what colleges want act essay

Complete List: Which Colleges Require ACT Writing?

What Is the ACT Writing Test?

The ACT Writing Test is an optional section of the ACT exam that assesses a student's writing skills. It provides colleges and universities with an additional measure of a student's readiness for college-level writing assignments. The test consists of a single prompt that presents a specific issue or topic and requires students to take a position on it. Students are given 40 minutes to plan, write, and revise their response.

The ACT Writing Test evaluates a student's ability to analyze multiple perspectives, develop and support an argument, and effectively communicate ideas in a coherent and organized manner. It assesses critical thinking, reasoning, and persuasive writing skills. The essay is scored on a scale of 2-12 by two independent readers who evaluate the overall quality of the response, including its development, organization, and use of language.

While the ACT Writing Test is optional, many colleges and universities require or recommend it for admissions. Some schools use the writing score as part of their evaluation process, while others consider it as supplemental information. It is essential for students to check the requirements of the schools they are applying to in order to determine whether they should take the ACT Writing Test.

Preparing for the ACT Writing Test involves honing writing skills, familiarizing oneself with different types of prompts, and practicing writing under timed conditions. Students should develop their ability to construct a clear thesis statement, support it with relevant evidence and examples, and demonstrate strong reasoning and critical thinking skills.

Taking the ACT Writing Test can provide students with an opportunity to showcase their writing abilities and enhance their college applications. It allows them to demonstrate their proficiency in expressing ideas effectively and persuasively. By preparing adequately and practicing writing skills, students can perform well on the ACT Writing Test and present themselves as strong candidates to colleges and universities.

Why Do Some Schools Require ACT Writing?

Some schools require the ACT Writing Test as part of their admissions process for several reasons:

1. Writing Assessment: The ACT Writing Test provides colleges and universities with a standardized measure of a student's writing abilities. It allows admissions officers to evaluate a student's writing skills, including their ability to construct a well-organized essay, develop and support arguments, and convey ideas effectively. By assessing a student's writing proficiency, schools can better determine if the student is prepared for the rigors of college-level writing assignments.

2. Holistic Evaluation: Including the ACT Writing Test helps colleges and universities get a more comprehensive understanding of a student's academic abilities. It complements other components of the application, such as grades, test scores, and extracurricular activities, providing a more well-rounded view of the applicant. Schools may consider the writing test to gain insights into a student's critical thinking, analytical skills, and ability to communicate effectively.

3. Writing-Intensive Programs: Some colleges and universities place a strong emphasis on writing skills and have writing-intensive programs or majors. For these institutions, the ACT Writing Test becomes an important tool for assessing a student's aptitude for written communication. Requiring the writing test helps ensure that admitted students are capable of meeting the demands of writing-intensive coursework and projects.

4. Standardized Comparison: The ACT Writing Test provides a standardized way to compare writing abilities across applicants. It offers a consistent measure of writing skills that is easily comparable across different schools and regions. By requiring the writing test, schools can use it as a common benchmark for evaluating applicants and making admission decisions.

It's important for students to research the requirements of the schools they are interested in to understand whether the ACT Writing Test is required or recommended. Some schools may consider the writing score as an important factor in their evaluation process, while others may place less emphasis on it. Understanding the expectations of each school will help students make informed decisions about whether to take the ACT Writing Test and how to best prepare for it.

What Kind of Colleges Require ACT Writing?

Several colleges and universities require the ACT Writing Test as part of their admissions process. These schools may have different reasons for including the writing section and vary in their emphasis on its importance. Here are some types of colleges that often require ACT Writing:

1. Highly Selective Colleges: Many highly selective colleges and universities, including Ivy League institutions, top-ranked private universities, and prestigious liberal arts colleges, often require ACT Writing. These schools receive a large number of applications and aim to holistically evaluate candidates, considering their academic achievements, extracurricular involvement, and writing abilities.

2. Writing-Intensive Programs: Colleges and universities with writing-intensive programs or majors often require the ACT Writing Test. These programs may include majors in English, creative writing, journalism, communications, or any field that emphasizes strong writing skills. Requiring the writing section helps these institutions assess a student's ability to meet the demands of writing-intensive coursework.

3. Honors Programs: Many colleges and universities have honors programs that offer advanced coursework, research opportunities, and a more challenging academic experience. These programs often require the ACT Writing Test to gauge a student's writing skills and intellectual capabilities. Demonstrating strong writing abilities is particularly important for admission to honors programs.

4. Scholarship Consideration: Some colleges and universities require the ACT Writing Test for scholarship consideration. Merit-based scholarships, especially those that focus on academic achievement or leadership, may use the writing score as a factor in awarding scholarships. Requiring the writing section allows these institutions to assess a student's overall potential and eligibility for financial aid.

5. State Universities: Some state universities, particularly flagship and highly competitive public institutions, may require the ACT Writing Test. These schools often have a large applicant pool and may use the writing section to differentiate between candidates who have similar academic profiles. Requiring the writing test helps these universities make more informed admission decisions.

It's important for students to check the specific requirements of each college or university they are interested in to determine whether ACT Writing is mandatory or recommended. College websites and admissions offices typically provide this information. Students should also consider their own writing abilities and goals when deciding whether to take the ACT Writing Test, as well as the potential benefits it may provide for their college applications.

Full List of Colleges That Require ACT Writing

While the ACT Writing Test is optional for most colleges and universities, there are some institutions that require or recommend it as part of their admissions process. Here is a list of colleges and universities that currently require ACT Writing:

1. University of California (UC) System: All nine campuses of the University of California system require ACT Writing. These campuses include UC Berkeley, UCLA, UC San Diego, UC Davis, UC Santa Barbara, UC Irvine, UC Santa Cruz, UC Riverside, and UC Merced.

2. Claremont McKenna College: This private liberal arts college in California requires ACT Writing for admission.

3. Colorado School of Mines: ACT Writing is required for admission to this public research university specializing in engineering and applied science.

4. Georgia Institute of Technology: Georgia Tech requires ACT Writing for admission to its undergraduate programs.

5. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: This public research university requires ACT Writing for admission.

6. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT): MIT requires the ACT with Writing or the SAT with Essay for admission.

7. University of Michigan-Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan requires ACT Writing or SAT Essay for admission.

8. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: ACT Writing is required for admission to UNC-Chapel Hill.

9. University of Notre Dame: ACT Writing or SAT Essay is required for admission to Notre Dame.

10. University of Pennsylvania: The University of Pennsylvania requires ACT Writing or SAT with Essay for admission.

11. University of Virginia: ACT Writing or SAT with Essay is required for admission to the University of Virginia.

Please note that this list is subject to change, and it's essential for students to verify the requirements of each institution they are interested in as part of their college application process. Additionally, some colleges and universities may recommend ACT Writing but not require it. Students should check with individual institutions to understand their specific policies regarding ACT Writing.

In conclusion, while the ACT Writing Test is optional for most colleges and universities, there are some institutions that require or recommend it as part of their admissions process. It is important for students to research and understand the specific requirements of each college they are interested in to ensure they meet the necessary criteria. Adhering to the ACT Writing requirements can help students present a comprehensive application and increase their chances of admission to their desired institutions.

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Colleges that Require the ACT Writing Test

Learn Which Colleges and Universities Require the ACT With Writing

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• Ph.D., English, University of Pennsylvania
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If you're trying to decide whether you should take the ACT with Writing or just the regular ACT, the list below can help you make your decision. It includes all of the colleges and universities in the 50 United States that require the ACT writing section, listed by state.

Realize, however, that there are hundreds of colleges that recommend the ACT Plus Writing without requiring it. So unless you know for sure that the schools you're applying to don't care about the writing section, it may be wise to spend the extra half an hour and $16.00 to take the ACT Plus Writing.

Note that the number of colleges requiring the ACT with Writing continues to decrease since the SAT dropped the required writing section from its exam in March of 2016. Some schools had required the ACT Writing Test to put the SAT and ACT on equal footing, but now that writing is optional for the SAT, many schools have decided to make it optional for both exams.

Schools Requiring the ACT Writing Test

The schools on the list were identified using ACT's search tool. Colleges change their requirements frequently, so be sure to double-check with the schools for the most accurate and up-to-date information. Click on a school's name here to get more information including acceptance rates and typical ACT and SAT scores for admitted students.

• California Institute of Technology
• Chapman University
• Claremont McKenna College
• Golden State Baptist College
• Harvey Mudd College
• Occidental College
• Patten University
• Scripps College
• Soka University of America
• Stanford University
• University of California at Berkeley (Berkeley)
• University of California at Davis (UC Davis)
• University of California at Irvine (UC Irvine)
• University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA)
• University of California at Merced (UCM)
• University of California at Riverside (UCR)
• University of California at San Diego (UCSD)
• University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB)
• University of California at Santa Cruz (UCSC)
• University of La Verne
• University of San Diego
• Westmont College

Connecticut

• United States Coast Guard Academy (USCGA)
• Yale University
• Delaware State University

District of Columbia

• Florida A&M (FAMU)
• Florida Atlantic University
• Florida International University (FIU)
• Trinity Baptist College
• Georgia Southern University
• Morris Brown College
• Ogeechee Technical College
• Oxford College of Emory University
• University of Hawaii at Manoa
• Bible Missionary Institute
• MacCormac College
• Olive-Harvey College
• St. Joseph College Seminary
• VanderCook College of Music
• Fairhaven College
• Indiana University East
• Louisville Bible College
• Simmons College of Kentucky
• Washington Adventist University

Massachusetts

• Harvard University
• Springfield College
• Wellesley College
• College for Creative Studies
• University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Mississippi

• Urshan College
• University of Montana Western

New Hampshire

• Dartmouth College
• Seton Hall University
• Barnard College - Columbia University
• Concordia College - New York
• CUNY - John Jay College of Criminal Justice
• Five Towns College
• List College - Jewish Theological Seminary
• Molloy College
• Pratt Institute
• Siena College
• SUNY College - Old Westbury
• SUNY Maritime College
• University at Buffalo - SUNY
• United States Military Academy - West Point
• Vassar College

North Carolina

• Duke University
• Elizabeth City State University
• Elon University
• Fayetteville State University
• North Carolina Central University (NCCU)
• Queens University of Charlotte
• University of North Carolina School of the Arts
• Western Carolina University
• Winston-Salem State University

North Dakota

• God’s Bible School and College
• Lake Erie College
• East Central University
• Lane Community College
• Oregon State University
• Portland State University

Pennsylvania

• Arcadia University
• Lafayette College
• Muhlenberg College
• University of the Sciences in Philadelphia
• York College of Pennsylvania

Rhode Island

• Rhode Island College
• Rhode Island School of Design (RISD)

South Carolina

• University of South Carolina - Columbia (USC)

South Dakota

• Southwest Tennessee Community College
• Cedar Valley College
• Hardin-Simmons University
• Paul Quinn College
• Southwest School of Art
• St. Edward's University
• Stephen F. Austin State University
• Tarleton State University
• University of Dallas
• University of Mary Hardin-Baylor
• University of Texas at Austin
• University of Texas at Dallas (UTD)
• University of Washington Tacoma

West Virginia

• West Virginia University Institute of Technology
• West Virginia University
• Public Universities Where Most Students Score 20 - 25 on the ACT
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ACT Writing and SAT Essay Requirements

On january 19th, 2021, college board announced that they will no longer administer the sat subject tests in the u.s. and that the essay would be retired. read our blog post  to understand what this means in the near term and what the college board has in store for students down the road., our articles on subject tests and the sat essay will remain on our site for reference purposes as colleges and students transition to a revised testing landscape. as an admission tool, students should consider the essay as canceled. compass recommends our students forgo the sat and act optional essays on future exams..

The SAT Essay and ACT Writing continue to pose a conundrum for students. While College Board and ACT have made these components optional, a small number of colleges continue to require or recommend them. Compass believes that students should no longer take the SAT Essay or ACT Writing unless they are applying to (or thinking about applying to) one of the few colleges that still requires the essay. Students who have already taken the essay should not be overly concerned about scores. One reason the essay is fading away is that the scores simply aren’t that accurate or useful. Colleges never really found a use for them, and the essays created an unnecessary obstacle for some applicants.

Rather than worrying about an essay score that is mostly ignored by colleges, Compass believes students should spend their time strengthening the more valuable pieces of their academic portfolio: high school GPA and, more specifically, success in rigorous courses like APs. Compass offers AP and academic tutoring in over 50 subjects to help students stay on pace with their coursework. Our team of subject specific expert tutors will guide the program from start to finish. We also offer a Study Skills and Organizational Coaching program to provide students with the tools they need to excel in the classroom.

The following table of popular colleges provides a wide range of institutions and policies.

Colleges with essay optional policies often do not specify whether submitted essay scores will be used for admission. When the college explicitly states that scores will not be evaluated, we have listed the policy as “Not Considered.” “Optional” should not be interpreted as meaning that the college uses submitted scores. We recommend contacting the school if you have specific questions.

ACT and SAT Essay Requirements - Class of 2019 and Beyond

* In response to COVID-19, these schools have announced temporary test optional or test blind policies, which also effects their essay requirements and recommendations. Please check with the individual schools for more information.

** University of Montana Western has students submit ACT Writing in order to satisfy English proficiency requirements.

Post a comment or send an email to [email protected] with questions or recommended changes.

