Between AI and grade inflation, colleges no longer trust your application

The Common Application opened Aug. 1 , and many families are already preparing for a system that is disappearing. They will polish essays, assume that “test-optional” means scores no longer matter and treat AP exams merely as tools for college credit.

Today, all three assumptions are wrong. Colleges are no longer taking it on faith that grades accurately reflect applicants’ academic preparedness or even that applicants filled out their applications honestly. More than ever before, colleges want not just authentic applicants but authenticated applicants.

Consider what an application contains: unverified extracurriculars, essays of unknown authorship and grades of uncertain value. According to a 2025 report by faculty at the University of California, San Diego, a math placement exam for freshmen found that a quarter of those who tested below middle-school level had perfect 4.0 GPAs in their high school math classes. Inflated grades are worse than useless — they lie.

Colleges do have one standardized, authenticated measure of academic preparedness: SAT and ACT scores. Yet most colleges have stayed test-optional since the COVID shutdowns. The truest measure of what people value is what they do, not what they say, and by that measure most colleges have not cared much about authenticity at all.

But that is starting to change. Every Ivy League school has now announced a return to test-required admissions. Columbia, which had pledged to remain permanently test-optional, was the last holdout — it recently reversed course .

The case for using the scores is strong. A 2024 Opportunity Insights study of Ivy-plus colleges (the eight Ivies plus schools like the University of Chicago, Duke, MIT and Stanford) found that SAT and ACT scores are 3.9 times as predictive of first-year college grades as high school GPA. It made no sense to ignore a measure of the very preparedness colleges claim to want. It still makes no sense, especially when colleges say they prefer the authentic applicant to the curated one.

Students have also noticed. For the first time since before the pandemic, more applicants reported an SAT or ACT score through the Common App than did not. Those submitting test scores grew 10 percent over last year; those not submitting scores declined by 6 percent. Families are no longer taking test-optional colleges at their word. They have worked out the obvious: If a high score can help, then withholding a score can hurt.

AP exam scores are similarly rising in importance to fill the void left by inflated grades. A long list of selective colleges now require, recommend or at least use AP exam scores in admissions — among them Caltech , Stanford , MIT , Yale , Dartmouth , Princeton and Duke . AP scores used to be for course placement, not admission. But as grades in AP classes have grown less trustworthy, colleges are using the exam score to check the grade, the same move they are making with the transcript and the SAT.

Essays are moving in the opposite direction. University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill , the University of Georgia , Georgia Tech , Tulane University , the University of Miami and others have dropped their supplemental essays. Duke, although it has kept its essays, no longer assigns a rating to them because it’s “no longer assuming that the essay is an accurate reflection of the student’s actual writing ability” due to AI and paid admissions consultants.

I hope colleges keep their application essays and authenticate them instead. They could compare the quality of an application essay with a proctored writing sample, such as the ACT’s optional essay. A real essay still adds context that no test score can. But an admissions criterion that can be gamed and isn’t fixed should be dropped. Better no essay than one that rewards whoever cheats best.

There are signs of more to come. Caltech has a “ Fraud Squad “ to investigate the applications of admitted students. Harvard’s faculty voted to cap the share of A grades awarded. More than 3,000 University of California professors have signed a letter demanding that the system require SAT or ACT math scores again. Princeton ended its 133-year-old tradition of unproctored exams because AI made cheating too easy to ignore. Students are using AI to cheat , and teachers are unable to spot it, so proctored exams are the only viable path forward.

Yale released a faculty report that, among other recommendations, urges colleges to put academic achievement first. That something so obvious needed to be said reveals how far higher education has strayed from its mission.

Expect more colleges to require SAT or ACT scores, increase their use of AP exam scores in admissions decisions and drop the supplemental essays students can so easily game. Proof is beginning to take precedence over polish. The next few years will show which colleges live up to their words or fall back on vapid talking points. When a college truly values authenticity from applicants, you’ll know — they will require it.

David Blobaum is a nationally recognized expert in the entrance exam and college admissions industry. He is the CEO of Summit Prep and the director of Outreach for the National Test Prep Association , a non-profit that works to support the appropriate use of testing in admissions.