Top 5 Takeaways This Month
• Global SAT demand is accelerating, with more students using their scores for admissions outside the U.S.
• ETS’s acquisition of ACT could reshape testing and strengthen the ACT’s digital product.
• AI is most effective when paired with clear thinking, strong writing, and human guidance.
• Early Decision faces renewed scrutiny for disproportionately benefiting wealthier applicants.
• Enrollment declines, loan limits, and policy shifts are increasing volatility across higher education.
This Just In — On the Ground From IACAC: College Board Updates
Yesterday morning, we attended the College Board’s annual update at the International ACAC in Pittsburgh. The talk focused mainly on College Board’s initiatives for international support around the SAT (with some discussion of AP and PSAT).
Below are some key takeaways from the presentation:
- 2025 saw roughly 191,000 international SAT test takers from approximately 200 regions.
- In 2026, this number has already increased significantly (perhaps by as much as 22 percent). We will follow up on this year’s official data when it is released in October.
- English-taught higher ed programs are growing worldwide, which is driving a global demand for the SAT.
- Local and regional use of the SAT is surging in certain areas compared to last year: namely in Thailand (up 63 percent), across Europe (up 327 percent), in Vietnam (17 times greater), and throughout parts of Central Asia (500 times greater).
- A significant portion of testers in the above areas are using those SAT scores to apply to institutions within their region.
- One of the key international initiatives for 2026 is partnering with the Ministries of Education in Türkiye and Uzbekistan to support the use of the SAT in those locations.
- The College Board is also close to rolling out SAT and AP score delivery through UCAS.
Undocumented Students Barred From Enrolling in Florida Colleges & Universities
Last week, the Florida State Board of Education approved a policy that will ban undocumented students from attending any of the institutions within the Florida State University and State College systems. This policy will affect all 12 public institutions in the state as well as all 28 public colleges and adult education programs. Starting in the 2027-28 academic year, students will need to provide documentation proving that they are U.S. citizens or “lawfully present” in the United States prior to enrolling. Currently-enrolled students will not be impacted by the change.
Takeaways:
Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina had previously introduced similar bans on undocumented students for some or all of their public higher educational institutions; that said, Florida’s ban is unprecedented in its breadth of institutions. Some critics of the new policy point to the potential of a sizable negative impact on enrollment. In 2023, nearly 50,000 of the system’s students were undocumented. Losing a number of students of that magnitude could cost the system upwards of $15 million in revenue from lost tuition and fees. Pro-immigration groups have excoriated the ban as “cruel” and “likely illegal.” It remains to be seen what legal challenges will be put forward – and to what level of success.
Florida state board bans undocumented students from college system (Higher Ed Dive) – 7/2/26
New at Onsen: Expanded Test Prep Support
We’ve recently expanded our one-on-one virtual tutoring to include the LNAT, ESAT, TMUA, DELF, UCAT, & HPAT.
These join the tests and programs we already support, including the SAT, ACT, GMAT, GRE, LSAT, MCAT, Bocconi and IE entrance exams, AP courses and exams, and the IB.
As always, we offer free diagnostics and complimentary 30-minute demo lessons, allowing students to meet an expert tutor and receive a personalized plan.
Is there another important exam you’d like to see us support? Just reply to this email and let us know.
Columbia University Swears In Fifth President in Four Years
Last week, Columbia University swore in its 21st president, Dr. Jennifer Mnookin, the former chancellor of University of Wisconsin-Madison. Dr. Mnookin has also served as the dean of UCLA School of Law. She received a bachelor’s degree from Harvard, a law degree from Yale, and a doctorate from MIT. Dr. Mnookin identified her key initial focus areas as squaring the role of artificial intelligence on campus – which she sees as a “real opportunity” – and helping students build skills to better handle their political differences. “This university has been around for longer than our nation, and we need to make sure that it’s making a positive impact on the world way after all of us aren’t here anymore.”
Takeaways:
This is Columbia’s fifth presidential swearing-in in four years. Over that time, the Ivy League university has been roiled by outside political currents including backlash from its handling of pro-Palestinian student protests and scrutiny from a pugnacious presidential administration on a variety of fronts including over race-conscious admissions and DEI initiatives. Columbia University’s board of trustees described Dr. Mnookin as a “consensus builder” with “an exceptional academic and leadership pedigree and a reputation for building trust through listening and engagement.”
Columbia University Has a New President. Again. This One Plans to Stay. (NY Times) – 6/30/26
ETS Acquires ACT in a Potential Watershed Moment for Test Prep
ETS, the testing giant that develops and administers the GRE, TOEFL, TOEIC, and PRAXIS tests, has acquired the ACT in a move that could have a significant impact on the test prep world. In its press release, ETS states that together with the ACT it aims to “deliver solutions to help individuals learn, demonstrate skills, and connect to jobs in a dynamic economy being radically reshaped by AI.” ACT CEO Steve Tapp lauded the benefits of the merger: “Joining ETS gives us the platform to fulfill our mission at a scale we couldn’t reach alone.”