Related posts:

ACT Writing scores have gone through multiple changes. To try to clear things up, Compass has published ACT Writing Scores Explained . A similar analysis for the SAT is also available.

Our College Profiles page  provides SAT and ACT scores for some of the most competitive colleges in the country.

Score choice and superscoring policies can be found for more than 400 popular colleges and universities.

Subject Test requirements continue to evolve, so Compass keeps an up-to-date list.

Updated 6/24/2020

About Art Sawyer

Art graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University, where he was the top-ranked liberal arts student in his class. Art pioneered the one-on-one approach to test prep in California in 1989 and co-founded Compass Education Group in 2004 in order to bring the best ideas and tutors into students' homes and computers. Although he has attained perfect scores on all flavors of the SAT and ACT, he is routinely beaten in backgammon.

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Hi Art, Hope you are staying safe. Son is sophomore who will be taking the September ACT. He is not a great writer, does not like writing, and does not want to take the writing portion. He likely will score in the 33-35 range and apply to a variety of schools (a couple top [sub-10% acceptance rate] privates and top publics, as well as some less competitive universities and colleges). Not applying to any UC schools. Do you think lacking the writing score — which likely would be average — will hurt him? Put another way, would doing the writing help him at schools where it is “optional” assuming his score is not great but not terrible? Thanks. ST

ST, If colleges were completely honest, they would admit that the Writing test is dead. Some won’t state it so bluntly because it sounds like writing is not important. I don’t think there will be any colleges that care about your son’s Writing score by the time he applies. He should pass on it in September.

Thanks Art — appreciate the great advice here and on this web site generally!

If I’m understanding correctly, the only students who need to be taking the writing/essay exams are those applying to the first 9 schools on your list that are “required” or “recommended”? In this wild west post-Covid era of college testing where it seems the only constant thing is change, it is hard to understand why anyone would still take the essay portion if they aren’t applying to any of those 9 schools. We are in CA so it used to be needed for the UC’s but as you noted even that has changed. So now post-Covid, do you still advise most of your students to take the writing exams, or feel that there is “more upside than downside” to taking them? My 11th grader previously did the SAT w/essay and scored 760 R&W, 650 M, and 4/4/5 on the essay. He’ll be retaking it to improve his math score, or possibly switching over to the ACT since SAT isn’t offered this summer (He was scheduled for the March exam that was cancelled the day before, so we are re-evaluating our options). Thanks very much for your insight.

BSS, I’d go even a step further and say that — except for students applying to West Point — the essay can finally be retired. I’m not sad to see it go!

Given that your son is already considering the ACT, I’d recommend looking at July ACT and August SAT dates. Not that he needs to take both, but the strategy is a hedge against cancellations. Registration for some students just opened up for the SAT dates, but it sounds like your student will need to wait until registration goes wider on June 3.

Duke: “Recommended” Duke website: “We do not require the optional essay.” https://admissions.duke.edu/apply/ I don’t see anywhere that they recommend it.

Also, on your Subject Test page: Duke: “Recommended Strongly ” Duke website: “We do not require Subject Tests.” I see nothing that would indicate it is “Recommended Strongly”. https://admissions.duke.edu/apply/

Caltech – “Optional” Caltech website – “Caltech also does not require the SAT Essay or ACT Writing exam sections. These sections will not be considered in the application review process.” http://admissions.divisions.caltech.edu/apply/first-yearfreshman-applicants/standardized-tests

I believe the vast, vast majority of the colleges you list as “Optional” similarly don’t even consider a writing score.

Thanks for reaching out! And thank you, in particular, for the Duke update. Just a few weeks ago we checked their site and they still had Subject Tests listed as recommended strongly with the “or ACT” twist. We’ve updated the Subject Test page to reflect that. We still have Duke listed as recommending the essay because of this: https://today.duke.edu/2018/07/duke-makes-sat-essay-act-writing-test-optional-applicants (this announcement is from almost two years ago, but we haven’t heard anything to specifically counter it.)

We recognize that the essay is becoming increasingly less relevant in admissions, and we have plans to revisit this list and put the “Optional” schools in better context.

Hello Mr. Sawyer, I have an SAT score of 1510 and my essay score is 5/4/6 should I consider taking the SAT again to improve the essay score if I plan to apply to the top universities such as Harvard, Yale and Duke.

Mazin, You should not repeat the SAT just because of your Essay score. You may have seen the news yesterday that College Board is phasing out the Essay. It is simply no longer a concern.

Mr. Sawyer, what are you thoughts on the ACT writing (essay). Do you expect it to follow suit and discontinue it like the SAT essay?

Marjorie, My first thought is that — ACT’s decision aside — students should not take the Writing test. It is disappearing for good reason — it’s just not very good or useful.

ACT will make a business decision, just as College Board did — although not necessarily with the same immediate result. ACT may want to retain the fees it is receiving for the Writing test. It may also try to wait just long enough not to seem that it is following College Board’s lead. ACT typically implements changes during its school calendar year of Sept – July. I would not be surprised to see the essay discontinued after the summer administrations.

Mr. Sawyer-Wanting some advice. My junior just took the ACT and scored a 33 composite with a 35 in English and a 34 in reading. Our school had recommended the writing test so he took it and bombed it with a 6/12. He has taken all honors and AP English classes offered and done excellent. GPA is 3.95 unweighted. I wonder if his horrible handwriting played a role but now he is stuck with a 6 on writing. Should he retake the test just to improve that score? If so does he take it with writing again or simply try to score a 33 without writing and submit that score. He’s looking at Carleton, Pomona, Grinnell along with some others.

Sarah, One of the reasons the essay has been abandoned is just how fluky the results can be. I would not recommend retesting only to raise his Writing score.

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Your chance of acceptance, your chancing factors, extracurriculars, act writing test: which colleges still require it.

Quick question for the community—I’m planning out my ACT dates and wondering if I need to take the writing section. Does anyone know which colleges still require the ACT writing test, or has it become pretty rare?

The ACT Writing Test has indeed become less of a requirement over the past few years. Many colleges have moved towards making standardized tests optional, and this policy typically includes the essay portions of these exams. However, there may still be some programs, particularly those that are writing-intensive, that might recommend or require the Writing Test for a more comprehensive assessment of your skills.

I would suggest making a list of the schools you're interested in and checking their admissions websites or contacting their admissions offices directly for the most accurate information. Keep in mind that while it may not be required, a strong score on the Writing Test can still be a positive addition to your application, especially if you're interested in a humanities or social sciences major where writing is a significant component of the curriculum.

That said, you should focus most of your energy on achieving a strong composite score on the ACT, as that is generally of greater interest to admission committees than the writing portion.

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Should You Take the ACT With or Without Writing

Wondering if the ACT writing test is for you? You're not alone. Taking the ACT with writing can give you an edge in college admissions by showcasing your writing skills and adding depth to your college applications with a special ELA score (English language arts). Let's explore the ins and outs of the ACT Writing Test to help you make an informed decision. 

What is the ACT Writing Test?

The ACT writing test is an optional 40-minute essay that comes after the main ACT exam. It's designed to measure your writing skills — skills you've been honing in high school and will need in college. 

You'll get a prompt with a complex issue and three perspectives. Your job? Craft your own viewpoint and analyze how it relates to the given perspectives. 

Your writing sample will be evaluated on these four components:  

Ideas and Analysis

Show you understand the issue and can generate relevant ideas.

Development and Support

Back up your argument with solid reasoning.

Organization

Structure your essay clearly to guide the reader through your argument.  

Language Use and Conventions

Use clear, effective language that resonates with your audience.  

The writing test complements the English and reading tests, offering colleges a fuller picture of your skills. 

Is the Writing Portion of the ACT Required?

The ACT writing test is optional, but some colleges and school districts do require it, so do your homework. Check the requirements for your target schools and your district's graduation policy. 

What is the Difference Between Taking the ACT with Writing vs. Without Writing?

Taking the ACT with writing won't affect your Composite score, but it does add an English Language Arts (ELA) score to your report. Opting out means you'll miss out on this additional score. Learn more about ACT writing scores . 

Why You Should Take the ACT With Writing

The ACT with writing offers a unique platform to articulate your thoughts and viewpoints, and it's a chance to go beyond grades and scores, allowing you to connect with admissions officers on an intellectual level. Whether you're set on a dream school or still charting your course, the ACT writing test is a valuable tool in your college application toolkit. Here are a few more factors to consider:  

1. Your School or State Requires It

Some colleges, highs schools, and states require the ACT writing test. Check this early on to avoid surprises. 

2. You Want Your Application to Stand Out

A strong writing score can make your application more competitive. It's a chance to showcase your logical reasoning skills. 

3. Your Grades in English or Language Arts Aren’t the Best

If your grades in English or language arts courses are not stellar, a high score on the ACT writing test can help balance your academic profile. 

4. You Aren’t Sure Where You Want to Apply Yet

If you're still exploring your options, taking the ACT with writing keeps all doors open, as some colleges may require it. 

Why Take the ACT Without Writing

If none of the above reasons apply to you, and if none of your target schools require the ACT writing test, you might opt to take the ACT without writing. This can also save you time and reduce test-day stress.

How To Prepare for the ACT Writing Test

Crafting a standout ACT essay is all about strategy and focus. Allocate time for planning, writing, and reviewing. Understand the prompt and use optional planning questions to guide your thoughts. Keep your argument focused and support it with sound reasoning. Before submitting, review your essay for clarity and accuracy.  

By following these guidelines, you'll be well on your way to writing an essay that not only showcases your writing skills but also makes your college application stand out.  

Resources to Help You Prepare for the ACT Writing Test

Additional act writing test resources.

Explore these resources for more information on producing your best work on test day.

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What is the ACT?

Many colleges require scores from the ACT or SAT tests as a part of the admissions process.  Your ACT score is a key component of your college applications.

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About the act.

The ACT is an entrance exam used by most colleges and universities to make admissions decisions. It is a multiple-choice, pencil-and-paper test administered by ACT, Inc. The purpose of the ACT test is to measure a high school student's readiness for college, and provide colleges with one common data point that can be used to compare all applicants. College admissions officers will review standardized test scores alongside your high school GPA, the classes you took in high school, letters of recommendation from teachers or mentors, extracurricular activities, admissions interviews, and personal essays. How important ACT scores are in the college application process varies from school to school. Overall, the higher you score on the ACT and/or SAT, the more options for attending and paying for college will be available to you.

When should I take the ACT?

Most high school students take the ACT, SAT, or both during the spring of their junior year or fall of their senior year. It's important to leave time to re-take the test if you need to raise your score before you apply to college. The ACT exam is offered nationally every year in September, October, December, February*, April, June, and July*.  View all upcoming  ACT test dates. *No test centers are scheduled in New York for the February or July test dates. No test centers are scheduled in California for the July test date.

What is on the ACT?

There are four ACT sections:  

The ACT also includes an optional 40-minute Writing Test. Some colleges may require that you complete the ACT Writing Test. You can confirm each college's admissions policies on the school website or on our  school profiles.

How long is the ACT?

The ACT is 2 hours and 55 minutes long . If you choose to take the ACT with Essay, the test will be 3 hours and 35 minutes long.

How is the ACT scored?

Each section of the ACT is scored on a 1 to 36 point scale. Your composite ACT score is the average of your four section scores, also on a scale from 1 to 36. If you take the ACT with Writing Test, you will receive a separate score on the Writing Test.

Should I take the ACT or the SAT?

Most colleges and universities will accept scores from either the SAT or ACT, and do not favor one test over the other. That said, college-bound students are increasingly taking  both the SAT and ACT.  Changes made to the SAT in 2016 have made it easier than ever to prep for both tests concurrently—and earn competitive scores on both! The best way to decide if taking the SAT, ACT, or both tests is right for you is to take a timed  full-length practice test  of each type. Since the content and style of the SAT and ACT are very similar, factors like how you handle time pressure and what types of questions you find most challenging can help you determine which test is a better fit. Try our  QUIZ: SAT, ACT, or Both?  to learn more

How do I register for the ACT?

Registration deadlines fall approximately five weeks before each ACT test date. You can get registration materials from your school counselor, or you can register online on the  ACT website.

How can I prep for the ACT?

We can help. We have  ACT prep solutions  for every student and every budget. Take a Free ACT Practice Test

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Colleges That Require the SAT Essay (2020): A Complete List

The SAT essay has been through a lot of changes in recent years. In the new SAT, it exists as a separate section from the rest of the sections. You may have heard that not all schools require it, even the ones that require standardized test scores. Why is that? Also, just because it isn’t required, does that mean you don’t have to do it? And what’s a good essay score, anyway?

First, a few things about the SAT and ACT optional essays:

• The essay portion is scored completely separately from the Math and Reading sections (or, in the case of the ACT, the Math, Reading, and Science sections). That means your total score is not affected by your SAT Essay or ACT Essay (Writing) score.
• The SAT Essay is graded by two College Board readers who each give it a score between 1 and 4 on three different aspects: reading, analysis, and writing. That means the highest possible SAT Essay grade is an 8|8|8. The ACT Writing section is also scored by two readers, each out of 6 (for a high score of 12).
• You have the choice to take the SAT and ACT with or without the essay. If you opt to take the essay version, the test is slightly longer and slightly more expensive.

