The Common App personal statement essay has long been a standard requirement in most college applications. For Sage Gonzalez, it was an essay she chose to write, since Northwestern University no longer requires it.

The university, like many others, has made the personal statement optional and now requires shorter supplemental essays instead. This year many schools have dropped the supplemental essays, too.

Gonzalez, an incoming freshman, suspects AI is the reason behind these decisions.

“That’s really, really, really sad because I think that through your Common App essay, not even just the supplementals, it’s the very vital part in the application process to really get the school to know who you are, what you want to do, your intentions,” Gonzalez said.

This year, the Common App officially opened Aug. 1, marking the start of the 2026-2027 cycle. And like in many areas of education, AI is reshaping the college application experience.

Students now face a hodgepodge of rules about the use of AI tools in their applications. Some schools offer detailed policies while others offer limited guidance or none at all, leaving students to search the internet for answers from previous applicants, rely on blog posts, Reddit, and other unofficial sources to find out what’s allowed.

While AI has not been explicitly named as a reason to move away from the written word in college applications, the technology has pushed many admissions offices to make changes.

“College admissions offices across the country have been responding pre-emptively to AI usage in many different ways, including explicit bans against using the technology,” AJ Alvero, assistant research professor and computational sociologist at Cornell University, wrote in a statement.

Alvero is one of the authors of a recent study that found college applicants are increasingly using AI in their essays, particularly those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.

The study also found that a high amount of AI content in application essays was associated with a 22% drop in admissions odds.

Rules about AI use vary.

Northwestern University details constructive uses of AI, including researching colleges, brainstorming essay topics and reviewing grammar. But it considers problematic its use to translate an essay written in another language or to repurpose an essay written for another school. Georgia Institute of Technology’s guidance recommends using AI for resume building and filling out the activities section of the Common App. The University of Wisconsin-Madison says it will not disqualify an applicant suspected or found to have used AI in their admissions essay, though they discourage submitting an AI-generated essay. Cornell University expects students to use AI ethically for brainstorming, grammar review and research.

A spokesperson for Cornell told NBC News that beginning in fall 2027, applicants will have to disclose any support they received while completing their application, including the use of AI technology.

Schools also vary in how they use AI to evaluate applicants.

In 2019, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill began using AI as part of its admissions review process, as reported in The Daily Tar Heel and detailed on the university’s website. More recently, in July 2025, Virginia Tech announced it would begin utilizing an AI essay reviewer in collaboration with human reviewers. A spokesperson for the Georgia Institute of Technology told NBC News the school will use AI to review data-centric aspects of the application. Spokespeople from the University of Michigan, Cornell University, University of Wisconsin–Madison and Yale University told NBC News that AI is not used in their admissions review process for undergraduate applicants.

But one thing is common to all educational institutions: they are struggling to determine the authenticity of applications.

A recent Wall Street Journal article detailed how admissions officers at the California Institute of Technology are verifying information in applications. The report highlights how AI, in part, has made it easier to create parts of the application.

For students navigating the changing AI landscape, admissions experts advise caution.

Ethan Sawyer, founder of College Essay Guy, wrote in a statement, “My bigger concern isn’t about students getting caught. It’s about what students might miss if they hand much of their writing (and thinking) over to a machine.”

According to an April 2026 survey conducted by college prep company Kaplan, 90% of the 500 survey respondents of high school sophomores, juniors and seniors said there should be at least some restrictions on AI in admissions essays.

It remains unclear if writing will continue to be part of the college admissions process given the rise of AI. For students applying to schools that do require essays, Jayson Weingarten, former University of Pennsylvania admissions officer and current senior admissions consultant at Ivy Coach, offered a warning.

“In elite college admissions, there’s no courtroom standard of ‘innocent until proven guilty.’ Students will not get the benefit of the doubt,” Weingarten wrote.

“In highly selective college admissions, authenticity has always been the competitive advantage,” he wrote. “In a process where standing out is everything, the last thing an applicant should want is to sound like everyone else. Or worse, like Generative AI.”