Takeaways:
For all of those who are stakeholders in the future of test prep, this development is significant, indeed. In the midst of the shift to digital testing options, the ACT seemed to have lost the arms race to the SAT. Not only has the ACT ceded significant market share, it has produced a volatile product that is, by many measures, inferior to the digital SAT. By partnering with ETS, the ACT will gain access to tools and technology that could shrink the distance between its product and the College Board’s digital SAT.
That being said, the press release that announced the acquisition, much like Mr. Tapp’s 2025 year-end letter, never directly mentions the ACT’s flagship product: the ACT test. The announcement’s use of phrases like “expanding access to education and job opportunities across America” and “deliver(ing) high quality, evidence-based solutions that go beyond testing,” seem to point to a new direction for the ACT. It will be interesting to follow this direction as it unfolds; meanwhile, one hopes that students who choose the ACT test as a pathway for college admission receive the support from the company that they deserve.
ETS Acquires ACT, Expanding Pathways to Opportunity Across America (ETS Newsroom)
Loan Limits Instituted For U.S. Graduate Students
Effective today, U.S. graduate students will be limited in the amount of money they can borrow in federal loans against the cost of their education. After nearly twenty years of no constraints, many grad students will be capped at $20,500 per year – and will be unable to borrow more than $100,000 over the course of their entire program. While a federal court initially blocked the move, these limits, a facet of the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” have gone into effect today. An analysis from the PEER Center approximates that the new policy will affect about 30 percent of borrowers.
Takeaways:
U.S. Secretary of Education has presented the new regulation as a power play to force colleges and universities to drop their “exorbitant” prices. By eliminating the “Grad PLUS” loans that supplement other support students receive – and veritably remove the ceiling for borrowers’ loans – the Department of Education hopes to remove one of the incentives for graduate programs to unduly raise the cost of tuition: because they know the federal government will loan students funds for the extra costs. While many experts agree that loan limits are necessary, skeptics of the new caps feel that they are extreme. Dominique Baker, an associate professor of education and public policy at the University of Delaware, fears that the new constraints will make graduate school unfeasible for some low-income students. “We have really robust evidence on what happens when we reduce access to financial aid…and that is that students stop enrolling.”
Will the new student loan limits actually drive down tuition? Economists weigh in (npr) – 6/28/26
Research Spotlight: What Stanford’s New AI Report Actually Says About Learning
Stanford reviewed over 800 academic papers related to the positive impacts of AI on students and teachers in K-12 education. Only a very small subset – 20 papers – offered substantial causal evidence that AI tools provided tangible support to these cohorts. While the sample size is small, the takeaways were noteworthy. In some cases, AI tools helped students perform better on supported practice tasks. These students solved more problems, received faster feedback, wrote more easily, or felt that learning was more enjoyable. When researchers removed the AI support, however, results were mixed. While some students continued to perform at a higher level than before they had access to the technology, others saw a marked drop in performance. Researchers concluded that AI-driven short-term gains might come at the expense of weakening deep thinking and independent learning.
Takeaways:
When embracing AI technologies in an educational context, the key question should be not whether AI can help students complete a task but whether it can help students become more capable in general. Further findings from the Stanford report suggests that AI is most effective when it acts like a tutor – offering hints, asking guiding questions, and helping students build understanding – instead of providing immediate solutions. On the SAT, ACT, and AP exams – as with most school assessments – students will eventually have to perform on their own, so while a tool that gives students answers may make their studies feel easier, easier practice is not always better practice. In order to not stifle independent learning, it is important for students (and non-students) to be careful to not outsource their thinking but, rather, to use AI as a learning buddy: Ask it for hints before answers. Ask it to quiz you. Ask it to explain why your wrong answer was tempting. Ask it to generate a similar problem and then solve that one without help.
The Evidence Base on AI in K-12 Report (Stanford University) – June 2026
Student Motivation: Does AI Have the Tools to Manage this Challenge?
In an April Chalkbeat interview, Sal Khan, likely the most high-profile ed-tech entrepreneur, announced that his company’s “biggest lever is really investing in the human systems.” This statement represents a near-180 from when he launched AI-driven learning platform Khanmigo three years ago. At that time, he heralded Khanmigo as “probably the biggest positive transformation that education has ever seen” and predicted that it could be an “amazing personal tutor…(to)…every student on the planet.” While the idea of AI-driven education is a tempting one – and the promise of accessibility and scalability carries real value – data is showing that despite its power, artificial intelligence struggles to bridge the “motivation gap.” In many cases, ed-tech tools that are not human-driven fail in motivating students to learn something new – unless they are already motivated to do so.