Second, the most important thing you can take away from this post is: don’t assume you need to take the SAT or ACT with the essay ! The number of schools that require it is low, and fewer and fewer schools are even recommending it. In recent years, schools like the California Institute of Technology, Claremont McKenna College, and the University of Michigan have all stopped asking for it. Princeton University started asking for a graded paper instead.

In short? Unless you know you’re going to score well, based on past experience or a diagnostic test, or you’re applying to certain schools, reconsider if preparing for the ACT/SAT Essay is a good use of your test prep time or if you should just skip it altogether.

Which Schools Want to See the SAT Essay/ACT Writing?

A very small number of schools outright require the SAT Essay or ACT Writing. They are:

• All of the University of California schools
• The United States Military Academy
• University of Montana-Western
• Martin Luther College
• Soka University of America

That’s it! Of course, the University of California system is huge and includes heavy hitters like Berkeley, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, and more. If you’re considering applying to any of these schools, you’ll need to take the SAT Essay. Otherwise, unless these remaining schools are on your list, you don’t explicitly need to take the essay as part of the SAT.

However, in college admissions, required isn’t the end of the line. A good number of additional schools recommend the SAT Essay. For these schools, you won’t be automatically turned away without the essay, but it’ll help your chances to have it present.

You might be surprised to learn that most of the very top schools – Harvard University, Yale University, Brown University, etc. – are not terribly interested in the SAT Essay, even though they care quite a bit about your overall SAT score (or ACT score). That’s in part because highly selective schools ask high school applicants for extensive essays, which they use to evaluate applicant’s proficiency with written English.

The colleges and universities that recommend the SAT Essay are:

• Abilene Christian University
• Austin College
• Berry College
• Chapman University
• Colby College
• Concordia College-Moorhead
• Duke University
• Michigan State University
• Oregon State University
• Simmons University
• Stanford University
• Stony Brook University-SUNY
• Taylor University
• University at Buffalo-SUNY
• University of Minnesota-Twin Cities

If any of these schools are on your list, you should seriously consider including the essay in your SAT or ACT test prep plans. Still, there are a few things to keep in mind.

Should You Take the SAT or ACT Essay?

While you could, of course, make your decision about taking the SAT Essay based on the schools to which you know you’re applying, the majority of students take the SAT or ACT before they’ve finalized their college lists. For that reason, you may need to decide whether to take the essay without knowing whether you’re planning to apply to any of the above schools.

So, if you’re signing up for the SAT or ACT soon, consider the following:

Advantages of Taking the SAT Essay or ACT Writing

The biggest advantage to taking the SAT Essay is that you cover all your bases. If you decide to apply to any of the schools on the required or recommended lists, you won’t have to go back and take it again or risk rejection for not having taken it.

Similarly, the SAT Essay can provide another data point for admissions officers about the strength of your academic profile and application—if you do well. An above-average essay or writing score can help prove your writing abilities to colleges.

On the flip side, not taking the SAT Essay at all will limit the number of schools to which you can apply and be a competitive applicant. While many selective schools do not care about the essay, some do, and they’re always looking for a reason to reject applicants. Not having an essay score could sink your application at Duke or Stanford.

Disadvantages of Taking the SAT Essay or ACT Writing

The biggest potential downside to taking the SAT Essay is that you might not score well, and colleges that don’t require or recommend the essay will have a piece of information that doesn’t show you in your best light. Given that most schools don’t want the essay, having a poor SAT Essay score can be a risk that isn’t worth taking.

Another disadvantage to taking the essay or writing portion is that you’ll be in the room longer. Fortunately, both sections come at the end of their respective tests, so it won’t tire you out for the rest of the test, but knowing that you’re going to be there an extra hour can affect students’ performance on the sections that matter most.

Similarly, another advantage to not taking the Essay portion is not having to prepare for it! College Board and ACT readers are looking for very specific elements, so you’ll need to spend time preparing, just as you would for the other sections. That’s time that might be better spent on the rest of the test, schoolwork, or extracurricular activities.

Who Should Take the SAT with Essay?

Those are the big-picture considerations for whether to take the SAT Essay or ACT Writing section, but it’s also worth thinking about the specifics of your college application. Much like decisions about the SAT Subject Tests, it’s important to consider your unique application. Are you someone who should definitely take the SAT with essay? Probably? Or definitely not?

Do the colleges you’re interested in require the SAT Essay?

If you’re interested in any of the above colleges that have an SAT or ACT essay requirement, you should take it. It won’t be the most important factor in your application, but not having it will be a huge red flag to these schools that you’re not serious about them because you didn’t take the time to read and understand their requirements.

Do the colleges you’re interested in recommend the SAT Essay?

Require is easy; recommend is a bit more complicated. When it comes to college admissions, it’s best to take colleges at their word. So, while schools like Michigan State may not turn you away with no SAT Essay score, they’ll be disappointed you don’t have it, unless you have a compelling reason like financial hardship. Duke University in particular has dropped numerous hints that they frown upon applications without the essay section.

Note that even some test-optional schools, like Coby, recommend the SAT or ACT essay. Of course, these schools are test-optional, so you don’t need to submit any standardized test essay at all. But because they care so much about writing skills, they want to see the essay; otherwise, even if you have a very high score, they may be insufficiently impressed.

Are you applying to any scholarships that require an SAT with Essay?

On top of that, colleges may not be the only thing you’re applying to this year! Because standardized tests play a big role in many scholarships – both offered by colleges and by external institutions – you should always check to see if any scholarships for which you’re planning to apply require you to submit SAT Essay or ACT Writing score reports.

Will the SAT Essay enhance your application?

Lastly, if you’re someone who excels in writing and feels comfortable with the SAT Essay, you might decide that taking it will boost your application! Although the essay won’t be factored into your total SAT score, it may still make a positive impact if you struggle in other areas. For some students, a writing test is something they definitely want colleges to see!

Final Thoughts

The most important thing to keep in mind about the writing sections of the SAT and ACT is that you need to do what’s best for your college goals and strategy. Remember that you don’t need to do the Essay section at every test date, so it may be that you want to take a first pass at the test and decide about the essay later. Or, you may know that it’s going to be required by one or more of your colleges, so you want to get a jump right away.

At the end of the day, wherever you’re applying, the SAT Essay or ACT Writing is just one part of your application, one that seems to hold less importance every year. While it’s important to take all parts of the process seriously, this isn’t one of the ones worth stressing about.

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If you’re going to be applying to college soon, there’s a good chance that you’re already thinking about the SAT. Most colleges still require standardized test scores, and millions of students across the country tackle this exam each year. 

As you begin your college search, it’s important to understand the exact standardized test requirements of the colleges on your list. Some will be test-optional . Others require scores from the SAT or ACT. In addition, some will require that you submit scores from the optional essay portions of these tests. There may also be schools that require or recommend SAT Subject Tests. Knowing the exact testing policy at each school you’re considering will help you plan your test taking strategy, and begin test prep well in advance. 

If you’re planning to take the SAT, you won’t want to miss this complete overview of what colleges require the SAT essay. 

What is the SAT Essay? How is it Scored?

Before we dive into which schools require it, let’s take a closer look at what exactly the SAT essay is, and how it is scored. 

On the SAT Essay, students are provided with a written argument that they must read and analyze. Students have 50 minutes to read the passage, plan the essay, and write their response. Most successful responses stick to the standard five-paragraph essay format. To see an example prompt and scoring rubric, check out the Essay Sample Questions on the College Board website. 

It’s important to note here that the SAT Essay score is separate from your overall composite SAT score. It does not impact the score ranging from 400-1600 as reported on your score report. Instead of being included in your composite score, it is provided in addition to it. 

The Essay is scored on a scale from 2-8 in three areas of evaluation—Reading, Analysis, and Writing. Each essay is reviewed by two scorers, and scores between 1-4 are awarded in each dimension. These scores are then added together so that you’ll receive three scores for the SAT Essay—one for each dimension—ranging from 2–8 points. A perfect score on the essay would be 8/8/8, but the mean score on the essay is a 5 for Reading and Writing, and 3 for Analysis. This means if you can achieve any score over 5/3/5, you have scored above average on the essay. For a more complete look at how the test is scored, don’t miss our post What is a Good SAT Essay Score?

Should I Take the SAT Essay?

First of all, the SAT essay is technically an optional section, so no, you are not required to take it. That being said, some colleges do require applicants to take the SAT with Essay. If you choose not to take the essay portion of the test, you will not be an eligible applicant for any of these schools. 

The SAT Essay used to be required at many top colleges, but it has become optional at many schools. Now, among elite schools, only the University of California schools require the Essay. Other selective colleges like Duke University, Amherst College, and Colby College recommend the Essay, but it’s not required. 

Take a look at the colleges on these lists, and see if there are any you plan to apply to. Also be sure to double-check on your schools’ webpages, as these policies can change. 

If you think you might change your mind about which schools you want to apply to, you should take the SAT Essay to leave those doors open. This is why we generally recommend taking the essay, regardless of whether or not it’s required. After all, you can’t go back and just take the SAT Essay if you decide to change your mind and apply to a school that requires it—you’d have to retake the entire SAT.

Some colleges don’t require the essay, but do recommend it. In these cases, we always direct students to do what the college recommends. 

That being said, there is currently no option to withhold your essay score if you do terribly on it. Your essay scores will always be reported with your other test scores from that day, even to colleges that don’t require them. 

What Colleges Require the SAT with Essay?

There colleges request scores from the SAT with Essay in order to apply.

Schools that Require the SAT Essay:

• All of the University of California schools
• Benedictine University
• City University London
• Delaware State University
• DeSales University
• Dominican University of California
• Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University
• Howard University
• John Wesley University
• Kentucky State University
• Martin Luther College
• Molloy College
• Schreiner University
• Soka University of America
• Southern California Institute of Architecture
• Texas A&M University—Galveston
• United States Military Academy (West Point)
• University of North Texas
• West Virginia University Institute of Technology
• Western Carolina University

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These schools do not require the SAT Essay, but do recommend that students submit it. At CollegeVine, our best advice is to always follow a college’s recommendations. 

Schools that Recommend the SAT Essay:

• Abilene Christian University
• Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences
• Allegheny College
• Amherst College
• Art Institute of Houston
• Augsburg University
• Austin College
• Caldwell University
• California State University, Northridge
• Central Connecticut State University
• Central Michigan University
• Cheyney University of Pennsylvania
• Coastal Carolina University
• Colby College
• College of Wooster
• Colorado School of Mines
• Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art
• Corban University
• Cornerstone University
• Dallas Christian College
• Duke University
• Eastern Illinois University
• Eastern Nazarene College
• Easternn University
• Endicott College
• Five Towns College
• Gallaudet University
• George Washington University
• Georgia Highlands College
• Greenville University
• Gwynedd Mercy University
• High Point University
• Hofstra University
• Holy Family University
• Husson University
• Indiana University South Bend
• Indiana University Southeast
• Indiana Wesleyan University
• Inter American University of Puerto Rico: Barranquitas Campus
• Juilliard School
• Keiser University (West Palm Beach)
• Lehigh University
• Madonna University
• Manhattan College
• Marymount California University
• Massachusetts Maritime Academy
• McMurry University
• Mercy College
• Modern College of Design
• Montana Tech of the University of Montana
• Morehouse College
• Mount Saint Mary College
• Mount St. Joseph University
• National-Louis University
• New Jersey City University
• Nichols College
• North Park University
• Occidental College
• Ohio University
• Oregon State University
• Purdue University Northwest
• Randall University
• Randolph-Macon College
• Reading Area Community College
• Rowan University
• Rutgers University—Camden Campus
• Rutgers University—Newark Campus
• Saint Michael’s College
• Sciences Po
• Seton Hill University
• Shiloh University
• Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania
• Silver Lake College of the Holy Family
• Southern Illinois University of Carbondale
• Southern Oregon University
• Spring Hill College
• Sul Ross State University
• SUNY Farmingdale State College
• SUNY University at Stony Brook
• Tarleton State University
• Texas A&M International University
• Texas A&M University
• Texas State University
• The King’s College
• United States Air Force Academy
• University of Evansville
• University of La Verne
• University of Mary Hardin—Baylor
• University of Massachusetts Amherst
• University of Minnesota: Twin Cities
• University of New England
• University of Northwestern—St. Paul
• University of the Virgin Islands
• University of Toledo
• University of Washington Bothell
• VanderCook College of Music
• Virginia Union University
• Wabash College
• Webb Institute
• Webber International University
• Wesleyan College
• William Jewell College

If any of the schools you are considering appear on either of the lists above, we recommend taking the SAT with Essay. In fact, we recommend that most, if not all, students take the SAT essay since it leaves more doors open in your college search. However, if you’re absolutely sure you won’t be applying to colleges that require or recommend the SAT with Essay, you can skip it.

Regardless, as you consider which colleges to add to your list, you’ll want to be certain you know what colleges require the SAT essay so that you can plan ahead for this part of your test. 

For help figuring out which schools might be a great fit for you, don’t miss our customized and innovative Chancing Engine and School List Generator . Here, we use a proprietary algorithm backed by over 100,000 data points to develop a school list based on your real admissions chances and preferences.

