What Happened to College Admissions?

The landscape of college admissions has undergone a dramatic transformation in the mid-2020s, driven by a confluence of legal decisions, technological advancements, and demographic shifts. This period, particularly from 2023 through mid-2026, has redefined access, equity, and the application process itself.

One of the most impactful events was the Supreme Court's June 2023 decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard and UNC, which effectively banned the consideration of race in college admissions. This ruling overturned decades of precedent allowing race as a factor in holistic reviews, aiming to foster diverse student bodies. The immediate consequence, observed in the 2024 and 2025 enrollment cycles, was a noticeable decline in Black, Hispanic, and Indigenous student representation at many highly selective institutions, including Harvard, UNC, MIT, and Princeton. Conversely, some state flagship universities and less selective institutions saw an increase in underrepresented minority students, suggesting a redistribution of applicants. Colleges have since explored race-neutral strategies to maintain diversity, such as revising essay prompts to focus on how race has affected an applicant's life, and increasing outreach to community colleges.

Simultaneously, the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) underwent a significant simplification process, mandated by the FAFSA Simplification Act. Intended to make financial aid more accessible, the rollout for the 2024-2025 academic year was plagued by extensive delays, technical glitches, and incorrect data calculations, disproportionately affecting low-income and first-generation students. The Department of Education's failures led to hundreds of thousands fewer students completing the FAFSA, delaying financial aid offers and creating immense uncertainty for families. While efforts were made to improve the process for the 2025-2026 cycle, including a phased rollout, the initial issues had a lasting impact on enrollment patterns and trust in the system.

A notable resurgence of standardized testing has also characterized this period. Following widespread test-optional policies during the COVID-19 pandemic, many elite institutions, including Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, Brown, and Caltech, reinstated SAT/ACT requirements for the 2024-2025 and 2025-2026 cycles. This shift is largely attributed to concerns about grade inflation and internal data suggesting that standardized tests are strong predictors of college success, especially for identifying high-potential students from under-resourced backgrounds. While over 1,800 schools remain test-optional, the trend among highly selective institutions signals a two-tiered system where submitting strong scores can significantly enhance an applicant's chances.

Demographic shifts and the impending 'enrollment cliff' are also major concerns. Projections indicate a decline in the number of 18-year-olds in the U.S. starting in 2026, with a projected 15% drop by 2029. This 'enrollment cliff,' a result of lower birth rates in the early 2000s, will intensify competition among colleges for a shrinking pool of domestic students, particularly impacting institutions reliant on tuition revenue. While overall applications have continued to rise through the 2025-2026 cycle, driven by students applying to more schools, this trend is not expected to ease competition at highly selective institutions.

Finally, the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into the admissions process has become a significant development. By mid-2026, many colleges are using AI for administrative tasks like verifying application completion and standardizing transcripts, with some even employing AI to scan essays for efficiency. This has led to new policies regarding AI use by applicants; while some schools permit AI for brainstorming, many prohibit AI-generated content in essays and are developing methods to detect it. Institutions like Duke have even stopped assigning numerical scores to essays due to AI concerns, emphasizing authenticity and personal voice. Efforts to ban legacy admissions are also gaining traction, with several states enacting legislation and a bipartisan federal bill introduced in July 2026, though some institutions have found ways to circumvent state bans.