Students vying for admission to the University of California in 2006 must take a new set of college entrance tests approved this week by the Board of Regents.
UC President Richard Atkinson said the revamped SAT and ACT exams -- which will be offered starting in 2005 -- are more closely aligned with what students learn in high school.

University faculty recommended the new test policy, which regents endorsed at their San Francisco meeting Thursday.

Applicants for fall 2006 admission must take either the SAT I or ACT, along with two SAT II exams which cover single subjects such as American history or foreign language. The SAT II writing exam will no longer be required.

The upcoming SAT I will incorporate a writing exam, including an essay, as well as more rigorous math and reading comprehension sections. Word analogies, a long-standing and controversial feature of the exam, will be scrapped.

The new version of the ACT will offer an optional writing exam, but UC applicants will be required to take it.

Currently, prospective students take the SAT I or ACT and three single-subject exams offered by SAT II.

With more writing and math incorporated into the core exams, UC officials said they will no longer weigh results of the single-subject exams twice as heavily.

The university had considered dumping the widely used admissions exams in favor of developing its own test before the College Board, which owns the SAT, announced the revisions to its tests.

Atkinson sparked much of the debate over standardized exams two years ago when he criticized the tests as poor indicators of college performance and biased against students who can't afford to pay for preparation courses.

"Standardized tests provide a common measure of student performance in an educational system marked by vast disparities between schools," Atkinson said.