Want to know how your SAT score impacts your chances of acceptance to your dream schools? Our free Chancing Engine will not only help you predict your odds, but also let you know how you stack up against other applicants, and which aspects of your profile to improve. Sign up for your free CollegeVine account today to gain access to our Chancing Engine and get a jumpstart on your college strategy!

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Choose Your Test

Sat / act prep online guides and tips, how to write an act essay: step-by-step example.

ACT Strategies , ACT Writing

Sometimes writing—especially writing for standardized tests—can feel like something you "get" or "don't get." That's primarily because it's very difficult to explain and teach writing in a mechanical way, especially when you're up against time limits.

In this article, we've broken how to write the ACT essay into eight steps that work for every essay, every time. Then, we show you exactly how to do it with an actual ACT essay example.

Many students ask us how to write an ACT essay, and while the answer is simple enough to explain in eight steps (as we do below), it's not necessarily simple to do . As with any skill, the key to learning how to write an ACT essay is to study a good model (which we are going to cover in this article) and then practice, practice, practice.

Tackling ACT Writing, Step by Step

The ACT essay plan below has been modified from our ACT Essay Tips article to fit the new ACT Writing Test. The template includes three sections: planning, writing and revising. If you practice using this template to write ACT essays, you'll get much faster and (probably) more precise. Here's the sample prompt we'll be responding to:

Intelligent Machines

Many of the goods and services we depend on daily are now supplied by intelligent, automated machines rather than human beings. Robots build cars and other goods on assembly lines, where once there were human workers. Many of our phone conversations are now conducted not with people but with sophisticated technologies. We can now buy goods at a variety of stores without the help of a human cashier. Automation is generally seen as a sign of progress, but what is lost when we replace humans with machines? Given the accelerating variety and prevalence of intelligent machines, it is worth examining the implications and meaning of their presence in our lives.

Perspective One: What we lose with the replacement of people by machines is some part of our own humanity. Even our mundane daily encounters no longer require from us basic courtesy, respect, and tolerance for other people.

Perspective Two: Machines are good at low-skill, repetitive jobs, and at high-speed, extremely precise jobs. In both cases they work better than humans. This efficiency leads to a more prosperous and progressive world for everyone.

Perspective Three: Intelligent machines challenge our long-standing ideas about what humans are or can be. This is good because it pushes both humans and machines toward new, unimagined possibilities.

Write a unified, coherent essay about the increasing presence of intelligent machines.

Stage 1: Planning

Time: 8-10 minutes

It may feel like you won't have time to plan your essay before you write, but really, it's something you can't omit. Trust us. Organizing your thoughts as you write will cost you way more time than if you take the time to plan out your essay before you begin writing.

Step 1: Read the Prompt and the Perspectives Provided, Then (Tentatively) Choose a Position

Because addressing the relationship between your perspective and at least one other perspective is an integral part of the essay task, you need to make sure you understand what the prompt is saying and at least skim through the perspectives.

The good news is that each perspective includes both a general assertion about intelligent machines as well as an opinion that places the topic in a broader context, saving you some work in coming up with your own, independent perspective.

While it is possible to come up with a fourth point of view on the topic, I don't recommend it. The added time you'll have to spend coming up with your own point of view could be better spend developing your comparison of your perspective to at least one other perspective.

If your perspective is a "blending" of multiple perspectives, that's also fine, as long as you make sure you compare your blended perspective to each of the perspectives it combines; otherwise, you won't fulfill the "analyze the relationship between your perspective and at least one other perspective" part of the task. Bottom line: choose the perspective you think you can support the best.

Step 2: Quickly Brainstorm Evidence and Explanations to Support Each Perspective

Because the ACT essay involves discussing the relationship between your perspective and at least one other perspective, not just your perspective, you'll have to use multiple pieces of evidence in your essay.

During this step, if you find that you're able to find more convincing evidence to support a different perspective than the one you've chosen, you can always switch—after all, you're still planning. Also, you don't have to write in complete sentences, or phrase things as elegantly as you will in the actual essay, so don't worry about that.

Here are some potential places you can look to for evidence and examples:

Opening Paragraph of the Prompt

If you haven't already, read through the paragraph at the beginning of the essay prompt. You can appropriate some or all of the examples in it to use in your own essay. 

Personal Experience

You can tell any story (real or not) about you or someone else you know (or make up) that supports any one of your points.

Again, these can be real or made up. You could invent a research study that looked at recordings of phone calls and found >80% of people end up cursing while using automated phone menus (to support perspective one), make up statistics that show automated cashiers are able to process three times as many check-outs as human cashiers (to support perspective 2), or come up with any other kind of statistics that support one of the perspectives.

Specifics from Sources

Use knowledge of events from history or current events to support your points. If you're not certain of the details, it's all right—the essay graders won't deduct points for factually inaccurate information. For this essay, you could use the invention of the printing press (and its effects) as an example of how mechanization can lead to "unimagined possibilities."

Here's the evidence I came up with for my essay:

Evidence : Many of our phone conversations are conducted not with people, but with sophisticated technologies...that don't necessarily work at 100%

Explanation : People get so frustrated with the technology that when they press "0" to speak with a real human they are often rude and discourteous

Evidence : Robots build cars on assembly lines

Explanation : Lower cost, decreases risk of injury to human workers

Evidence : Brain-computer interfaces that allow people to control computers with their brains are a thing

Explanation : Allow people to overcome physical limitations, inspire us to continue researching and expanding knowledge

Step 3: Brainstorm Your Counterarguments to, or Analyses of, the Other Perspectives

There's no one right way to respond to the perspectives the ACT gives you. Some of it depends on what point of view you take. For instance, if I agreed with Perspective One, which takes a negative view of the effects of intelligent machines, I might want to discuss both of the other two perspectives (which both take positive views of intelligent machines) in one paragraph, and then disagree with them in the next paragraph as I present my support for Perspective One.

Since I'm arguing for Perspective Three (machines challenge our ideas about what humans are or can be, which pushes us and machines toward new possibilities), I'm going to argue against Perspective One and Perspective Two separately, because I have strong evidence for my analyses of each perspective.

Because the essay only requires you to analyze the relationship between your perspective and at least one other perspective, if I had lots of evidence to use in my comparison of my perspective and Perspective One, but nothing to say about Perspective Two, I could also decide not to discuss that perspective at all. In this case, I was able to think of solid arguments for and against both of the other perspectives, so I chose to analyze both of them and their relationship to my perspective below. (Again, these are not necessarily worded in their final form.)

Counterargument/analysis : The benefits outweigh the costs, because providing people with the option to submit prescriptions or ask about store hours through an automated menu frees up customer service reps to answer real questions. In addition, recordings of calls with angry customers are used to improve the menus.

Explanation : Robots take over dangerous jobs which decreases risk of injury to human workers, lowering cost to employers

Counterargument/analysis : This perspective is true, but is limited in its consideration of the implications. Robots can not only do things instead of humans, but can actually work with humans, as in precise surgery, to a better result than either humans or machines alone.

Step 4: Organize Your Essay

Now that you have the main points of your essay, it's time to organize them in a way that makes sense. Make sure to include your introduction (with your thesis statement containing your point of view, or at least a rough sense of your thesis statement) and conclusion in this organization. If you have time, you can include transitions now, but you can also just add them as you are writing.

Introduction

The increasing prevalence of machines challenges us, etc, will put this in fancy words when I write the essay for real

Body Paragraph 1

• Perspective One argues that replacing humans with machine leads us to lose part of our own humanity, because even our mundane daily encounters no longer require from us basic courtesy, respect, and tolerance for other people.
• I have witnessed this in my own life through watching my mother interact with some of those "sophisticated" automated phone systems. She sometimes gets so frustrated with the technology refusing to do what she wants that, by the time the menu allows her to speak to a real human, my mother is no longer courteous or respectful.
• Despite this frustration, I think the benefits outweigh the costs, because providing people with the option to submit prescriptions or ask about store hours through an automated menu frees up customer service reps to answer real questions. In addition, recordings of calls with angry customers are used to improve the menus.

Body Paragraph 2

• In contrast to Perspective One, Perspective Two argues that the main utility of machines is in their ability to perform repetitive tasks more precisely and efficiently than humans.
• In auto plants around the world, robots build cars on assembly lines, performing their jobs with high precision and at lower overall cost to employers, who can make a one time purchase rather than having to pay a human a yearly salary (and worry about liability issues)
• This perspective is fine as far as it goes, but is limited in its consideration of the implications. Robots can not only do things instead of humans, but can actually work with humans, as in precise surgery, to a better result than either humans or machines alone.

Body Paragraph 3

• The true impact of intelligent machines in our lives is that they challenge us to re-think our preconceived notions of what people can do or become in the future.
• An example of this is brain-computer interfaces that allow people to control computers with their brains.
• With BCIs, people can overcome physical limitations.. In addition, BCIs have capture the interest of people from all different backgrounds and are being applied to non-scientific fields to create new, previously unimagined inventions and ways to interact with the world.

In conclusion, rather than taking away from our humanity, intelligent machines help us to move forward as a species to new heights.

By the end of this step, you should try to have about 30 minutes left so you have enough time to write. If you don't, just keep in mind that you might have to skimp on some of your explanations/counterarguments for the perspective(s) you compare to your own.

Stage 2: Writing

Time: 25-28 minutes

Once you've structured your argument, it's time to write it all down!

Step 5: Introduction Paragraph & Thesis

Write your introduction. If you can think of an interesting first sentence that brings your thesis into a larger discussion, start with that. (If writing the introduction stumps you, just leave 10-15 lines blank at the beginning of the paper and come back to it.)

From the simplest system of pulleys and ropes in ancient Greece to the most complex supercomputer in the world today, machines have had (and continue to have) a profound influence on the development of humanity.

Make sure you clearly state your thesis. For a 3+ (out of 6) essay, this should include your perspective on the issue and how it relates to at least one of the other perspectives presented in the prompt.

While some argue that machines have a negative impact on us, the increasing prevalence of intelligent machines in the world challenges us to change long held beliefs about our limitations and to continue forward to new and even more advanced possibilities.

Step 6:  Body Paragraphs

When you start your first body paragraph , try to think of a first sentence that refers back to the first paragraph. Ideally, you'll start every paragraph by referring back to your thesis to create a unified argument.

One common argument against the increased presence of machines in our day-to-day lives is that machines leach away at our basic humanity.

Next, address the argument opposing yours (in this case, Perspective One). Explain the evidence that supports this perspective in three to five sentences.

I found this to be true in my own life as a result of witnessing many a phone conversation between my mother and an automated telephone menu. For whatever reason, she consistently has issues with the menus that try to verify her date of birth. The automated system never understands what she says (possibly because of her accent), and asks her to input the numbers via her keypad; of course, my mom's smartphone is so smart that the screen turns off while she is on a call, making it impossible for her to follow the automated phone system's instructions. By the time the system gives up and routes her to speak to a "human representative," my mother is often so frustrated that she is far from courteous and respectful to that person.

Then, make sure to explain your counterargument to this perspective, tying it back to your thesis.

Despite my mother's understandable frustration with automated phone systems, however, overall the benefits outweigh the costs. Providing people with the option to submit prescriptions or ask about store hours through an automated menu frees up customer service representatives to answer questions machines are incapable of addressing. In addition, the recordings of angry phone calls (where customers are not courteous, respectful, or tolerant of other humans) are used to improve the phone menus to make them more user-friendly. Thus, the momentary disrespect toward other humans caused by machines is more than compensated for by the positive effects of those same machines.

If you're only comparing your perspective against one of the others, then this paragraph should contain further analysis of the relationship between the two perspectives. If you're comparing your perspective against both of the other perspectives (as I did in this essay), then this is where you introduce your thoughts on the second perspective.

Another school of thought argues that the main utility of machines is their ability to perform repetitive tasks more precisely and more efficiently than humans, which leads to a more prosperous and progressive world for everyone.

Address the argument of this second perspective (in this case, Perspective Two). Explain the evidence that supports this perspective in three to five sentences.

In auto plants around the world, robots build cars on assembly lines. Instead of having to pay a human employee a yearly salary, invest time in training that employee, and worry about liability should that employee be injured, manufacturing plants can now make a one-time purchase of an intelligent machine that will perform that same job at higher levels of precision. This leads to a more prosperous world for the manufacturers, as they are able to invest less money to get a better product.

Then, make sure to explain how this perspective relates back to your perspective.

This perspective is fine as far as it goes, but is limited in its consideration of the implications. Robots can not only work in place of humans, but can also work cooperatively with humans to a greater results than either could have hoped for alone. This can be seen in highly complex and delicate surgeries, where a surgeon controls robotic microtools to perform operations that even ten years ago would have been unimaginable and impossible.

Introduce your main perspective, linking it back to the counterarguments you've made against at least one of the other perspectives.

I agree with Perspective Three that the true impact of intelligent machines in our lives is that they challenge us to re-think our preconceived notions of what people can do or become in the future.

Present one final example in support of your perspective.

A final example of this is brain-computer interfaces, or BCIs. Humans are able to manipulate computers with their brains via electrodes that are either implanted in their brains or attached (temporarily) to their heads. With these intelligent machines, formerly paralyzed people who had no hope of communicating with others are able to transcend their physical limitations by concentrating to form words out of keyboards on the computer screens. In addition, BCIs have captured the interest of people from all different backgrounds and are being applied to non-scientific fields like music to create new, previously unimagined instruments that react to people's thoughts, adding a new dimension to an ancient art form. Truly, intelligent machines are providing the impetus not just for greater efficiency, but for greater accomplishments.

