIT pointed out, the most disadvantaged students were hurt the most by test-optional policies.

Equitable grading and waging war on selective programs became trendy all over the country in 2020. Even today, New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani wants to dismantle gifted-and-talented programs for younger students in the city’s public schools as part of his progressive agenda.

The left continues to perpetuate the classic “bigotry of low expectations,” implying that objective measures of excellence oppress students of color. 

It’s time the left let go of the objectively racist idea that measures of success are barriers to diversity. Since the Supreme Court overturned race-based affirmative action, colleges and commentators have ignored a far more just alternative: income-based affirmative action. 

It’s true that kids with access to tutors and who don’t need to work a part-time job in high school will probably have a leg up on the SAT. Why not consider this economic reality, rather than race for the sake of it?

That would help disadvantaged kids of all races, and, due to our nation’s unjust history, would disproportionately advantage applicants of color.

As we near six years post-pandemic, the fact that our elite institutions haven’t all prioritized reinstating excellence is a national embarrassment.

“This will no doubt have an impact on Columbia’s prestige and reputation in the future,” Rim said. “Maintaining a testing policy that might further exclude students from low-income and marginalized backgrounds will certainly not help Columbia’s reputation for elitism.”