Takeaways:
A study by Ron Ferguson, the director of Harvard’s Achievement Gap Initiative, found that, according to the hundreds of thousands of sixth to ninth graders surveyed, teachers who were able to successfully inspire their students shared several key qualities: the ability to exude genuine care about their students’ success and to grab and sustain students’ interest. Great teachers motivate their students “to think rigorously and persist in the face of difficulty.” AI alone is not yet capable of such feats – at least not yet.
AI Can’t Fix the Student-Motivation Problem (The Atlantic) – 6/25/26
Early Decision at Michigan Survives Despite Faculty Senate Resolution
Nearly three-quarters (1,300 members) of the University of Michigan’s faculty senate approved a measure in April that painted early decision admissions practices as creating an unfair advantage for students from affluent families. The senate asked the school to “immediately halt” early decision at the university until a “broad and substantive consultation” would allow the group to confirm that the practice aligns with the university’s educational values. Nevertheless, the University of Michigan system announced that it will be instituting the practice once again for this upcoming application cycle. UM assistant Vice President for Public Affairs and Internal Communications Paul Corliss released a statement via email that supports early decision admissions as “allow(ing) those admitted students to focus on and enjoy their senior year in high school with… confidence.”
Takeaways:
In recent years, there has been a growing movement to retire admissions practices that seem to favor wealthy applicants. Legacy preference has been the most natural target, but binding early admissions have come under significant fire. As students who apply “early decision” are compelled to commit to enrollment before they have clarity on financial aid packages, students whose families are under a certain income threshold will be unable to exercise this option. At many institutions, students who apply early are accepted at a much higher rate; therefore, opponents argue that early decision “reduces diversity of students from different socio-economic backgrounds.”
University of Michigan offering ‘early decision’ again despite pushback (The Detroit News) – 6/24/26
China Reshuffles its Educational Offerings to Favor Emerging Technology
China has undertaken one of the most extensive education reforms in its modern history: between 2021 and 2025, national universities retired 12,200 programs that the government deemed obsolete. An outsized percentage of these cuts came to programs in the humanities, foreign languages, and the arts. Meanwhile, roughly 10,200 new programs, mainly prioritizing emerging technologies, were added to the curriculum. Data from the Ministry of Education showed that over 30 percent of all undergraduate programs in China were affected by this change.
Takeaways:
Unemployment rates in China have been the driving force of these curriculum changes. As of March of this year, 16-to 24-year-old non-students in urban areas are currently unemployed at a rate of 16.9 percent, up from a share of 16.1 percent just a month prior. By increasing offerings in disciplines such as artificial intelligence and robotics, the Ministry of Education hopes to re-align higher education with industrial goals and, thereby, help combat unemployment trends.
That said, with the ever-changing face of emerging technology, some have argued that programs that traditionally have been associated with less stable job prospects – such as humanities, foreign languages, and arts programs – can actually give students an edge with understanding and communication with shifting AI technologies. Anthropic co-founder and president Daniela Amodei recently extolled her decision to major in comparative literature: “I think the ability to have critical thinking skills and learn to interact with people will be more important in the future, rather than less.”
China Cuts 12,200 University Programs, Replaces Many With AI Degrees (Forbes) – 6/23/26
The Beginning of the “Enrollment Volatility Era” in Higher Ed?
A recession-perpetuated population decline in the U.S. over the past several decades has now begun to translate to fewer high school graduates, the number of which is expected to drop by as much as 15 percent by 2034. This impending “enrollment cliff” is expected to have highly disruptive ramifications on the higher education landscape. Several popular U.S. institutions, such as Syracuse University, have missed enrollment targets this year, leading some to believe that the tipping point is on the horizon. This existential threat is especially pressing among private colleges without large endowments. According to figures from the Federal Reserve, roughly 60 colleges are closing each year, and many of these have been smaller private schools. “If you’re enrolling 300 students, it’s going to be really tough to make it work,” said Sandy Baum, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute. That said, many flagship universities are also planning for significant budget shortfalls as higher education feels the strain of an unpredictable enrollment. According to Syracuse University Chancellor J. Michael Haynie, “Enrollment volatility is widespread, unpredictable and the ‘new normal’ for even strong, well-resourced universities.”
Takeaways:
In order to help manage projected enrollment downturn, many public universities have worked to source both more out-of-state domestic students and more international students. While the former strategy has brought in a largely stable number of students, institutions have struggled to increase international enrollment numbers. A recent NAFSA report revealed that foreign student enrollment at U.S. universities fell 20% year-on-year from 2024 to 2025. Owing much to this trend is the erratic messaging around and implementation of President Trump’s “America First” approach to higher education. Between the potential difficulty of visa procurement and the horror stories of foreign nationals being detained at the border, some families who would have otherwise considered the U.S. as a higher ed destination for their child are looking elsewhere.