Step 7: Conclusion

Check your time. Try to have 5-6 minutes left at this point.

Come up with a quick sentence that restates your thesis to wrap up the essay.

In conclusion, rather than taking away from our humanity, intelligent machines actually help us to move forward as a species to achieve new, previously unimagined possibilities.

Stage 3: Revising

Time: 2-4 minutes

You've written out a full ACT essay now, which is great! The final step is to see if you can fix any errors or improve anything else about the essay.

Step 8: Reread & Revise

Let's look at our complete ACT essay example:

[1]     From the simplest system of pulleys and ropes in ancient Greece to the most complex supercomputer in the world today, machines have had (and continue to have) a profound influence on the development of humanity. While some argue that machines have a negative impact on us, the increasing prevalence of intelligent machines in the world challenge us to change long held beliefs about our limitations and to continue forward to new and even more advanced possibilities.

[2]     One common argument against the increased presence of machines in our day-to-day lives is that machines leach away at our basic humanity. I found this to be true in my own life as a result of witnessing many a phone conversation between my mother and an automated telephone menu. For whatever reason, she consistently has issues with the menus that try to verify her date of birth. The automated system never understands what she says (possibly because of her accent), and asks her to input the numbers via her keypad; of course, my mom's smartphone is so smart that the screen turns off while she is on a call, making it impossible for her to follow the automated phone system's instructions. By the time the system gives up and routes her to speak to a "human representative," my mother is often so frustrated that she is far from courteous and respectful to that person. Despite my mother's understandable frustration with automated phone systems, however, overall the benefits outweigh the costs. Providing people with the option to submit prescriptions or ask about store hours through an automated menu frees up customer service representatives to answer questions machines are incapable of addressing. In addition, the recordings of angry phone calls (where customers are not courteous, respectful, or tolerant of other humans) are used to improve the phone menus to make them more user-friendly. Thus, the momentary disrespect toward other humans caused by machines is more than compensated for by the positive effects of those same machines.

[3]     Another school of thought argues that the main utility of machines is their ability to perform repetitive tasks more precisely and more efficiently than humans, which leads to a more prosperous and progressive world for everyone. In auto plants around the world, robots build cars on assembly lines. Instead of having to pay a human employee a yearly salary, invest time in training that employee, and worry about liability should that employee be injured, manufacturing plants can now make a one-time purchase of an intelligent machine that will perform that same job at higher levels of precision. This leads to a more prosperous world for the manufacturers, as they are able to invest less money to get a better product. This perspective is fine as far as it goes, but is limited in its consideration of the implications. Robots can not only work in place of humans, but can also work cooperatively with humans to a greater results than either could have hoped for alone. This can be seen in highly complex and delicate surgeries, where a surgeon controls robotic microtools to perform operations that even ten years ago would have been unimaginable and impossible.

[4]     I agree with Perspective Three that the true impact of intelligent machines in our lives is that they challenge us to re-think our preconceived notions of what people can do or become in the future. A final example of this is brain-computer interfaces, or BCIs. Humans are able to manipulate computers with their brains via electrodes that are either implanted in their brains or attached (temporarily) to their heads. With these intelligent machines, formerly paralyzed people who had no hope of communicating with others are able to transcend their physical limitations by concentrating to form words out of keyboards on the computer screens. In addition, BCIs have captured the interest of people from all different backgrounds and are being applied to non-scientific fields like music to create new, previously unimagined instruments that react to people's thoughts, adding a new dimension to an ancient art form. Truly, intelligent machines are providing the impetus not just for greater efficiency, but for greater accomplishments.

[5]     In conclusion, rather than taking away from our humanity, intelligent machines actually help us to move forward as a species to achieve new, previously unimagined possibilities.

In these last 2-4 minutes, you want to read over your essay and trying to pick up a point or two by revising. In this time, you can do a number of things.

You can, of course, correct mistakes :

Paragraph 1, Sentence 2: [subject/verb agreement; change is bolded]

The increasing prevalence of intelligent machines in the world challenges us to change long held beliefs about our limitations and to continue forward to new and even more advanced possibilities.

You can replace dull or problematic words or phrasing with fancier words or clearer turns of phrase:

Paragraph 2, last sentence

Thus, the momentary disrespect toward other humans caused by machines is more than compensated for by the positive effects of those same machines.

We can change it to:

Thus, any momentary disrespect my mom might show to a customer service representative (as a result of frustration with the automated system) is more than compensated for by the positive effects of those same machines.

There you go! Now you know how to write a good ACT essay.

If any part of this was confusing, re-read that section. Then try to write a full essay yourself using a sample ACT essay prompt.

Next Steps for Writing Your Own ACT Essay

Practice planning your essays in eight to ten minutes before you start writing . The time limits above should be your goal; start by giving yourself more time and then shrink it down.

You can use the list from our ACT essay prompts blog post or any list of ACT-like questions and start with the planning stage . Don't forget to check out our full analysis of the ACT Writing Rubric , with strategies and explanations that can guide you in your essay planning!

Our blog post about ACT essay tips has more in-depth information about the details of planning and arguing in the ACT essay.

If you've already taken the ACT and are wondering how to get your essay up to a perfect 12 score, definitely be sure to check out our article on getting a 12 on the ACT Writing section.

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Our classes are entirely online, and they're taught by ACT experts . If you liked this article, you'll love our classes. Along with expert-led classes, you'll get personalized homework with thousands of practice problems organized by individual skills so you learn most effectively. We'll also give you a step-by-step, custom program to follow so you'll never be confused about what to study next.

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Laura graduated magna cum laude from Wellesley College with a BA in Music and Psychology, and earned a Master's degree in Composition from the Longy School of Music of Bard College. She scored 99 percentile scores on the SAT and GRE and loves advising students on how to excel in high school.

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What are colleges looking for in your application essay?

Colleges look for three things in your admission essay: a unique perspective, strong writing, and an authentic voice. People in admissions often say that a great essay is one where it feels like the student is right there in the room, talking authentically to the admissions committee!

Admission essays are very different from the 5-paragraph essays you write in English or history class! Great essays are built around stories, not arguments. They reveal your character, not rehash your achievements . The best essays focus on moments when you changed, learned, or grew as a person.

How to Answer the 2024-25 Common App Essay Questions

An outstanding college essay can be the x-factor that gets you accepted to the school of your choice – particularly if you’re hoping to attend a prestigious university . As the emphasis on test scores declines , recent data shows that over 56% of colleges place considerable or moderate importance on students’ supplemental essays. So the Common Application, with its variety of essay prompts , can help you showcase your personality, achievements, and aspirations. 

While writing essays about yourself may be an art form, how you approach your answer can be more scientific. Here are our best strategies to select and answer the Common App essay questions for the 2023-2024 admissions year. 

How do you know which prompt to pick? 

Before you start brainstorming, consider the following criteria to choose an essay topic.

• Instinct – When writing a college essay made its way onto your to-do list , was there a personal story that jumped to mind? If so, test out how it feels to trust that instinct. Is there a prompt that this idea aligns with? 
• Passion – Can you write about this topic with excitement? If you’re leaning toward a topic because it feels like the one you “should” choose rather than one you’re amped about, don’t fall for that common mistake . Admissions officers read a ton of essays. If you’re not passionate about your subject matter, it’ll be clear. 
• Understanding – While the Common App essay questions seem fairly straightforward, ensure you understand your prompt and can answer all parts of it. Another mistake students make is forcing something they want to talk about into an existing essay topic. If you have an idea that doesn’t address one of their specific questions, consider prompt 7, which allows you free rein to explore the topic of your choice.
• Dimension – Does your essay give insight into who you are, outside of your GPA, extracurriculars, and letters of recommendation? For example, if you were the captain of your school’s varsity soccer team, an essay about soccer may not be your best choice.

The Common App Essay Topics 

According to a study from Yale , the most important thing to college admissions officers isn’t which prompt you choose, but that you write a great essay. Here are a few pointers to keep in mind:

• Craft a compelling, cohesive narrative that relates back to who you are as a person and a student. 
• Be honest , and don’t embellish details nor use AI .
• Avoid clichés that college counselors have seen before .
• Start early , and give yourself plenty of time to perfect your essay.
• Proofread your essay , and ask a friend, teacher, or family member to read it too. 

Common App Prompt #1: Identity essay 

“Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.”

Students who have a unique aspect of their identity that isn’t otherwise represented in their application might enjoy this prompt. And remember: identity doesn’t just mean your ethnic background. 

• Choose an aspect of your identity that makes you who you are. Are you the first in your family to go to college? Were you educated outside of a traditional school system? Are you a member of a religious group that has shaped your worldview? Each of these examples represents an aspect of identity that might be interesting to explore.
• Be specific about your background, identity, or interest that you’ve chosen. Explain how your personal experience deviates from the norm. 
• Describe the impact of this facet of your identity on who you are. Reflect on how this has related to your growth and perspective on yourself, your community, and your future. For example, if English wasn’t your first language, how did learning the language influence your interests? Did you turn to movies and television and discover a love of cinema that influenced you to pursue a career in entertainment? 

Get your creative juices flowing by reading other Common App essay prompt 1 examples that worked.

Common App Prompt #2: Overcoming obstacles essay 

“The lessons we take from obstacles we encounter can be fundamental to later success. Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience?”

Don’t think you can only write on this topic if you’ve experienced some type of significant hardship. No matter who you are or where you’re from, you’ve had to overcome obstacles to get to where you are today. Adversity breeds resilience, which is a great quality to highlight to a college admissions committee. 

• Identify an obstacle that has impacted you. Think back on experiences that required you to persevere. This could be something big, like the loss of a parent or a natural disaster, or something less severe, like a failing grade on an important assignment or losing an election for class president. 
• Detail the experience and your role in it. How did you feel when you first encountered this challenge? If you were overwhelmed or scared, be honest. Specificity around details, emotions, and your mindset will create empathy and paint a full picture. Then, complete the story. How did this event unfold? How did your mindset shift? 
• Highlight what you learned and your eventual success. As you brainstorm, make a list of your takeaways. If you experienced a major illness, did you find a renewed sense of gratitude for your physical health? Then, connect your learnings to some success. If you got fired from a part-time job, did the experience help you identify the career path you actually want to pursue and put you in a position to pursue it? 

Study up on how other determined students have aced Common App essay prompt 2 . 

Common App Prompt #3: Individuality essay 

“Reflect on a time when you questioned or challenged a belief or idea. What prompted your thinking? What was the outcome?”

College campuses are full of students who are eager to expand their horizons and reassess previously held worldviews. If this sounds like you, prompt three might be perfect. 

• Choose a belief or idea that you questioned at some point. This could be anything from your approach to mental health, to your perspective on gender roles or religious beliefs. Explain why you held this belief and the importance of this idea in your life. 
• Explain what prompted you to explore . Was it a book? An article? A conversation with a teacher? Describe the scene – what happened, where you were, and how you felt.
• Detail the experience of your reflection . Did you turn to books to better understand the other side of this issue? Did you engage in conversation with people who thought differently from you? Get into the weeds of your exploration.
• Present your conclusion . If you changed your perspective, what was the evidence that caused this shift? And if you discovered an even greater sense of certainty around your original opinion, how does that feel? Or, if you’re still not sure but continuing to explore, that’s a great answer, too.

Read how other curious high school students explored beliefs in Common App Prompt #3 essay examples . 

Common App Prompt #4: The gratitude essay 

“Reflect on something that someone has done for you that has made you happy or thankful in a surprising way. How has this gratitude affected or motivated you?”

Gratitude can be a powerful source of motivation, particularly when we’re feeling defeated or down. If you’ve experienced an act of kindness that impacted your life in some significant way, reflect on it in prompt #4.

• Pinpoint an act of kindness that someone has done on your behalf. This could be something monumental, like a family member donating an organ, or a small, everyday gesture, like a stranger paying for your coffee. 
• Set the stage for your story. What happened? Why did you need this act of kindness? If you ran out of gas in the middle of the highway, what did that feel like? Then, present the act of kindness in as much detail as you can while staying within the word limit. What prompted the kind stranger to pull over with their gas can? What conversation ensued? 
• Explore your gratitude and reflect upon how the experience affected you. Did this random act of kindness change your perspective? Did you pay it forward through community service? Show how this experience caused you to change in some way, big or small. Don’t stop at gratitude; push yourself to action. 

Read about times other high school students felt inspired by the empathy shown to them.

Common App Prompt #5: The personal growth essay 

“Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others.”

High school is a period of deep personal growth. Use this prompt to highlight ways you’ve grown that might not be captured by your GPA or extracurricular activities. 

• Reflect on periods of personal growth and pinpoint the events that might have triggered them. Make a list of these types of occurrences. For example, traveling abroad to a new country, being selected to write for the school newspaper, or overcoming a fear of public speaking to compete in a debate. 
• Narrate your experience . You might think of this as your “before” and “during” snapshot. If you weren’t the best student in your science class, but had an exciting hypothesis to tackle in a science fair project, describe how you approached this project. Then, tell the reader about what happened. Did you succeed? Did you fail? Did you uncover a new skill?  
• Expand on your shift in perspective and how this experience caused you to look at yourself and those around you differently. Think of this as your “after.” If your project went on to win your local science fair, how did this shift your view of your scientific abilities? Underline how you grew from this experience and how it shaped your perspective. 

