Fewer Essays, More Applications: The New Admissions Math

Notable colleges are shifting away from supplemental essays

In recent days, Tulane and the University of Georgia have announced that they are dropping their supplemental essays, and only requiring that students submit their 650-word personal statement on the Common App for admission. These moves are part of a broader move away from essays taking place in selective college admissions.  Here is a list of colleges making moves away from essays or deprioritizing them in the admissions process.

• UGA is dropping its supplemental essay for Fall 2027 (announced May 21, 2026)
• Tulane is dropping the "Why Tulane?" essay for 2026-2027 (announced May 22, 2026)
• WashU is dropping one of its optional essays for Fall 2027 (announced April 2026), while simultaneously adding Early Action and demonstrated interest
• UVA dropped supplementals entirely for most applicants in the 2025-2026 cycle (announced summer 2025)
• TCU dropped all short-answer supplemental prompts for the 2025-2026 cycle (announced July 2025)
• Duke removed essays from its quantitative scoring algorithm, deprioritizing rather than eliminating them

What’s driving the change?

1. AI. It’s no secret that more students are turning to AI to help with their essays, making them sound more homogeneous and less authentic. The essay supplements are becoming a weaker signal of demonstrated interest than they used to be. And they are becoming a weaker indicator of student writing ability. Christoph Guttentag, former Dean of Admissions at Duke, in announcing that essays would no longer be evaluated quantitatively, stated that they are "no longer assuming that the essay is an accurate reflection of the student's actual writing ability.”
2. They aren’t necessary to conduct a thorough review. The admissions department at UGA made it clear that they were getting what they needed from the Common App personal statement. They reviewed years of essays, considering the value of the supplemental essay and determined, “we believe the one essay response gives us what we need in our evaluation process.”
3. The desire to speed up application review. Reading essays takes time, and admissions officers are pressed for time with the staggering application inflation at selective colleges. Eliminating the essay will speed up the time it takes to review an application and allow admissions officers to read more files.
4. Removing hurdles for admission. Without an essay requirement, more students will submit applications to these colleges. As evidence, consider the impact at UVA. Removing the essay had a very meaningful impact on applications. Here is a graph of application volume, reflecting the impact of dropping the essay supplements. Eliminating the essay supplement removes a tiny bit of friction and makes it easier to apply.

Facing the demographic cliff, more schools will be tempted to increase their applicant pool by removing obstacles to application. Others will increase their application volume and appear more selective. There is a perception that the rise in selectivity of Northeastern was assisted by its lack of supplemental essays.

5. There are better ways to measure demonstrated interest. The “Why Us” essay supplement was always a chance for students to demonstrate that they had put some time and energy into investigating the school. But now the abundance of online resources and AI have weakened the signal and reduced the required time to investigate a school or its programs. Schools are looking more closely at other measures of demonstrated interest and are particularly looking to early admissions as a means of gauging student interest.

Consequences of these changes

Our colleagues at CollegeMatchPoint spelled out the immediate consequences of eliminating the supplemental essays.

• Admissions may become even more competitive at these schools as more students apply given the lower barrier to apply.
• These colleges will seek to recruit more broadly from across the country.
• Other factors, transcripts, testing may rise in importance in the application.
• The Personal Statement will take on more weight and will stand alone to reflect the student’s voice.
• The coherence of the application will assume increased importance.

While these individual colleges are moving away from supplements, they are keeping the primary essay intact. And many other highly selective colleges continue to use supplements in their admissions policy. Thus, students will continue to focus on the essay in the admissions process.  The essay is by no means going away, but its use in admissions is evolving and will continue to do so in the near term.