The Classic Learning Test, a college-entrance exam backed by conservatives, has been around since 2015. But Florida’s recent decision to accept the test as an alternative to the SAT and ACT for undergraduate admission to the state’s public colleges put the CLT, as it’s commonly known, into the spotlight.
The exam’s approval makes Florida the first state-university system to accept the test, which is largely taken by home-schooled students and those at private or charter schools. It has also thrust the system’s 12 public universities, including its highly ranked flagship, into a markedly different peer group. According to the CLT website, more than 200 colleges — most of them small private religious institutions — accept the test.
For Florida’s state university system, where an entrance exam is required for admission, the CLT could gain traction among some students as an alternative to the SAT and ACT.
“The system is pleased to add the CLT to reach a wider variety of students from different educational backgrounds,” the State University System of Florida said in a statement. “Not intimidated by controversy or critics, our focus is on the success of our students, and the State of Florida.”
Here are four takeaways about what the CLT is and who tends to use it:
What is the CLT?
The CLT is based on a classical education model. It is an online exam that assesses verbal reasoning, quantitative reasoning, and grammar and writing.
The “classic” in the exam’s name refers to the use of “classic literature and historical texts” for the reading selections on the test, according to the CLT website. A technical report produced by the testing organization states that the CLT’s use of older texts, rather than contemporary sources, gives it “healthy neutrality on contemporary political matters.”
The testing time for the CLT is also shorter — two hours, which is about an hour less than the SAT and ACT.
Who takes the CLT?
Recent data from the testing company shows that from 2016 to 2023 roughly 21,000 juniors and seniors sat for the CLT.
Still, that’s just a fraction of the number of students who take the better-known standardized tests. In the high-school class of 2022, 1.7-million students took the SAT, while 1.3 million took the ACT.
How many colleges accept the CLT?
More than 200 colleges allow students to submit CLT scores for admission. The majority of them are private and faith-based, and a few are online only. Several are well known, like Catholic University of America and Liberty University. And about three dozen of them have little publicly available information because they don’t report their enrollment, financial, or other data on Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System surveys.
Which public institutions accept the CLT?
Before Florida’s Board of Governors voted to approve the CLT, the colleges in the state that accepted the exam for admissions were private institutions — such as Ave Maria University and Trinity Baptist College, each of which had undergraduate enrollments of fewer than 10,000 students in the fall of 2021, which is the latest data available.
Among the 12 new additions are much-larger colleges, including the University of Central Florida, which had almost 60,000 undergraduates in the fall of 2021. The only other public colleges that accept the CLT, according to its website, are Christopher Newport University and the University of New Mexico’s main campus.
