This is a real, recent, and fairly sudden shift, not a slow drift -- a genuine wave of selective schools cut supplemental essays for the 2025-26 and 2026-27 cycles, and the reasoning splits into a few distinct, sometimes uncomfortable explanations depending on which school you ask.
Which schools have actually done this
Fully eliminated their supplemental essays: Georgia Tech (whose combined why-us-and-why-this-major essay is gone, even though the school still admits by major internally), UNC-Chapel Hill, the University of Georgia, the University of Miami, Tulane, and the University of Washington all dropped supplemental essays entirely for the 2026-27 cycle.
Cut the most prominent one, kept something smaller: Yale removed its traditional "Why Yale" essay. Cornell removed its university-wide essay but still requires an essay specific to the school or college within Cornell you're applying to.
Went first, a cycle earlier: The University of Virginia largely eliminated supplemental essays for most applicants starting with the 2025-26 cycle -- a year ahead of this broader wave -- with only its School of Nursing still requiring an additional written response.
Softened rather than eliminated: Washington University in St. Louis removed one optional essay. Bowdoin made its supplemental essay optional instead of required.
Why they're actually doing this
The honest answer varies by school, and it's worth not flattening it into one cause:
AI is a real factor, but only explicitly for some schools. Tulane specifically cited the rise of AI writing tools as a reason for dropping its essay -- when a polished, on-topic response can be generated in seconds, a short supplemental prompt stops reliably telling an admissions office anything about how a specific student actually writes or thinks. Notably, most of the other schools on this list haven't cited AI as their stated reason, even though it's the explanation that gets repeated most often in coverage of this trend.
Some schools concluded the essays just weren't adding much. The University of Georgia reviewed years of its own supplemental essay responses and concluded, in its own words, that its single remaining essay "gives us what we need in our evaluation process" -- suggesting the extra prompt wasn't meaningfully changing decisions relative to the personal statement most applicants already submit.
Reducing a barrier to applying is a deliberate goal at some schools, with a real and somewhat circular consequence: removing an essay requirement measurably increases how many students apply, which increases application volume, which can make admission look more competitive in raw numbers even as each individual application got easier to complete.
The number that shows exactly what happens next
UVA's own data is the clearest evidence of that last point, because it went first and the effect is fully visible in one year of numbers. After UVA dropped its supplemental essay for the 2025-26 cycle: Early Action applications rose from 41,885 to 57,495, a 37% increase, and Regular Decision applications rose from 17,568 to 26,767, a 52.4% increase. Same number of seats, dramatically more applicants -- which is exactly the mechanism behind the broader application inflation trend already reshaping how reliable a "target school" label is from one year to the next.
An interesting tension: dropping the essay doesn't mean the school stopped caring about fit
This is worth connecting directly to how demonstrated interest tracking actually works: the same "Why us" essay these schools are cutting is exactly the kind of thing that used to double as a fit and interest signal. Dropping it doesn't necessarily mean a school stopped wanting that signal -- some are simply collecting it a different way. WashU is the clearest example: it removed an optional essay while, in the very same admissions cycle, announcing it would begin tracking demonstrated interest for the first time ever through campus visits, virtual info sessions, and portal engagement. Read together, that's not really "less scrutiny" -- it's the same underlying question (do you actually want to be here) moving from an essay prompt to a CRM-tracked behavior pattern.
What this means for you
- Don't read "no supplemental essay" as "this school is now easier to get into." The opposite risk is closer to true: schools that drop essays tend to see application volume spike, which can make them harder to be admitted to in raw numbers even though each individual application takes less time.
- Your personal statement carries more relative weight at these specific schools -- if a school drops its supplement, your Common App essay may be the only substantial writing sample admissions officers see from you there, which raises the stakes on getting it right.
- If a school dropped its "why us" essay, check whether it started tracking demonstrated interest instead -- some schools are swapping one signal for another rather than genuinely caring less about fit.
- This list is current but not necessarily stable -- it changed meaningfully in a single year (UVA a cycle ahead of everyone else), so check each specific school's current application requirements directly rather than trusting a list from a prior cycle, including this one.