Colleges Dropping Supplemental Essays: Why SAT/ACT Scores Now Matter More
The college application is shrinking — less information for aspiring students to submit. This summer, the University of Miami, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of Georgia, and Tulane University all eliminated their supplemental essays – the short, school-specific essays required beyond the main Common App personal statement – for the 2026–27 cycle. Cornell University dropped its university-wide essay, keeping only prompts tied to the school program a student applies to, and Washington University in St. Louis retired its optional supplement. Every school framed the change as a way to make applying easier.
It will. And that's exactly the problem for applicants who don't see what comes next.
When a college removes essays, it removes information about your student, and about every other student in the pool. Admissions offices will be making the same number of decisions with fewer data points per applicant at the same moment application volume is climbing. Something has to fill that vacuum, and the evidence says it has already been chosen: the SAT and ACT. The same summer these essay announcements rolled out, Columbia University became the last Ivy League school to reinstate its testing requirement. Those two headlines are not separate stories. They're one story, and families planning for the 2026-27 cycle and beyond should read them together.
Why dropping supplemental essays means more applicants and less information
Let’s start with what disappears. A supplemental essay was never just a writing sample; it was a differentiator. It showed whether a student had done real thinking about a school, could reason on the page, and had substance beyond the activities list. Multiply that by two or three prompts per school and you've lost thousands of words of evaluative signals per applicant.
Why cut something so useful? The stated reason is student stress. The unstated reason is generative AI, which has made short-form essays nearly impossible to trust as a signal of an individual student's voice. Of this summer's announcements, only Tulane acknowledged this explicitly. We made this argument at length on our sister brand's blog when the first announcements landed: AI is the real reason colleges are dropping supplemental essays.
Now look at what happens to the applicant pool when the essay barrier comes down. The University of Virginia removed its supplemental essay for the 2025-26 cycle, and regular decision applications (the standard, non-early round) jumped 52.4%, from 17,568 to 26,767. Total applications rose 27%, from 64,463 to 82,118. Similar surges would not be surprising at Miami, UNC, UGA, and Tulane this fall.
Placing those two facts side by side, admissions readers at these schools will face dramatically more applications, each carrying less information. Committees don't respond to that squeeze by reading more slowly. They respond by leaning harder on the signals that remain – and on the ones that can be compared across 80,000 files in seconds.
What do colleges look at when the supplemental essays are gone?
Strip the supplements out of an application and take inventory of what remains: the transcript, the activities list, recommendations, the Common App personal statement, and test scores.
Each of the first four has a reliability problem. Grade inflation has compressed the top of the GPA scale, so transcripts increasingly show admissions officers thousands of students with near-identical A averages (rigor still matters, but the number itself separates less than it used to). Activities lists and recommendations were already the softest parts of the file. And the personal statement, now the only essay many colleges will see, faces the same AI-authenticity doubts that just killed the supplements. If admissions offices couldn't trust a 250-word "why us" essay, they may feel equally ambivalent about a 650-word personal statement.
That leaves one measure that is standardized across every applicant, administered under proctored conditions, and that can't be outsourced to a chatbot. Colleges have noticed. That's why the testing story this June matters so much.
Are SAT and ACT requirements coming back? Look back at June
On June 15, 2026, Columbia announced it will require SAT or ACT scores beginning with the 2027-28 cycle, citing a multi-year faculty review that found scores "a useful indicator of potential student success." Columbia was the last Ivy holdout. Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, Brown, Cornell, and Penn had already reversed course, alongside MIT, Caltech, Stanford, and Georgetown. The turn began in early 2024, when Dartmouth's internal research found that test scores predicted college performance better than high school grades alone.
Several of the schools cutting essays remain test-optional, and that doesn't blunt the point. It sharpens it. At a test-optional college with no supplemental essays, a strong submitted score is one of the few remaining ways left to add substantive information to your file – and the applicants who submit will be compared against your student whether or not they submit.
