For years, the conventional wisdom passed between families went something like this: test scores are optional, and a strong “Why This School?” essay can carry an application across the finish line. That conventional wisdom is now outdated — and relying on it could put your student at a real disadvantage.
Six of the eight Ivy League schools, along with MIT, Stanford, Caltech, Georgetown, and dozens of others, now require SAT or ACT scores for the 2026-27 cycle. The reasoning admissions offices give is consistent: with grade inflation making transcripts harder to compare across high schools, test scores have become one of the few standardized data points colleges still trust. I ensure my students approach testing as a deliberate, multi-year strategy — not an afterthought. And it doesn’t stop at the SAT or ACT. Elite institutions are scrutinizing AP scores just as closely — the difference between a 4.3 and a 4.5 AP average can be the difference between an admit and a denial at a school like Harvard.
At the same time, a different trend is unfolding in the opposite direction. Tulane, the University of Georgia, UVA, UNC, TCU, and WashU have all dropped or scaled back supplemental essays this cycle — and more schools are expected to follow. Tulane’s admissions office cited AI directly, noting that it’s become difficult to tell which “Why Tulane?” responses are genuinely a student’s own work. With that signal less trustworthy, schools are leaning harder on what’s left: transcripts, course rigor, test scores, and the Common App personal statement, which now carries far more weight than it used to.
Here’s what families often miss: dropping a supplemental essay doesn’t make a school easier to get into. It removes a barrier, which means more applications, lower admit rates, and more competition for the same number of seats.
So what does any of this have to do with an 8th, 9th, or 10th grader? Everything. The students who will be best positioned in two or three years are those whose course selection, testing timeline, and personal narrative were deliberately built — not assembled the summer before senior year. At Prestigious Pathways, I like my students to begin shaping their academic and extracurricular story well before junior year, so that by the time it’s just one essay carrying the weight, there’s no scramble to manufacture material — only genuine experience to draw from.
The admissions landscape your older child navigated may already be gone. Strategy that starts early isn’t a luxury anymore — it’s the actual advantage.
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