Colleges Juice Application Numbers by Letting Students Write Fewer Essays
Schools say they are trying to ease student stress and AI overload. Consultants say the moves will increase selectivity.
By Roshan Fernandez | July 10, 2026 5:30 am ET
A select group of colleges is making it easier to apply—but probably harder to get in.
Top schools including Tulane University, Washington University in St. Louis and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill are reducing the number of essays applicants have to submit. Colleges say that they are trying to ease students’ stress, and that artificial intelligence has made it harder to tell whether students are actually doing the writing.
The moves will likely increase applications, potentially making admissions more cutthroat, college counselors say. Texas Christian University experienced a roughly 14% jump in applications after removing two of its supplemental essays last year.
Schools are “trying to become more competitive,” said Caroline Koppelman, founder of an admissions firm. For students deciding where to apply, an extra essay “can be the straw that breaks the camel’s back a little bit, or at least the straw that makes you not apply to that school.”
A lower admissions rate improves schools’ rankings and “protects their prestige,” said Christopher Rim, chief executive of admissions firm Command Education. “A lot of that is really artificial.”
With the population of college-goers shrinking in coming years, higher-education institutions are fighting over a smaller pie—and supplemental essays can deter applicants. Topics can range from a formative book to a community students belong to. The essays take significant time and creativity, particularly as prompts have grown more peculiar in recent years, including “So where is Waldo, really?” and “What advice would a wisdom tooth have?” One counselor said their student had 30 pages of additional essays for nine applications.
TCU said responses to the questions it cut—about its values and inclusivity—lacked originality. “You still see a narrowing to the mean,” said Heath Einstein, vice provost of enrollment management. “Students are still going to respond in ways that they think we want to hear.”
Einstein said the school’s aim in expanding application numbers is simply to increase enrollment, not lower its admit rate.
WashU eliminated one optional essay this year. Applicants felt obligated to respond, but sometimes repeated what they had already written elsewhere in the application, said Grace Chapin James, assistant vice provost for undergraduate admissions.
“We just felt like if we were stressing people out…we might as well remove that from our process,” she said. The school kept its other supplemental essay, which asks why students chose their major.
Others, such as the University of Virginia, the University of Miami and the University of Georgia, have removed supplemental essays, too.
Some admissions advisers say cutting supplemental essays will only add to the ballooning ranks of students who get deferred and wait-listed as young people apply to more colleges.
“They’re just kind of winging it and throwing a bunch of applications,” said Trey Chappell, director of College X-ing, a consultant.
Growing AI use is making the essays less valuable for colleges. Tulane said the tool “has compromised our ability to discern which ‘Why Tulane’ responses are artificially polished,” according to a note the dean of admissions sent to the college’s counseling network.
A letter signed by more than 1,000 University of California professors, urging the system to reinstate the SAT, also flagged AI as a reason essays are becoming less reliable.
“A lot of the supplemental essays are, in a sense, becoming dead weight,” said Rim. Some colleges are leaning more on personal statements, along with grades and test scores.
Many schools still value supplemental essays and will likely keep them, said Ethan Sawyer, founder of College Essay Guy. They can help determine whether students would be a good fit, he said.
Still, schools that have long used essays to help gauge students’ interest now have other ways to predict whether they will attend. Some colleges track whether students visit their website; how long they spend on virtual campus tours; or whether they open emailed links, said Brett Schraeder, who works on enrollment modeling for EAB, an education-consulting firm.
“People may not realize the extensive amount of data that the colleges collect,” said Maria Laskaris, a former dean of admissions at Dartmouth and now a senior private counselor for Top Tier Admissions.
Kathleen Keesey, who recently graduated from high school near Denver, wrote 29 supplemental essays for admission, plus dozens more for scholarships and honors programs.
Her attitude was to “just grind these essays out.” She spent months on the effort, refusing to duplicate submissions. But she liked being able to highlight additional skills such as leadership—in some, she covered her role as president of a speech and debate club.
She found it off-putting when applications didn’t have supplemental essays, and worried how she would distinguish herself.
“I wasn’t relieved,” she said. “I was wondering, ‘Why aren’t you asking me more questions?’ There’s so much more I have to tell you.”
Originally published on The Wall Street Journal on July 10, 2026
