Fewer Essays, Higher Stakes

Another one bites the dust. Another college drops a supplemental essay. Another application becomes shorter. Another student exhales. Parents look at the reduced requirements and assume that the process is finally becoming easier. Don’t fall for it. For the 2026–27 admissions cycle, several selective universities have eliminated or reduced supplemental writing. Tulane has paused its “Why Tulane?” essay. GeorgiaTech and the University of Georgia will require only the Common App personal statement. UNC–Chapel Hill and the University of Miami have removed their supplemental questions. Washington University in St. Louis has dropped an optional essay but retained its academic-interest response. Cornell has removed its university-wide prompt while keeping college-specific essays. Bentley’s additional supplemental responses are optional, rather than completely nonexistent. UVA and TCU had already made similar cuts in the previous cycle.

Why are colleges doing this? First, some supplements were producing very little new information. Admissions offices found that many responses repeated the personal statement, repackaged the college website, or delivered predictable declarations of “fit.” Second, application volume has made reading increasingly difficult. Removing one 250-word essay from 50,000 applications eliminates 12.5 million words from an admissions office’s workload. That is not a philosophical change. It is operational survival. Third, generative AI has weakened the essay as evidence. A polished response may now reflect a student, a parent, a consultant, a chatbot, or some combination of all four. Tulane publicly cited AI as one factor, while Duke has stopped assigning essays a separate numerical score. Finally, fewer requirements remove friction. A student who might skip a college because of an additional essay can now apply with one click. That may broaden access, but it can also inflate application totals and push acceptance rates lower. After UVA removed most supplemental writing, its applicant pool rose from 64,463 to 82,118. The essay change was not necessarily the only cause, but the pattern is instructive.

How does this impact your application? For students, the consequence is compression. The CommonApp common essay must now carry more voice. The activities list must show depth, impact, and progression in 150 characters. Recommendations must validate the qualities the application claims. Academic rigor, testing, honors, major selection, and demonstrated interest may receive greater attention. The strongest applicants will therefore build one coherent identity across every section, rather than treating the application as a collection of forms to complete quickly alone. The application may contain fewer words, but every remaining word now has more work to do.