For Florida families, none of this is abstract. Our public universities never went test-optional: every State University System school, from the University of Florida to Florida State University, requires an SAT, ACT, or CLT score to be admitted as a freshman. Bright Futures does, too. Under the Florida Department of Education's 2025-26 requirements, the Academic Scholars award requires a 1330 SAT or 29 ACT, while the Medallion award requires 1190 or 24. A Florida student without a competitive test score is locked out of options before the application season even starts.
A few years ago, I wrote that "test optional" dies a bit each day. The essay announcements accelerate the funeral. A college that cuts essays while testing requirements return across the selective tier is telling you in plain institutional language which data point it intends to lean on.
What families should do about it this fall
The strategic response isn't complicated, but it does require starting earlier and taking testing more seriously than the test-optional-era trained families to.
Treat the SAT/ACT as a core application credential, not a formality. For rising juniors and seniors, structured test preparation belongs on the calendar now, planned backward from target test dates rather than squeezed in after a disappointing first score report.
Build a real testing timeline. A junior should sit for the PSAT, take a diagnostic SAT and ACT to pick the better-fit test, then prep for two or three official administrations before senior fall. Our SAT and PSAT programs and ACT prep courses are built around precisely that sequence.
At schools that remain test-optional, submit strategically. A score at or above a college's published middle 50% (the score range covering the middle half of last year's admitted students, listed on every admissions website) strengthens a thinner application; withholding a test score increasingly reads as a suspect data point of its own. Our guide on when to submit test-optional scores accounts for that strategy.
Don't abandon the personal statement. It's now the only essay many colleges will read, so it carries more evaluative load than ever, and it still decides close calls. Authentic, specific, unmistakably human writing just became scarcer – and more valuable.That also means the personal statement deserves more attention than ever. A thoughtful review, strategic revision and expert feedback can make the difference in close admission decisions.
The colleges cutting essays say they're making it easier to apply. True. They're also making it harder for students to distinguish themselves, because they've removed one of the few places where an application speaks in the student's own words. When the field of comparison narrows, the measures that remain carry more weight. In the 2026-27 cycle, no remaining measure is positioned to carry more of that weight than the SAT and ACT.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which colleges dropped supplemental essays for 2026–27?
As of July 2026, the University of Miami, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of Georgia, and Tulane University have eliminated supplemental essays entirely for 2026–27. Cornell University dropped its university-wide essay but still requires a school-specific prompt, and Washington University in St. Louis retired its optional supplement. The University of Virginia made a similar move a year earlier.
Do fewer essays make it easier to get into these colleges?
No. Easier to apply, harder to get in. When the University of Virginia dropped its supplemental essay, regular decision applications surged 52.4% and total applications rose 27%, which pushes admit rates down. Fewer essays also means fewer chances to differentiate yourself, so the remaining parts of the application, especially test scores, count for more.
Are SAT and ACT scores required again at top colleges?
Yes, for most of the selective tier. All eight Ivy League schools will require SAT or ACT scores by the 2027–28 cycle, with Columbia the last to reinstate its requirement in June 2026. MIT, Stanford, Caltech, and Georgetown already require scores, and Florida's public universities never dropped their testing requirement at all.
Should my student still submit scores to test-optional colleges?
Usually, if the score is at or above the college's published middle 50% range. With supplemental essays disappearing, a strong score fills the information gap left in the application. Withholding a score at a test-optional school increasingly functions as a signal in itself, so the submit decision deserves real strategy.
When should my student start SAT or ACT prep?
By fall of junior year. That allows a PSAT baseline, a diagnostic to choose between the SAT and ACT, a full prep cycle, and two to three official test dates before senior-year application deadlines, with room to retest if the first official score falls short of target.
Score At The Top Learning Centers & Schools has spent over 40 years helping Florida students turn preparation into scores that hold up in a thinner application. Schedule a diagnostic SAT and ACT with us and build your student's testing plan before the fall calendar fills. To get started, visit scoreatthetop.com
