UNC System starts accepting new CLT entrance exam gaining popularity on the right
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- UNC System now accepts CLT; scores required only if GPA < 2.8.
- CLT emphasizes classical passages, includes logic items, and bans calculators.
- One small study showed CLT predicts freshman performance; broader data needed.
The University of North Carolina System is now accepting a new standardized test that’s been endorsed by high-profile conservative politicians. But the test’s proponents say it’s not political.
The UNC System requires college entrance exam scores only from applicants with high school GPAs below 2.8, but students with higher GPA’s can still submit scores if they choose to. The Classic Learning Test – or CLT – is now accepted by UNC System schools in addition to the ACT and SAT. The exam places an emphasis on a traditional liberal arts education and features classical and ancient texts from the Western canon.
“We recognize that many students who are not required to submit a test score will choose to do so anyway, and the CLT gives applicants another option to help demonstrate their college readiness,” Andy Wallace, director of media relations for the UNC System, told The Charlotte Observer.
It’s the latest in a growing number of universities and university systems, such as public universities in Florida, Arkansas and Oklahoma, to bring the CLT into the fold of standardized tests they accept for admissions. Over 300 institutions now accept it.
It’s been lauded by prominent Republican politicians such as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth as well as directors of education policy at conservative, Washington, D.C. think tank The Heritage Foundation. Kevin Roberts, president of The Heritage Foundation, is listed as a member of the CLT’s board of academic advisors.
“The CLT is the gold standard, and our academies need to attract the very best,” Hegseth said in a tweet May 3.
He later announced the CLT will be accepted at all U.S. service academies for the 2027 admissions cycle.
Despite support from leaders on the right, proponents say the test’s mission isn’t a political one.
“We don’t have control over who decides to like the exam... By nature of having classic texts, it transcends partisan politics,” CLT Director of Legislative Strategy Michael Torres told The Observer. “We have people of all different backgrounds on our board of advisors – academics, people left of center, people right of center, so we don’t have an institutional stand in politics.”
What is the CLT?
The exam, which was first launched in 2015, is focused on “restoring the foundations of education,” according to its website.
“For thousands of years, education was understood as forming and equipping the whole human person–intellectually, emotionally, and ethically–to live a happy and fulfilling life,” its website states. “Classic Learning Test (CLT) aims to help restore this vision for education.”
The test’s creator, Jeremy Tate, is a former high school English teacher. Tate first conceived of the test around 2014 when he said the ACT and SAT aligned themselves to Obama-era Common Core standards. Common Core has been widely criticized as a top-down educational model that encourages educators to teach to the test.
At the time, Tate was running a test-prep company that worked with several Catholic schools in the Baltimore area, Torres said, and many parents were concerned the tests did not align with traditional Catholic education.
“Most people thought he was a little crazy to try and compete with the College Board and the ACT, but there was definitely interest in having an alternative,” Torres said.
Colin Dingler, chief research and policy analyst for the ACT, denies the ACT was realigned to match Common Core standards. Instead, he says the test is created by regularly surveying teachers around the country about class content.
Torres said the main content differences between the CLT and tests like the SAT and ACT are that the CLT “is rooted in a liberal arts tradition” and features longer passages from classic texts.
“In the reading comprehension and grammar sections, the readings students will see are longer passages from classic works – everything from Plato to Martin Luther King, from Isaac Newton to Albert Einstein, things of that nature,” Torres said. “You’ll have James Madison, Shakespeare, things that we would consider classic texts, and they’ll be longer.”
The CLT has an author bank available online: two-thirds of the test’s passages are by the authors listed. It includes around 160 authors from a variety of time periods and disciplines. Though, it does seem to more heavily feature older texts: only 11 authors on the list were born after 1900, while 89 were born before 1700. The list also includes works by 16 Catholic saints.
The math content on the CLT also differs some from the SAT and ACT.
“A big difference is we have logic and reasoning questions,” Torres said. “We also don’t allow calculators which the other two tests have graphing calculators built into their testing platform.”
Dingler said he doesn’t have a problem with a standardized test featuring classical texts or with students learning from them. But, he does take issue with the notion that only those texts promote critical thinking.
“The claim that it’s important for kids to learn these classic texts – I think that’s a great idea and I have no problem with that,” he said. “It’s true that there are a lot of classical texts that have very rich content and do require and encourage critical thinking, but it is not true that anything that isn’t from the classical tradition doesn’t include those things.”
Dingler also said publishing an author bank is different from the ACT’s approach. The ACT is often trying to find passages students may be unfamiliar with. That’s in order to test reading comprehension skills on the fly rather than knowledge of content students have already been exposed to.
“Reading is a transferable skill, and that’s what we’re trying to look at,” Dingler said.
How do CLT test takers actually do in college?
One challenge facing new standardized tests is that the more long-established ones like the SAT and ACT have a sizable head start when it comes to collecting long-term data.
However, Torres pointed out that the first longitudinal study of how predictive CLT scores were of later college performance was published in October.
It followed 235 students at Grove City College, a small, Christian school in Pennsylvania, and showed a positive correlation between scores on the CLT and performance during freshman year of college. Basically, students who did better on the exam usually also did better in school their first year.
“We’re talking with more partner colleges to see if they want to do more independent research, and those will be starting to come out more and more in the coming couple years,” Torres said.
Continuing that research is necessary, Dingler said. While the study’s results were promising for the CLT when it comes to its validity for predicting college outcomes, it was a relatively small sample.
“The more evidence you have, the stronger your claim is,” he said. “It’s also not just how many students were involved or how many years of data you have. It’s also about how representative that sample of students is and how many different types of settings the test was taken in, for example.”
This story was originally published February 9, 2026 at 5:00 AM.
