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.
“We view this as a lever that shapes education,” Tate said in a recent interview.
The exam has been widely embraced by the homeschooling community and Christian private schools.
The Heritage Foundation’s Jonathan Butcher told the publication that the CLT provides more “rigorous content” than established tests.
“It is generally bland material that doesn’t have any inherent value in it,” he said.
Despite its popularity in religious circles, Tate maintains that the test is not exclusively religious. He noted that the author bank includes a diverse range of thinkers, from Adam Smith and Karl Marx to Confucius and Martin Luther King Jr.
However, more than two dozen of the authors are Christian theologians or saints.
“I don’t think anyone in the West can be considered seriously educated without some knowledge of the Christian intellectual tradition, including the Bible,” Tate has said.
The rapid expansion of the test has sparked debate among academics regarding its reliability. Audrey Amrein-Beardsley, a professor at Arizona State University, told The Post that researchers are currently “lacking evidence” on the CLT.
A 2024 review by the Iowa Board of Regents found no peer-reviewed studies demonstrating how well the test predicts college success. Consequently, Iowa’s public university system decided to continue using only the ACT or SAT for automatic admissions.
Questions have also been raised regarding the security of the exam’s remote testing option. While the SAT and ACT require students to visit testing centers to prevent cheating, the CLT allows students to take the exam at home.
ACT spokesman Juan Elizondo told the paper that his organization does not offer remote testing because “trust is of the utmost importance” regarding the risk of leaks.
In response, Classic Learning executives said they used high-standard security measures, including mandatory web cameras and software that prevents students from opening other browser windows.
While the CLT’s numbers are growing — reaching nearly 183,000 test-takers last year compared to fewer than 300 a decade ago — it remains a small player compared to its rivals. More than 2 million students in the class of 2025 took the SAT, while 1.4 million took the ACT.
Much of the CLT’s recent momentum comes from new state-level approvals.
In Florida, the test was approved in 2023 for university admissions and state scholarships. Republican State Senator Gary Byrne, who authored the Indiana CLT legislation, has argued that his goal was to provide parents with another choice and encourage a return to classic works.
Critics, however, worry about the ideological implications of the shift.
Curtis Dozier, a Vassar College professor who wrote a book on how the far-right uses ancient history, warned about the test’s focus.
“My biggest concern is that students won’t learn the truth about history,” Dozier said in an interview with the publication.
Tate remains undeterred by the criticism or the current market dominance of his competitors. A sign in the foyer of his company’s headquarters — as reported by The Post — predicts that by 2040, the CLT will surpass both the SAT and ACT to become the top entrance exam globally.
“We’re tracking a little bit ahead of what we need to get to the 2040 goal,” Tate added.
