In this year’s admissions cycle for our bachelor programs, the Stockholm School of Economics introduced an eligibility requirement of a minimum score of 1.25 out of 2 on the Swedish SAT (högskoleprovet). This was not an especially demanding requirement, considering the exceptionally high upper-secondary grades normally needed for admission. This year, applicants needed a 21.9 out of 22.5 to be accepted into our largest bachelor program. The measure was intended as a signal in response to the grade inflation that, according to Skolinspektionen, has occurred in Sweden. To our great satisfaction, shortly after we communicated our new eligibility requirement, the government appointed an inquiry into grading equivalence.

After the fall 2025 admissions round, however, we observed a significant decline in diversity within our domestic admissions. The share of admitted students coming from ten upper-secondary schools in Stockholm rose to nearly 50%, the percentage of women fell by 10 and 13 percentage points respectively in our two bachelor programs, and the share of applicants from our outreach initiative aimed at individuals without university-educated parents dropped by 20%.

This year’s admissions simply led to greater homogeneity. We view this as deeply problematic, because talent, motivation, and ambition exist in many places. We are an international business school competing in the global arena. In that environment, declining diversity not only affects quality, it also negatively influences international accreditations and rankings.

Diversity enhances the learning experience

The reason heterogeneity in the student body and among faculty matters for accreditations and rankings is that a diversity of perspectives and experiences leads to better teaching, not least because this richness of viewpoints becomes visible in the classroom, in seminars, and in group work. We are also an institution entirely dependent on private funding, and our corporate partners expect that the students who graduate from us are not cast in the same mold. They demand, and financially support, our efforts to reach prospective students from non-academic backgrounds. Reflection, perspective-taking, and cultural understanding are even embedded as fundamental learning goals in SSE’s educational mission, which we summarize as FREE.

We were, to put it mildly, surprised by the sharp decline in diversity. One reason was that among applicants with high grades (above 21.8) who take the test and score 1.25 or higher, 53% are women. When high-achieving women and men take the test, the differences in passing the 1.25 threshold are minimal; women perform even slightly better than men. The problem is that they take the test at lower rates. Nearly 70% of individuals with grades of 21.8 or higher who do not take the test are women. So, in short: high-achieving women passed our eligibility requirement at slightly higher rates than men, if they took the test. But they simply take it less often.

This led our highest academic governing body, the Faculty and Program Board, composed of all department heads, the Vice President for Education, and faculty and student representatives, to unanimously conclude that our pilot requirement of the scholastic aptitude test had unintended consequences that did not justify keeping it.

A truly meritocratic admissions process

Critics claim that by removing the requirement, we are prioritizing groups over individuals and endorsing a view in which group identity is placed above individual achievement. That interpretation is far removed from our understanding of meritocracy. What we seek is a truly meritocratic admissions process, one in which individuals are given the opportunity to be evaluated according to the same standard. We believed that using the test as an eligibility requirement would be a cost-effective and simple way to verify the fairness of grade-based admissions, and we have never raised objections to the design of the test itself. The problem is that the measuring stick was never put to use. The composition of those who came to the measurement point was simply too homogeneous.

We cannot force anyone to pay the SEK 550 test fee to the Swedish Council for Higher Education and sit for the exam. We could, of course, intensify our efforts to encourage a more heterogeneous group to take the test. But as a small institution, we concluded that it would be difficult and resource-intensive to run such an information campaign on our own. Had other universities in Sweden joined us, the effort would have been easier, but we received no indication that they intended to adopt the test as an eligibility requirement. Instead, we were forced to watch students with high grades choose other programs that did not require a test score.

We are not backing down in the face of public opinion, if we were sensitive to that, we would never have introduced, nor removed, the test requirement. We seek heterogeneity of perspectives and experiences in our programs for reasons of quality and ranking performance. We are not satisfied with the current admission structure for our bachelor programs, and starting next year we are removing the test requirement. But this is only one step toward a more revised admissions process. We have already begun work on redesigning our admissions so that we can better identify the most capable students, the ones we know can be found in many, sometimes unexpected, parts of society. A continual effort to develop a more meritocratic admissions process is essential for shining brightly on the international business-school stage.

Lars Strannegård
Professor and President of the Stockholm School of Economics