For inspiration, here are examples of Essay #5 responses from high school students just like you. 

Common App Prompt #6: The passion essay 

“Describe a topic, idea, or concept you find so engaging that it makes you lose all track of time. Why does it captivate you? What or who do you turn to when you want to learn more?”

Every student, no matter their GPA or collegiate aspirations, has a hobby or pastime they enjoy. Are you particularly passionate about yours? Take this opportunity to write about it, particularly if your passion is unique.

• List the things you love . Ideally, your greatest passion came to mind as soon as you read this prompt. But if you have an affinity for more than one thing, make a list. This could be anything from making pottery to playing chess or trying out new recipes in the kitchen.
• Explain why you have such an affinity for this hobby or pastime. Delve into the history behind this passion. How did you first get interested in rescuing animals? Did a parent or mentor expose you to this work? Did the experience of finding a lonely cat on the street spark your passion? 
• Expand upon your learning process and how you developed your knowledge of this topic. If you love astronomy, what steps did you take to learn about the night sky and types of stars? Did you immerse yourself in YouTube videos about space? Or visit local observatories? Demonstrate your thirst for knowledge and ability to self-motivate. 

Read other passionate essays here that have captivated admissions officers. 

Common App Prompt #7: Topic of your choice 

“Share an essay on any topic of your choice . It can be one you’ve already written, one that responds to a different prompt , or one of your own design.”

Prompt 7 can be divisive. For some, this open-ended prompt is a great opportunity to write a unique, personal essay. Since there are no rules (other than the word limit), there are several ways to approach Prompt 7.

You could choose a topic that is unique to you, write a personal statement, or tell a compelling story that has some broader appeal. Or, you could think totally outside the box and turn your essay into a screenplay, newspaper article, or other artistic form. 

If you’re considering this prompt, try not to recycle an essay you’ve previously written for a high school class. The admissions officer will recognize your junior year English essay on Othello and, most likely, will find this choice lazy. Moreover, the Common App essays are meant to offer insight into who you are – not how you perform academically. 

That said, this prompt does offer you the opportunity to reuse a prior essay as a base and then tweak it. Just be careful. The college admissions process is high-stakes. Don’t ruin your chances because you’re trying to save time on your essay. 

To find inspiration, check out other students’ essays on Prompt 7 . 

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College Campus Protests: What Students Should Know Before Taking Action

Before demonstrating, students should learn their rights, understand campus policies and consider potential consequences.

Protesting on Campus: What to Know

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There are limitations, and sometimes punitive consequences – if laws or campus policies are broken – for participating in protests.

Key Takeaways

• Public schools, but not private ones, are bound by the First Amendment.
• Students should know their rights and campus policies before protesting.
• Legal or institutional consequences can occur if laws or campus policies are violated.

Student activism has been prominent on college campuses across the U.S. for generations, from the Civil Rights Movement and Vietnam War decades ago to more recent protests surrounding Black Lives Matter, the overturn of Roe v. Wade and the latest war between Israel and Hamas.

"Campuses have traditionally been places where there is free exchange of ideas, the unfettered pursuit of the truth and an encouragement of students to be engaged in public discourse," says Lynn Pasquerella, president of the American Association of Colleges and Universities, an organization focused on advancing equity within higher education.

However, there are limitations, and sometimes punitive consequences – if laws or campus policies are broken – for participating in protests. Here's what college students should know about engaging in rallies, sit-ins and other on-campus protests.

Protesting on a Public vs. Private College Campus

Public universities are bound by the First Amendment – which protects freedom of speech and the right to peacefully assemble – while private institutions are not, experts say.

"Unless there is a relevant state law, private colleges and universities can have whatever protest policies they want, including prohibiting all protests if that's their decision," says Ben Wizner, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project.

"Now, most private colleges adopt free expression principles that at least approximate the standards of the First Amendment. But it's important to know that those are not generally enforceable. So if they decide that they don't like the direction of a particular protest movement, they can change those rules."

Because of this, those attending private colleges in particular need to refer to their student handbook and understand their campus' time, place and manner rules.

"Even for speech that is permitted, it's not permitted at all times and in all places," Wizner says. "That's because colleges have to function, people have to get in and out of buildings, people have to use libraries. Almost every school will have a rule that prohibits the kind of encampments or building takeovers that we've seen" with the protests related to the Israel-Hamas war. "Nonetheless, I wouldn't tell a student not to do that. I would just make sure they understand that doing so is civil disobedience. It's likely to escalate the response."

The Do's and Don'ts of Protesting

Students protest to "raise awareness and push for change on issues they feel are being overlooked or mismanaged by those in power, especially after going through the expected avenues have failed," Stephanie Hall, senior director for higher education policy at the Center for American Progress, an independent policy institute based in Washington, D.C., wrote in an email. "This could include concerns over social justice, human rights, the environment or internal issues around campus policies or administrative decisions."

However, before participating, it's important to have a plan as "well organized logistics decrease the chances of unsafe situations cropping up," she says.

"Know the cause," Hall adds. "Be informed about the issue, goals and demands of the protest."

During a demonstration, students should be peaceful and nondisruptive, abstain from violence and not resist arrest – if it comes to that, says Zach Greenberg, senior program officer and a First Amendment attorney at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a nonprofit organization focused on protecting free speech on college campuses.

Not resisting arrest is a hallmark of engaging in civil disobedience – violating a law or policy in peaceful protest and accepting the consequences.

"Document everything with, usually, a cellphone ," says Greenberg, who is also FIRE's student association counsel. "Just put a video on your recording device. That can be a really good tool in the case they are facing university discipline."

Students should "know their rights, know the limits of what they can do, what they can't do and adhere to those limits," Greenberg says.

Pasquerella advises against making unconditional, nonnegotiable demands and being unwilling to "listen critically and with understanding to all sides of an issue. Because if you don't do that, you'll never move the needle. ... We all have to come to situations of protest, no matter what side we are on, in good faith and with the willingness to engage in humanistic identification."

Students also need to be mindful of outside agitators and "the dangers of ideological filtering," she adds. "And the messages that they are getting from certain groups and not have their movements be co-opted by extremists ... They need to speak up forcefully against any messages of hate, of violence that are being put out there by those who are supposedly their allies. In the past, it may have been easier to distinguish who your allies were and who your enemies were."

Other Considerations to Weigh Before Protesting

Presence of social media.

Compared to protests in past generations, many people today have access to smartphones. This means videos and pictures can be posted on social media or online in a blink of an eye, which comes with both advantages and downsides, experts say.

"College students today are living in a sort of merciless world where what they do is permanently recorded and available to anyone and searchable for all time," Wizner says. "And that may bear on the kind of decisions and risks that some young people want to make."

Potential Institutional and Legal Consequences

Colleges can shut down protests and punish students – either through suspension or expulsion – in cases of civil disobedience, which occurs when students willingly violate university policies, disrupt campus or commit any acts of violence.

Legally, college students are considered adults, so fines or arrests can occur if laws are broken. Depending on the circumstances, the legal consequences of peaceful civil disobedience are typically not severe, Wizner says.

"You may spend half a day in jail or overnight if you get arrested at night," he says. "You are likely to have a court appearance where the charges are dropped, provided that you don't re-offend or get arrested again in the next six months. That's not a guarantee and of course it depends what you are arrested for. The consequences may be different for breaking a window and entering a building at night than they are just for peacefully blocking somebody's right of way."

However, if students engage in this conduct repeatedly, it may affect potential career opportunities , Wizner adds, especially jobs in law enforcement or security. Additionally, private employers can choose not to hire someone if they consider the protest reason offensive.

"Students should know what potential consequences they may face and decide if the purpose of the protest outweighs those," Hall says. "In the context of today’s campus protests, we are seeing students overwhelmingly say that their purpose for protesting or their demands of their institutions are worth the consequences they may receive on an individual level. This is the spirit of protest, after all: putting yourself or even your livelihood on the line in the name of a bigger cause."

Impact of Protesting in College

While students face potential consequences, peaceful campus demonstrations can result in some positive outcomes, experts say.

For instance, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, a group of students marched and protested at the University of Rhode Island, taking over the administration building and making a list of demands in response to racist incidents on campus, Pasquerella recalls.

"The administration worked with them to achieve their shared objectives around promoting racial and social justice," she says. "I still hear from those students about how it was one of the most meaningful experiences that they had in college."

"Protests can be a learning experience and that's what we hope that they will do," Pasquerella adds. "It involved negotiation on complex issues with administrators who held power. It involved working together with a team on trying to achieve a shared objective. And really putting their own sense of meaning and purpose and applying it to what they were doing in a college environment, connecting those co-curricular activities to protest with their curriculum and using that. And they use that leadership role throughout their careers. It really enhanced their ability to do their work."

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America’s Colleges Are Reaping What They Sowed

Universities spent years saying that activism is not just welcome but encouraged on their campuses. Students took them at their word.

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N ick Wilson, a sophomore at Cornell University, came to Ithaca, New York, to refine his skills as an activist. Attracted by both Cornell’s labor-relations school and the university’s history of campus radicalism, he wrote his application essay about his involvement with a Democratic Socialists of America campaign to pass the Protecting the Right to Organize Act . When he arrived on campus, he witnessed any number of signs that Cornell shared his commitment to not just activism but also militant protest, taking note of a plaque commemorating the armed occupation of Willard Straight Hall in 1969.

Cornell positively romanticizes that event: The university library has published a “ Willard Straight Hall Occupation Study Guide ,” and the office of the dean of students once co-sponsored a panel on the protest. The school has repeatedly screened a documentary about the occupation, Agents of Change . The school’s official newspaper, published by the university media-relations office, ran a series of articles honoring the 40th anniversary, in 2009, and in 2019, Cornell held a yearlong celebration for the 50th, complete with a commemorative walk, a dedication ceremony, and a public conversation with some of the occupiers. “ Occupation Anniversary Inspires Continued Progress ,” the Cornell Chronicle headline read.

As Wilson has discovered firsthand, however, the school’s hagiographical odes to prior protests have not prevented it from cracking down on pro-Palestine protests in the present. Now that he has been suspended for the very thing he told Cornell he came there to learn how to do—radical political organizing—he is left reflecting on the school’s hypocrisies. That the theme of this school year at Cornell is “Freedom of Expression” adds a layer of grim humor to the affair.

Evan Mandery: University of hypocrisy

University leaders are in a bind. “These protests are really dynamic situations that can change from minute to minute,” Stephen Solomon, who teaches First Amendment law and is the director of NYU’s First Amendment Watch—an organization devoted to free speech—told me. “But the obligation of universities is to make the distinction between speech protected by the First Amendment and speech that is not.” Some of the speech and tactics protesters are employing may not be protected under the First Amendment, while much of it plainly is. The challenge universities are confronting is not just the law but also their own rhetoric. Many universities at the center of the ongoing police crackdowns have long sought to portray themselves as bastions of activism and free thought. Cornell is one of many universities that champion their legacy of student activism when convenient, only to bring the hammer down on present-day activists when it’s not. The same colleges that appeal to students such as Wilson by promoting opportunities for engagement and activism are now suspending them. And they’re calling the cops.

The police activity we are seeing universities level against their own students does not just scuff the carefully cultivated progressive reputations of elite private universities such as Columbia, Emory University, and NYU, or the equally manicured free-speech bona fides of red-state public schools such as Indiana University and the University of Texas at Austin. It also exposes what these universities have become in the 21st century. Administrators have spent much of the recent past recruiting social-justice-minded students and faculty to their campuses under the implicit, and often explicit, promise that activism is not just welcome but encouraged. Now the leaders of those universities are shocked to find that their charges and employees believed them. And rather than try to understand their role in cultivating this morass, the Ivory Tower’s bigwigs have decided to apply their boot heels to the throats of those under their care.

I spoke with 30 students, professors, and administrators from eight schools—a mix of public and private institutions across the United States—to get a sense of the disconnect between these institutions’ marketing of activism and their treatment of protesters. A number of people asked to remain anonymous. Some were untenured faculty or administrators concerned about repercussions from, or for, their institutions. Others were directly involved in organizing protests and were wary of being harassed. Several incoming students I spoke with were worried about being punished by their school before they even arrived. Despite a variety of ideological commitments and often conflicting views on the protests, many of those I interviewed were “shocked but not surprised”—a phrase that came up time and again—by the hypocrisy exhibited by the universities with which they were affiliated. (I reached out to Columbia, NYU, Cornell, and Emory for comment on the disconnect between their championing of past protests and their crackdowns on the current protesters. Representatives from Columbia, Cornell, and Emory pointed me to previous public statements. NYU did not respond.)

The sense that Columbia trades on the legacy of the Vietnam protests that rocked campus in 1968 was widespread among the students I spoke with. Indeed, the university honors its activist past both directly and indirectly, through library archives , an online exhibit , an official “Columbia 1968” X account , no shortage of anniversary articles in Columbia Magazine , and a current course titled simply “Columbia 1968.” The university is sometimes referred to by alumni and aspirants as the “Protest Ivy.” One incoming student told me that he applied to the school in part because of an admissions page that prominently listed community organizers and activists among its “distinguished alumni.”

