Two Georgia universities scratch extra essay from admissions process

High school seniors applying this year to two of Georgia’s most selective colleges may have it a little easier than their older brothers and sisters after the University of Georgia and Georgia Tech have both announced they will no longer require supplemental essays for applicants.

“The ultimate goal is really to simplify the application for students, to take one layer out of the process,” said Mary Tipton Woolley, the executive director of Georgia Tech’s Office of Undergraduate Admission. “We know the application process takes time. It takes a lot of thought from students. It requires students to be thoughtful and introspective, and if we determine that something that is part of the application is no longer useful, then we want to remove that to make it more simple for students.”

Prospective students will still need to turn in a personal essay as part of the Common App, which is an online platform students use to apply for multiple colleges. That essay will be read by each school they apply for, but the change means students will no longer have to write separate essays assigned by the schools.

For Tech, the essay was typically about why the student wanted to study there or why they wanted to pursue their particular major, and UGA previously asked students to write about a book that had a strong impact on them.

College applicants sometimes find themselves writing over a dozen separate essays in an expensive and highly competitive process while balancing a full high school course load and other responsibilities.

A 2023 report from the National Association for College Admission Counseling found that nearly three quarters of counselors listed simplifying the application process as one of the top three proposed changes to help student mental health.

Woolley said part of the change comes down to the increasing use of artificial intelligence, but that’s not the whole story. The internet is full of advice on writing the type of college essay admissions officers supposedly want to read, she said, and with 68,000 essays to read from applicants last year, they start to sound the same.

“I think some of that is due to the fact that they’re just more well-known,” she said. “They’ve been around for a long time. There’s a lot available to students to guide them to write a certain way.”

Impact on students and colleges

Charles Mendels and Elaine Rosenblum, cofounders of Access Test Prep and Tutoring in Buckhead, work every day with students who dream of going to UGA, Georgia Tech or other top schools.

The two said the change will be a help for students like theirs, but Rosenblum lamented what she characterized as a shift away from emphasizing writing skills.

“I think there’s a cost to this in terms of the students and their critical and analytical thinking and having to talk about themselves or think about themselves in a critical and analytical way,” she said. “I think you can send people to college and give them technical skills, but without the critical and analytical skills, it could be an issue. I’m already seeing it with graduating students who aren’t being forced to write and really analyze.”

The SAT has discontinued its optional essay section, and students often skip the optional ACT essay because very few colleges require it as part of the admissions process.

Mendels said a move away from supplemental essays will mean more students will decide there’s no harm in applying to additional schools.

And having more applicants benefits institutions by making them seem more exclusive.

“If you get more people applying, you look like a more selective school,” he said.

Part of a trend?

Woolley said it’s too early to say whether the change will be part of a trend in Georgia, but other selective schools across the country have dropped their supplemental essays, including Tulane University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the University of Virginia.

According to the UVA Alumni Association’s Virginia Magazine, the number of first-year applicants to that university increased by more than 27% the year after that school dropped its supplemental essay requirement. The school’s previous record application increase was 17% in 2021, though the university noted it could not speculate on a cause behind the increase.

In a response to a comment on a blog post announcing the change, UGA’s executive director of undergraduate admissions David Graves said he’s expecting an increase in applications, but not at the same level UVA saw.

“UVA is also test optional as opposed to UGA being test required, so we do not expect as much of a jump,” he wrote. “I also feel that if one 250-300 word essay is the difference between applying or not, then a number of additional applications might not be as strong. But this was more of a focus on both the applicants themselves and my team. We could have added hurdles for students to apply, but is that really for the best for our future applicants who are already stressed and overworked?”