The Great Recession’s missing children are finally bringing college’s financial crisis into sight. Welcome to the ‘enrollment volatility’ era (Fortune) – 6/20/26
Writing First: The Primacy of Communication Skills in the AI Era
While the proliferation of AI has eroded the presumed job security of students who major in computer science, National Test Prep Association co-founder Jason Robinovitz argues that, potential struggles notwithstanding, there is still a high upside for these students – as long as they are willing to adapt to an ever-changing landscape. According to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, recent college graduates who majored in computer science currently face an unemployment rate of 6.1 percent, compared with a 4.8 percent unemployment rate across all recent graduates. While this figure partly owes to the growing reach of AI that has coincided with these students entering the workforce, the job market is also currently saturated with coders: there are nearly twice the annual number of computer degrees awarded now than there were ten years ago. In short, we are currently seeing a greater number of graduates compete for fewer entry-level jobs. Nevertheless, expert coders are becoming even more valuable commodities for the most sought-after employers. Case in point: last year Meta offered signing bonuses of up to $100 million to lure top researcher talent away from OpenAI. Therefore, “the floor fell out of the entry level while the ceiling shot into the stratosphere.”
Takeaways:
In order to fully leverage the benefits of the AI era, Mr. Robinovitz advises students to “become a strong writer first.” Coupled with a comprehension of “how the underlying systems are built and structured” a student who “can think clearly and express an idea with precision gets dramatically more out of the same tool than the person who can’t.”
Where We’re Going, We Don’t Need Coders (News From The Top) – 6/17/26
GMAC to Superscore GMAT
The Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) has announced that it plans to launch the “GMAT Superscore” in August 2026. This complimentary feature will automatically calculate a tester’s best composite score by combining their top section scores across multiple test attempts. The GMAT Superscore will also retroactively apply to any students who have already taken the GMAT Focus Edition and to those who plan to test prior to the August rollout.
Takeaways:
GMAC’s rationale behind the change is that they hope to decrease candidates’ “score anxiety” and encourage testers to apply to a broader range of institutions. Research conducted by GMAC has suggested that superscores – not just single test attempts – will present a high predictor of success on the graduate school level. While superscores are expected to increase the number of students who sit for the GMAT twice, it will likely also lower the number of “chronic retesters” – those who sit for far more than two tests. GMAC CEO Joy Jones lauded the move as a way to better reward candidates’ patience and persistence: “Every candidate has the opportunity to put their best foot forward when it matters most.”
GMAC To Launch A Tool That Lets Applicants Submit Their Best GMAT Scores (Poets & Quants) – 6/16/26
U.S. News & World Report 2026-27 Best Global University Rankings
This week, education rankings and consumer advice giant U.S. News & World Report released its annual list of Best Global Universities across over 100 countries. Harvard (1), MIT (2), and Stanford (3) were named the top 3 global universities. One of the biggest surprises this year was Princeton’s ranking at #14, dropping 13 points from the #1 spot in 2025. Among the top 10 global universities, 6 institutions are U.S-based (also including UC Berkeley [7], Yale [8], and Columbia [10]), 3 are based in the U.K (Oxford [4], Cambridge [5], and UCL [9]) and 1 is based in China (Tsinghua University [6]). Among those named to the top 50, 22 institutions are U.S. based, 7 are in China or Hong Kong, 6 are in the U.K., 5 are in Australia, 2 are in Canada, 2 are in Singapore, 1 is in each of Belgium, Denmark, Germany, The Netherlands and Switzerland. China is the country with the most schools named within the rankings, with 409 institutions; the U.S. is second with 275 schools.
Takeaways:
In recent years, some have denounced U.S. News & World Report’s rankings system for overvaluing prestige among higher ed institutions – and in turn, indirectly encouraging students to take on debt. Others have taken issue with the publication allegedly engaging in favoritism, manipulating data, and retaliating against colleges that disparage its ranking system. That said, U.S. News’ rankings are among the most highly valued globally. The publication’s managing editor, LaMont Jones, characterizes the rankings system as an “essential comparative resource.” “Our methodology focuses on a school’s research mission and scholarly impact, helping students identify institutions that are truly at the forefront of global knowledge creation.”
U.S. News Unveils 2026-2027 Best Global Universities Rankings (PR Newswire) – 6/16/26
Written by
Zachary Adler
Since 2010, Zach has been helping students achieve their college readiness goals, specializing in all sections of the SAT, ACT, PSAT, and SHSAT. Prior to joining Onsen, Zach worked for a global investment firm, as well as in various roles in the education space. He has served as a youth mentor and has run college readiness information sessions for students in under-resourced communities. Additionally, Zach is a writer and filmmaker. He is an International Baccalaureate scholar and a graduate of Boston University.