Joseph Slaughter, an English professor and the executive director of Columbia’s Institute for the Study of Human Rights, talked with his class about the 1968 protests after the recent arrests at the school. He said his students felt that the university had actively marketed its history to them. “Many, many, many of them said they were sold the story of 1968 as part of coming to Columbia,” he told me. “They talked about it as what the university presents to them as the long history and tradition of student activism. They described it as part of the brand.”

This message reaches students before they take their first college class. As pro-Palestine demonstrations began to raise tensions on campus last month, administrators were keen to cast these protests as part of Columbia’s proud culture of student activism. The aforementioned high-school senior who had been impressed by Columbia’s activist alumni attended the university’s admitted-students weekend just days before the April 18 NYPD roundup. During the event, the student said, an admissions official warned attendees that they may experience “disruptions” during their visit, but boasted that these were simply part of the school’s “long and robust history of student protest.”

Remarkably, after more than 100 students were arrested on the order of Columbia President Minouche Shafik—in which she overruled a unanimous vote by the university senate’s executive committee not to bring the NYPD to campus —university administrators were still pushing this message to new students and parents. An email sent on April 19 informed incoming students that “demonstration, political activism, and deep respect for freedom of expression have long been part of the fabric of our campus.” Another email sent on April 20 again promoted Columbia’s tradition of activism, protest, and support of free speech. “This can sometimes create moments of tension,” the email read, “but the rich dialogue and debate that accompany this tradition is central to our educational experience.”

Evelyn Douek and Genevieve Lakier: The hypocrisy underlying the campus-speech controversy

Another student who attended a different event for admitted students, this one on April 21, said that every administrator she heard speak paid lip service to the school’s long history of protest. Her own feelings about the pro-Palestine protests were mixed—she said she believes that a genocide is happening in Gaza and also that some elements of the protest are plainly anti-Semitic—but her feelings about Columbia’s decision to involve the police were unambiguous. “It’s reprehensible but exactly what an Ivy League institution would do in this situation. I don’t know why everyone is shocked,” she said, adding: “It makes me terrified to go there.”

Beth Massey, a veteran activist who participated in the 1968 protests, told me with a laugh, “They might want to tell us they’re progressive, but they’re doing the business of the ruling class.” She was not surprised by the harsh response to the current student encampment or by the fact that it lit the fuse on a nationwide protest movement. Massey had been drawn to the radical reputation of Columbia’s sister school, Barnard College, as an open-minded teenager from the segregated South: “I actually wanted to go to Barnard because they had a history of progressive struggle that had happened going all the way back into the ’40s.” And the barn-burning history that appealed to Massey in the late 1960s has continued to attract contemporary students, albeit with one key difference: Today, that radical history has become part of the way that Barnard and Columbia sell their $60,000-plus annual tuition.

Of course, Columbia is not alone. The same trends have also prevailed at NYU, which likes to crow about its own radical history and promises contemporary students “ a world of activism opportunities .” An article published on the university’s website in March—titled “Make a Difference Through Activism at NYU”—promises students “myriad chances to put your activism into action.” The article points to campus institutions that “provide students with resources and opportunities to spark activism and change both on campus and beyond.” The six years I spent as a graduate student at NYU gave me plenty of reasons to be cynical about the university and taught me to view all of this empty activism prattle as white noise. But even I was astounded to see a video of students and faculty set upon by the NYPD, arrested at the behest of President Linda Mills.

“Across the board, there is a heightened awareness of hypocrisy,” Mohamad Bazzi, a journalism professor at NYU, told me, noting that faculty were acutely conscious of the gap between the institution’s intensive commitment to DEI and the police crackdown. The university has recently made several “cluster hires”—centered on activism-oriented themes such as anti-racism, social justice, and indigeneity—that helped diversify the faculty. Some of those recent hires were among the people who spent a night zip-tied in a jail cell, arrested for the exact kind of activism that had made them attractive to NYU in the first place. And it wasn’t just faculty. The law students I spoke with were especially acerbic. After honing her activism skills at her undergraduate institution—another university that recently saw a violent police response to pro-Palestine protests—one law student said she came to NYU because she was drawn to its progressive reputation and its high percentage of prison-abolitionist faculty. This irony was not lost on her as the police descended on the encampment.

After Columbia students were arrested on April 18, students at NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study decided to cancel a planned art festival and instead use the time to make sandwiches as jail support for their detained uptown peers. The school took photos of the students layering cold cuts on bread and posted it to Gallatin’s official Instagram. These posts not only failed to mention that the students were working in support of the pro-Palestine protesters; the caption—“making sandwiches for those in need”—implied that the undergrads might be preparing meals for, say, the homeless.

The contradictions on display at Cornell, Columbia, and NYU are not limited to the state of New York. The police response at Emory, another university that brags about its tradition of student protest, was among the most disturbing I have seen. Faculty members I spoke with at the Atlanta school, including two who had been arrested—the philosophy professor Noëlle McAfee and the English and Indigenous-studies professor Emil’ Keme—recounted harrowing scenes: a student being knocked down, an elderly woman struggling to breathe after tear-gas exposure, a colleague with welts from rubber bullets. These images sharply contrast with the university’s progressive mythmaking, a process that was in place even before 2020’s “summer of racial reckoning” sent universities scrambling to shore up their activist credentials.

In 2018, Emory’s Campus Life office partnered with students and a design studio to begin work on an exhibit celebrating the university’s history of identity-based activism. Then, not long after George Floyd’s murder, the university’s library released a series of blog posts focusing on topics including “Black Student Activism at Emory,” “Protests and Movements,” “Voting Rights and Public Policy,” and “Authors and Artists as Activists.” That same year, the university announced its new Arts and Social Justice Fellows initiative, a program that “brings Atlanta artists into Emory classrooms to help students translate their learning into creative activism in the name of social justice.” In 2021, the university put on an exhibit celebrating its 1969 protests , in which “Black students marched, demonstrated, picketed, and ‘rapped’ on those institutions affecting the lives of workers and students at Emory.” Like Cornell’s and Columbia’s, Emory’s protests seem to age like fine wine: It takes half a century before the institution begins enjoying them.

N early every person I talked with believed that their universities’ responses were driven by donors, alumni, politicians, or some combination thereof. They did not believe that they were grounded in serious or reasonable concerns about the physical safety of students; in fact, most felt strongly that introducing police into the equation had made things far more dangerous for both pro-Palestine protesters and pro-Israel counterprotesters. Jeremi Suri, a historian at UT Austin—who told me he is not politically aligned with the protesters—recalls pleading with both the dean of students and the mounted state troopers to call off the charge. “It was like the Russian army had come onto campus,” Suri mused. “I was out there for 45 minutes to an hour. I’m very sensitive to anti-Semitism. Nothing anti-Semitic was said.” He added: “There was no reason not to let them shout until their voices went out.”

From the May 1930 issue: Hypocrisy–a defense

As one experienced senior administrator at a major research university told me, the conflagration we are witnessing shows how little many university presidents understand either their campus communities or the young people who populate them. “When I saw what Columbia was doing, my immediate thought was: They have not thought about day two ,” he said, laughing. “If you confront an 18-year-old activist, they don’t back down. They double down.” That’s what happened in 1968, and it’s happening again now. Early Tuesday morning, Columbia students occupied Hamilton Hall—the site of the 1968 occupation, which they rechristened Hind’s Hall in honor of a 6-year-old Palestinian girl killed in Gaza—in response to the university’s draconian handling of the protests. They explicitly tied these events to the university’s past, calling out its hypocrisy on Instagram: “This escalation is in line with the historical student movements of 1968 … which Columbia repressed then and celebrates today.” The university, for its part, responded now as it did then: Late on Tuesday, the NYPD swarmed the campus in an overnight raid that led to the arrest of dozens of students.

The students, professors, and administrators I’ve spoken with in recent days have made clear that this hypocrisy has not gone unnoticed and that the crackdown isn’t working, but making things worse. The campus resistance has expanded to include faculty and students who were originally more ambivalent about the protests and, in a number of cases, who support Israel. They are disturbed by what they rightly see as violations of free expression, the erosion of faculty governance, and the overreach of administrators. Above all, they’re fed up with the incandescent hypocrisy of institutions, hoisted with their own progressive petards, as the unstoppable force of years’ worth of self-righteous rhetoric and pseudo-radical posturing meets the immovable object of students who took them at their word.

In another video published by The Cornell Daily Sun , recorded only hours after he was suspended, Nick Wilson explained to a crowd of student protesters what had brought him to the school. “In high school, I discovered my passion, which was community organizing for a better world. I told Cornell University that’s why I wanted to be here,” he said, referencing his college essay. Then he paused for emphasis, looking around as his peers began to cheer. “And those fuckers admitted me.”

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Opinion Guest Essay

This Is Peak College Admissions Insanity

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By Daniel Currell

Mr. Currell, a lawyer and consultant, was a deputy under secretary and senior adviser at the Department of Education from 2018 to 2021. He is a trustee of Gustavus Adolphus College.

• May 1, 2024

Selective college admissions have been a vortex of anxiety and stress for what seems like forever, inducing panic in more top high school seniors each year. But the 2023-24 admissions season was not just an incremental increase in the frantic posturing and high-pressure guesswork that make this annual ritual seem like academic Hunger Games. This year was different. A number of factors — some widely discussed, some little noticed — combined to push the process into a new realm in which the old rules didn’t apply and even the gatekeepers seemed not to know what the new rules were.

It happened, as these things often do, first gradually and then all at once.

It started with a precipitous rise in the number of people clamoring to get in. The so-called Ivy-Plus schools — the eight members of the Ivy League plus M.I.T., Duke, Chicago and Stanford — collectively received about 175,000 applications in 2002. In 2022, the most recent year for which totals are available, they got more than 590,000, with only a few thousand more available spots.

The quality of the applicants has risen also. In 2002, the nation produced 134 perfect ACT scores ; in 2023 there were 2,542 . Over the same period, the United States — and beyond it, the world — welcomed a great many more families into the ranks of the wealthy, who are by far the most likely to attend an elite college. Something had to give.

The first cracks appeared around the rules that had long governed the process and kept it civilized, obligating colleges to operate on the same calendar and to give students time to consider all offers before committing. A legal challenge swept the rules away, freeing the most powerful schools to do pretty much whatever they wanted.

One clear result was a drastic escalation in the formerly niche admissions practice known as early decision.

Then Covid swept through, forcing colleges to let students apply without standardized test scores — which, as the university consultant Ben Kennedy says, “tripled the number of kids who said to themselves, ‘Hey, I’ve got a shot at admission there.’” More applications, more market power for the schools and, for the students, an ever smaller chance of getting in.

Last year, the Supreme Court’s historic decision ending race-based affirmative action left colleges scrambling for new ways to preserve diversity and students groping in the dark to figure out what schools wanted.

Finally, this year the whole financial aid system exploded into spectacular disarray. Now, a month after most schools sent out the final round of acceptances, many students still don’t have the information they need to determine if they can afford college. Some will delay attending, and some will forgo it entirely, an outcome that will have lasting implications for them and, down the line, for the economy as a whole.

These disparate changes had one crucial thing in common: Almost all of them strengthened the hand of highly selective colleges, allowing them to push applicants into more constricted choices with less information and less leverage. The result is that elite admissions offices, which have always tried to reduce the uncertainty in each new year’s decisions, are now using their market power to all but eliminate it. This means taking no chances in pursuit of a high yield, the status-bestowing percentage of admitted students who enroll. But low uncertainty for elite colleges means the opposite for applicants — especially if they can’t pay the full tuition rate.

Canh Oxelson, the executive director of college counseling at the Horace Mann School in New York, says: “This is as much uncertainty as we’ve ever seen. Affirmative action, the FAFSA debacle, test-optionality — it has shown itself in this one particular year. Colleges want certainty, and they are getting more. Families want certainty and they are getting less.”

In 2024, the only applicants who could be certain of an advantage were those whose parents had taken the wise precaution of being rich.

The Early Bird Gets the Dorm

For Ivy Wydler, an elite college seemed like an obvious destination, and many of her classmates at Georgetown Visitation Preparatory School in Washington, D.C., were headed along the same trajectory. After her sophomore year of high school, she took the ACT and got a perfect score — on her first try, a true rarity. Her grades were stellar. So she set her sights high, favoring “medium to big schools, and not too cold.”

Touring campuses, she was dazzled by how great and exciting it all seemed. Then she visited Duke, and something clicked. She applied in the binding early decision round.

It’s a consequential choice. Students can do so at only one college, and they have to promise to attend if accepted, before knowing what the school’s financial aid offer will be. That means there is at least a chance an applicant will be on the hook for the full cost, which at Duke is $86,886 for the 2024-25 year. Students couldn’t be legally compelled to attend if they couldn’t afford it, but by the time they got the news, they would have already had to withdraw their other applications.

If full tuition isn’t a deal killer, as it wouldn’t be for Ivy’s family, the rewards are considerable. This year, just over 54,000 high school seniors vied to be one of only 1,750 members of Duke’s incoming class. The 6,000 who applied in the early decision round were three times as likely to get in as the 48,000 who applied later.

