The Evolving World of Admissions: Key Issues for the 2025-2026 Cycle

The 2025-2026 admissions cycle is shaped by two powerful contemporary forces that are fundamentally altering how students present themselves and how colleges build their incoming classes. The aftermath of the Supreme Court's ruling on affirmative action and the rapid proliferation of artificial intelligence have converged, creating a new and complex environment for applicants to navigate.

A. The Post-SFFA Landscape: Navigating Admissions After Affirmative Action

In its June 2023 decision in Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) v. Harvard & UNC, the Supreme Court effectively ended the practice of race-conscious admissions, striking down the use of race as a direct factor in evaluating applicants. In response, colleges and universities that remain committed to diversity have adapted their admissions practices in several key ways that directly impact applicants:

• A New Emphasis on Lived Experience in Essays: The Court's majority opinion explicitly stated that "nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant's discussion of how race affected his or her life." Consequently, many selective colleges have revised their supplemental essay prompts to invite students to reflect on their background, life experiences, and the challenges they have overcome. Harvard, for example, now requires short answers on life experiences and how an applicant hopes to use their education. This allows admissions committees to understand a student's identity and context through their personal narrative, which remains a permissible part of a holistic review.
• The Decline of Legacy Preferences: In an effort to create a more equitable process, a growing number of institutions, including Virginia Tech, and several states, such as California, Virginia, and Maryland, have banned legacy preferences in admissions.
• A Focus on Socioeconomic Factors: Colleges are increasing their outreach to students from low-income backgrounds and are placing greater emphasis on socioeconomic factors in their holistic review. Major new financial aid initiatives, like those at UNC and Duke offering free tuition to in-state students from lower- and middle-income families, are a direct result of this strategic shift.
• Uncertainty in Scholarship Programs: The SFFA ruling has had a chilling effect on many race-based scholarships, with numerous programs being legally challenged, frozen, or modified to become race-neutral.

B. Artificial Intelligence in Admissions: The New Frontier of Authenticity

The widespread availability of sophisticated generative AI tools has introduced a new and challenging dimension to the application process, centered on the question of authenticity. University policies are still evolving but are beginning to coalesce around several key principles:

• A Spectrum of Policies: Institutional responses to AI range from strict prohibition to guidelines for limited, ethical use. A small number of institutions, including Georgetown and Brown, explicitly forbid the use of AI for generating any application content. A larger and growing group, including Caltech, Cornell, and the University of Virginia, has adopted a "limited use" policy. These schools permit AI for brainstorming ideas, conducting research, and checking grammar and spelling, but strictly prohibit its use for drafting or generating substantive written content. The Common Application itself classifies the submission of AI-generated content as application fraud. Many other top universities currently have no official policy but remind applicants that they must certify that all submitted work is their own.
• The Counselor's Recommendation: The primary goal of the application essay is to reveal the student's unique voice, personality, and perspective. AI, by its nature, produces text that is often generic, derivative, and devoid of genuine personal reflection. The risk of submitting an inauthentic essay that fails to connect with an admissions reader far outweighs any perceived benefit of using AI for content generation. A helpful guideline offered by Caltech is to ask: "Would it be ethical to have a trusted adult perform the same task you are asking of AI?" An adult can ethically proofread an essay, but they cannot ethically write it for the student. The same standard applies to AI.

These two forces—the post-SFFA legal landscape and the rise of AI—are not independent phenomena. They converge to create what can be termed the "Authenticity Gauntlet." On one hand, the SFFA ruling compels colleges to rely more heavily than ever on the personal essay as the primary vehicle for understanding an applicant's background, identity, and lived experience. Students are being asked to be more personal and reflective in their writing to provide the context that admissions offices need. On the other hand, the existence of AI simultaneously threatens the integrity of that very vehicle, making it more difficult for admissions officers to distinguish a student's genuine voice from an algorithm's output. The college essay has thus been elevated; it is no longer just a writing sample but the principal arena where authenticity is tested. Students who can successfully run this gauntlet—by writing with specific, detailed, and genuine vulnerability about their lives—will produce applications that stand out with far greater clarity and impact in the 2025-2026 admissions cycle.