The college admissions landscape continues to evolve year over year. We recently highlighted some strategies that universities implemented for last year’s (2025-2026) cycle, including:
The fall is rapidly approaching, and with it comes a new college admissions cycle. As such, we are following up on our 2026 report with a closer look at the new admissions strategies and institutional priorities gaining traction in 2027 and beyond.
The Ivy League has now completely walked back perhaps the most hotly contested vestige of COVID-era admissions: test-optional admissions.
This past June, Columbia University announced they would make standardized testing a requirement for students applying to the 2027-2028 application cycle and beyond, making 2026-2027 the last year of “test optional policies.”
Yale University also reinstated the testing requirement for this year’s (2026-2027) cycle, following recommendations put forth by their Presidential Council on College Admissions.
Columbia will follow Princeton University – who also announced last October students would need to submit scores in 2027-2028 and beyond – as the last two test-optional Ivy League schools. Dartmouth, Brown, and Harvard University reimplemented the testing requirement for 2024-2025 applicants, followed by Cornell, and Penn in the most recent (2025-2026) cycle.
Returning to the pre-COVID status quo comes amid the public outcry over declining student performance, accelerated by the recent warnings from University of California faculty. From their perspective, incoming freshmen’s academic deficiencies are at least in part due to the lack of standardized testing requirements.
The push to reinstate standardized testing extends past Ivy+ institutions. Auburn University and the University of Alabama announced that they would require standardized tests starting with the 2027-2028 admission cycle. Louisiana State University (LSU) also recently announced their return to standardized testing, but deferring the change until the 2028-2029 cycle.
In the cycle before the testing requirement takes effect, 2026-2027 for Auburn and Alabama and 2027-2028 for LSU, each institution is implementing a “tiered” testing requirement. Applicants who fall below a school-determined GPA threshold are required to submit standardized test scores, while those above it can apply test-optional.
2026-2027 will mark the first application cycle where Georgetown University will accept applications through the Common Application.
Though announced in 2025, Georgetown’s addition to Common App impacts admissions for the first time this year. By making it easier to apply to Georgetown, this change intensifies competition among universities for students’ limited application slots. This battle plays out over two finite resources: a student’s time and attention.
By making this change, Georgetown specifically cited an increased ability to reach students—especially those from diverse and historically underserved backgrounds—as the new policy’s impetus.
Georgetown will continue to accept applications directly through its proprietary portal. MIT and UC system schools now sit alone as the Common App holdouts among top-25 institutions.
Washington University in Saint Louis (WashU) has long maintained a distinct application process, given its status as a highly selective institution with merit-based scholarship applications and its acceptance of student video portfolios as an application component.
For the 2026-2027 cycle, WashU announced substantial changes to its admissions calculus, adding some criteria while removing others. These include:
These moves appear to signal two things: WashU wants to receive more applications while rewarding those students who show genuine interest and, thus, are more likely to enroll.
Falling in line with WashU, several other universities are also nixing their supplementary essays, partially in an effort to encourage a streamlined application process.
Tulane, University of North Carolina, University of Georgia have all eliminated their essay supplements for the 2026-2027 cycle, each noting that they believe the Common App personal statement is sufficient writing for application evaluation. Cornell University also got rid of its university-wide supplemental, but kept its school-specific responses.
Another reason why supplemental essays might be going by the wayside: increasing concerns over whether such long-form writing authentically represents the applicant. Duke University cited such a concern when they ditched the supplemental essay in 2024, which generative AI has exacerbated. According to reporting by Inside Higher Ed, Tulane’s thought process hinged on similar reasoning, while WashU’s decision was not made with AI in mind.
In response to questions about removing the supplemental essay, David Graves, University of Georgia’s Director of Undergraduate Admissions, explained that relieving student and counselor stress was the primary motivator for this change. While an increase in application volume to UGA would probably occur, Graves noted this was not a significant factor for the policy update.
Between generative AI and the desire to streamline applications, it will be interesting to see if the supplemental essay is on its way out.
Building on the momentum early rounds of admission gained last cycle – with University of Michigan and University of Southern California both rolling out such tracks in 2026 – more universities are jumping aboard the Early Decision (ED) and Early Action (EA) train.