Until recently, early decision was a narrow pathway — an outlier governed, like the rest of this annual academic mating season, by a set of mandatory practices laid out by the National Association for College Admission Counseling, which is made up of college admissions officers and high school counselors. Those rules said, for example, that colleges couldn’t recruit a student who was already committed to another school or actively encourage someone to transfer. Crucially, the rules said that colleges needed to give students until May 1 to decide among offers (noting early decision, which begins and ends in the fall, as a “recognized exception”).

The Justice Department thought those rules ran afoul of the Sherman Antitrust Act, which bars powerful industries from colluding to restrain competition. At the end of 2019, NACAC agreed to a settlement mandating that the organization “promptly abolish” several of the rules and downgrade the rest to voluntary guidelines. Now, if they chose to, colleges had license to lure students with special offers or benefits, to aggressively poach students at other schools and to tear up the traditional admissions calendar.

At that point, nothing restrained colleges from going all in on early decision, a strategy that allows them to lock in students early without making any particular commitments about financial aid. Of the 735 first-year students that Middlebury College enrolled last year, for example, 516 were admitted via binding early decision. Some schools have a second round of early decision, and even what amounts to an unofficial third round — along with an array of other application pathways, each with its own terms and conditions.

With the rules now abandoned, colleges got a whole new bag of tricks. For example, a school might call — at any time in the process — with a one-time offer of admission if you can commit on the spot to attend and let go of all other prospects. Hesitate and it’s gone, along with your chances in subsequent rounds. “We hear about colleges that are putting pressure on high school seniors to send in a deposit sooner to get better courses or housing options,” says Sara Harberson, the founder of Application Nation, a college advising service.

To inform these maneuvers, colleges lean on consultants who analyze applicant demographics, qualifications, financial status and more, using econometric models. High school seniors think this is checkers, but the schools know it’s chess. This has all become terrifying for students, who are first-time players in a game their opponents invented.

Application season can be particularly intimidating for students who, unlike Ivy, did not grow up on the elite college conveyor belt. When Rania Khan, a senior in Gorton High School in Yonkers, N.Y., was in middle school, she and her mother spent two years in a shelter near Times Square. Since then she and her younger brother have been in the foster system. Despite these challenges, she has been a superb student. In ninth grade, Rania got an internship at Google and joined a research team at Regeneron, a biotechnology company. She won a national award for her study of how sewage treatment chemicals affect river ecosystems. Looking at colleges, she saw that her scores and credentials matched with those of students at the very top schools in the country.

One of the schools she was most drawn to was Barnard. “I like that it’s both a small college and” — because it’s part of Columbia — “a big university. There are a lot of resources, and it’s a positive environment for women,” she said. And it would keep her close to her little brother.

Barnard now fills around 60 percent of its incoming class in the early decision round, giving those students a massive admissions advantage. It would have been an obvious option for Rania, but she can’t take any chances financially. She applied via the general decision pool, when instead of having a one in three chance, her odds were one in 20.

Officially, anyone can apply for early decision. In practice it’s priority boarding for first-class passengers.

Unstandardized Testing

When selective colleges suspended the requirement for standardized testing, it didn’t really seem like a choice; because of the pandemic, a great many students simply couldn’t take the tests. The implications, however, went far beyond mere plague-year logistics.

The SAT was rolled out in 1926 as an objective measure of students’ ability, absent the cultural biases that had so strongly informed college admissions before then. It’s been the subject of debate almost ever since. In 1980, Ralph Nader published a study alleging that the standardized testing regimen actually reinforced racial and gender bias and favored people who could afford expensive test prep. Many educators have come back around to regarding the tests as a good predictor of academic success, but the matter is far from settled.

Remarkably, students still take the exams in the same numbers as before the pandemic, but far fewer disclose what they got. Cindy Zarzuela, an adviser with the nonprofit Yonkers Partners in Education who works with Rania and about 90 other students, said all her students took the SAT this year. None of them sent their scores to colleges.

These days, Cornell, for example, admits roughly 40 percent of its incoming class without a test score. At schools like the University of Wisconsin or the University of Connecticut , the percentage is even higher. In California, schools rarely accept scores at all, being in many cases not only test-optional, but also “test-blind.”

The high-water mark of test-optionality, however, was also its undoing.

Applicants tended to submit their scores only if they were above the school’s reported median, a pattern that causes that median to be recalibrated higher and higher each year. When Cornell went test-optional, its 25th percentile score on the math SAT jumped from 720 to 750. Then it went to 760. The ceiling is 800, so standardized tests had begun to morph from a system of gradients into a yes/no question: Did you get a perfect score? If not, don’t mention it.

The irony, however, was that in the search for a diverse student body, many elite colleges view strong-but-not-stellar test scores as proof that a student from an underprivileged background could do well despite lacking the advantages of the kids from big suburban high schools and fancy prep schools. Without those scores, it might be harder to make the case .

Multiply that across the board, and the result was that test-optional policies made admission to an elite school less likely for some diverse or disadvantaged applicants. Georgetown and M.I.T. were first to reinstate test score requirements, and so far this year Harvard, Yale, Brown, Caltech, Dartmouth and Cornell have announced that they will follow. There may be more to come.

The Power of No

On Dec. 14, Ivy got an answer from Duke: She was rejected.

She was in extremely good company. It’s been a while since top students could assume they’d get into top schools, but today they get rejected more often than not. It even happens at places like Northeastern, a school now ranked 53rd in the nation by U.S. News & World Report — and not long ago, more than 100 slots lower than that. It spends less per student on instruction than the Boston public schools .

“There’s no target school anymore and no safety school,” says Stef Mauler , a private admissions coach in Texas. “You have to have a strategy for every school you apply to.”

Northeastern was one of the 18 other schools Ivy applied to, carefully sifting through various deadlines and conditions, mapping out her strategy. With Duke out of the picture, her thoughts kept returning to one of them in particular: Dartmouth, her father’s alma mater. “My mom said, ‘Ivy, you love New Hampshire. Look at Dartmouth.’ She was right.” She had wanted to go someplace warm, but the idea of cold weather seemed to be bothering her less and less.

Meanwhile Rania watched as early decision day came and went, and thousands of high school seniors across the country got the best news of their lives. For Rania, it was just another Friday.

A Free Market in Financial Aid

In 2003, a consortium of about 20 elite colleges agreed to follow a shared formula for financial aid, to ensure that they were competing for students on the merits, not on mere dollars and cents. It sounds civilized, but pricing agreements are generally illegal for commercial ventures. (Imagine if car companies agreed not to underbid each other.) The colleges believed they were exempt from that prohibition, however, because they practiced “ need-blind ” admissions, meaning they don’t discriminate based on a student’s ability to pay.

In 2022, nine current and former students from an array of prestigious colleges filed a class-action antitrust lawsuit — later backed by the Justice Department — arguing that the consortium’s gentlemanly agreement was depriving applicants of the benefits of a free market. And to defang the defense, they produced a brilliant argument: No, these wealthy colleges didn’t discriminate against students who were poor, but they sure did discriminate in favor of students who were rich. They favored the children of alumni and devoted whole development offices to luring the kinds of ultrarich families that affix their names to shiny new buildings. It worked: Early this year, Brown, Columbia, Duke, Emory and Yale joined the University of Chicago in conceding , and paying out a nine-figure settlement. (They deny any wrongdoing.) Several other schools are playing on, but the consortium and its rules have evaporated.

This set schools free to undercut one another on price in order to get their preferred students. It also gave the schools a further incentive to push for early decision, when students don’t have the ability to compare offers.

For almost anyone seeking financial aid, from the most sought-after first-round pick to the kid who just slid under the wire, the first step remained the same: They had to fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid form, or FAFSA.

As anyone knows who’s been through it — or looked into the glassy eyes of someone else who has — applying for financial aid can be torture at the best of times. This year was the worst of times, because FAFSA was broken. The form, used by the government to determine who qualifies for federal grants or student loans, and by many colleges to determine their in-house financial aid, had gotten a much-needed overhaul. But the new version didn’t work , causing endless frustration for many families, and convincing many others not even to bother. At mid-April, finished FAFSA applications were down 29 percent compared with last year.

“The FAFSA catastrophe is bigger than people realize,” says Casey Sacks , a former U.S. Department of Education official and now the president of BridgeValley Community and Technical College in West Virginia, where 70 percent of students receive federal funds.

Abigail Garcia , Rania’s classmate and the 2024 valedictorian of their school, applied to in-state public colleges as well as Ivies. She couldn’t complete the FAFSA, however, because it rejected her parents’ information, the most common glitch. She has financial aid offers from elite schools, all of which use a private alternative to the government form, but she can’t weigh them against the public institutions, because they are so severely delayed.

For most students, 2024’s FAFSA crisis looks set to take the uncertainty that began last fall and drag it into the summer or beyond. “That’s going to reduce the work force in two to four years.” Ms. Sacks says. “FAFSA completions are a pretty good leading indicator of how many people will be able to start doing the kinds of jobs that are in highest demand — registered nurses, manufacturing engineers, those kinds of jobs.”

As the FAFSA problem rolls on, it could be that for the system as a whole, the worst is still to come.

Can Any of This Be Fixed?

On the numbers, elite college applicants’ problems are a footnote to the story of college access. The Ivy-Plus schools enroll less than 1 percent of America’s roughly 15 million undergraduates . If you expand the pool to include all colleges that are selective enough to accept less than a quarter of applicants, we’re still talking about only 6 percent of undergraduates. The easiest way to alleviate the traffic jam at the top is to shift our cultural focus toward the hundreds of schools that offer an excellent education but are not luxury brands.

Luxury brand schools, however, have real power. In 2023, 15 of 32 Rhodes scholars came from the Ivies, nine from Harvard alone. Twenty of this year’s 38 Supreme Court clerks came from Harvard or Yale. If elite colleges’ selection process is broken, what should we do to fix it?

Here’s what we can’t do: Let them go off and agree on their own solution. Antitrust law exists to prevent dominant players from setting their own rules to the detriment of consumers and competitors.

Here’s what we won’t do: Legislate national rules that govern admissions. Our systems are decentralized and it would take a miracle for Congress not to make things worse.

But here’s what we can do: Hold the schools accountable for their processes and their decisions.

Institutions that receive federal funds — which include all elite colleges — should be required to clearly state their admissions criteria. Admissions as currently practiced are designed to let schools whose budgets run on billions of taxpayers dollars do whatever they want. Consider Stanford’s guidance to applicants: “In a holistic review, we seek to understand how you, as a whole person, would grow, contribute and thrive at Stanford, and how Stanford would, in turn, be changed by you.” This perfectly encapsulates the current system, because it is meaningless.

Colleges should also not be allowed to make anyone decide whether to attend without knowing what it will actually cost, and they should not be allowed to offer better odds to those who forgo that information. They should not offer admissions pathways tilted to favor the rich, any more than they should offer pathways favoring people who are white.

It just shouldn’t be this hard. Really.

The Envelope Please …

Ivy has the highest academic qualifications available inside the conventional system, and her family can pay full tuition. Once upon a time, she would have had her pick of top colleges. Not this year.

Over the course of the whole crazy admissions season, the school she had come to care about most was Dartmouth.

Along with the other seven Ivies, Dartmouth released this year’s admissions decisions online on March 28, at 7 p.m. Eastern. Ivy was traveling that day, and as the moment approached, she said, “I was on the bed in my hotel room, just repeating, ‘People love me for who I am, not what I do. People love me for who I am, not what I do.’”

She was rejected by Duke, Vanderbilt, Stanford, Columbia and the University of Southern California, where Operation Varsity Blues shenanigans could once guarantee acceptance but, as Ivy discovered, a perfect score on the ACT will not. She landed on the wait list at Northeastern. She was accepted by Michigan and Johns Hopkins. And Ivy was accepted at both her parents’ alma maters: the University of Virginia and Dartmouth, where she will start in September.

For Rania, the star student with an extraordinary story of personal resilience, the news was not so good. At Barnard, she was remanded to the wait list. Last year only 4 percent of students in that position were eventually let in. N.Y.U. and the City University of New York’s medical college put her on the wait list, too.

A spot on a wait list tells applicants that they were good enough to get in. By the time Rania applied to these schools, there just wasn’t any room. “It was definitely a shock,” she said. “What was I missing? They just ran out of space — there are so many people trying to get into these places. It took two weeks to adjust to it.”

She did get lots of other good news, a sheaf of acceptances from schools like Fordham and the University at Albany. But then came the hardest question of all: How to pay for them? Some offered her a financial aid package that would leave her on the hook for more money than undergraduates are allowed to take out in federal student loans. Even now, some colleges haven’t been able to provide her with financial aid information at all.

Rania had all but settled on Hunter College, part of the City University system. It’s an excellent school, but a world away from the elite colleges she was thinking about when she started her search. Then at almost the last moment, Wesleyan came through with a full ride and even threw in some extra for expenses. Rania accepted, gratefully.

For Rania, the whole painful roller coaster of a year was over. For so many other high school seniors, the year of broken college admissions continues.

Daniel Currell, a lawyer and consultant, was a deputy under secretary and senior adviser at the Department of Education from 2018 to 2021. He is a trustee of Gustavus Adolphus College.

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