Conservative-pushed Classic Learning Test is now replacing the SAT and ACT in some states
Source: The Independent
Monday 06 April 2026 16:13 EDT
A new college entrance exam focused on ancient Western civilization is gaining ground across the United States, with backing from the Trump administration and Republican-led states as a challenger to the long-dominant SAT and ACT. The Classic Learning Test, founded in 2015, has recently picked up a string of high-profile endorsements, The Washington Post reported.
The Pentagon has authorized the exam for use in U.S. military service academies and associated scholarships. State legislatures in Indiana and Arkansas have enacted laws requiring public universities to consider CLT scores, and the North Carolina university system has agreed to accept the test at its campuses, including its flagship in Chapel Hill.
Jeremy Tate, the founder of the test and the Maryland-based company behind it, Classic Learning Initiatives, told the newspaper that the organization has “had some big wins.”
Unlike the SAT and ACT, which have increasingly pivoted toward contemporary excerpts and shorter reading passages, the CLT draws two-thirds of its verbal content from a bank of more than 160 writers. These include philosophers, scientists and religious figures such as Plato, St. Augustine, Dante and Shakespeare. The test also prohibits the use of calculators in its math section.
Read more: https://www.the-independent.com/politics/college-classic-learning-test-sat-states-b2952603.html
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Plato, Augustine, and Dante (all mentioned in the OP) didn't write in English either.