For the upcoming cycle, students will have more opportunities to apply early. University of Florida and Florida State University will offer ED pathways, while Occidental College and Syracuse University will now offer EA tracks.
For Syracuse University, the addition of EA is especially notable given its recently reported enrollment struggles. In early June, Syracuse announced they had missed enrollment targets for 2026, and in April, the university eliminated or paused enrollment to dozens of majors, prioritizing resources towards majors with the highest demand.
By adding EA, Syracuse adds a non-binding method of identifying students more likely to yield, joining Syracuse’s existing ED I, ED II, and RD pathways.
Yale’s 2026 Report on Trust in Higher Education highlighted the ballooning cost of undergraduate degrees.
The report also found that, while the “high-tuition high-aid” model ultimately does perform as designed – consistently reducing the cost of attendance for those with demonstrated need – its poor communication causes families to be unaware of their actual contribution or significantly overestimate it.
It is extremely beneficial to families, then, when institutions take steps to publicize and streamline how aid is calculated.
Whitman College has taken this belief to heart by pioneering a brand-new financial aid system: anchoring family contributions to a set fraction of household income. Through its innovative “10% Promise,” Whitman now commits to covering all tuition costs that are more than 10% of a family’s household income.
Brandeis University is also leading the charge for expeditious aid calculations. Brandeis recently launched Faye, a new online tool that allows families to quickly compute net tuition costs and strategize ways of affording the institution.
While we covered Northeastern’s accelerated aid estimates last year as a perk for ED applicants, Whitman and Brandeis have eliminated the wait for scholarship estimates for all prospective applicants. By allowing for a straightforward calculation of aid, these schools save families from the guesswork of whether college is affordable, encouraging applicants from aid-conscious households.
While Whitman and Brandeis have created straightforward methods of calculating household contribution, more schools are removing the financial burden of tuition entirely for certain families. Starting this fall, Bryn Mawr College, Davidson College, and the University of Notre Dame will join the ranks of institutions publicly offering “no tuition” income thresholds.
At Bryn Mawr and Davidson, families making less than $175,000 will pay no tuition.
Notre Dame expanded their Pathways to Notre Dame initiative to encompass different family situations. With these changes, households making less than:
For students matriculating in Fall 2027, St. John’s University will offer a new initiative—St. John’s Ready—that ensures “first-time, first-year” students have access to course materials at no additional charge. St. John’s estimates that students will save an average of ~$1,300 through this program.
While this isn’t a direct change to the university’s admission policy, this can still be seen as an incentive to entice applications, particularly for students from first-generation backgrounds. As evidenced by programs like St. John’s Ready, colleges are working harder to expand the applicant pool to students that wouldn’t normally see higher education as an option.
California State University’s direct admissions pathway will go into effect for all Californians for fall 2027, following a two year pilot.
This program aims to heighten awareness of college eligibility, especially among students from underrepresented backgrounds. Students are identified for direct admission and encouraged to apply to California State University through mailers. After an application is complete, the student will be invited to enroll at one of CSU’s 17 participating campuses.
Publicly sponsored direct admission programs are gaining steam alongside their private counterparts (viz. Niche and Common App’s direct admission programs). North Carolina, Georgia, and New York have all recently launched direct admission programs of their own; Texas has also long maintained its direct admission pathway for the top 10% of high school students.
In a couple words: not much. After several major changes for 2025-2026, Common App has only made a few cosmetic updates for 2026-2027. These include:
Common App appears to also share colleges’ interest in streamlining the applicant experience and admissions process and reducing any friction that causes applications to go unfinished.
In February 2026, Common App released its prompts for the 2026-2027 cycle. The prompts are identical to last year’s, and they appear to have not changed the “Challenges and circumstances” and “Additional Information” sections, solidifying their 2025-2026 updates.
Looking at these ten changes, some of which directly challenge the relevance of established application norms, many have been made to improve a student’s application experience.
When understanding the why behind these updates, admissions offices seem to have the following considerations top of mind:
Further, some innovations are continued expansions of strategies pioneered by other institutions. To see which ones stick and which ones become one-off experiments, we’ll have to keep our eyes glued to 2028.
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