Colleges drop essays to boost applications
Top universities are eliminating supplemental application essays to artificially inflate their prestige rankings and bypass the challenges of AI-generated writing.
The argument
The guest argued that reducing the essay burden leads to a surge in applications, allowing schools to accept a lower percentage of applicants and boost their selectivity metrics. Additionally, admissions offices are struggling to distinguish human writing from AI-polished submissions, prompting them to abandon the essays altogether.
Hear it yourself
"When you see more applications, then you can choose to accept the same number of students and you can inflate your ranking or your prestige. Now some of these schools also want to grow enrollment."
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