Duke says it will no longer count essays in admissions decisions

In February of last year, Duke University made an announcement that seemed like big news. In a Duke Chronicle article, the dean of undergraduate admissions said that they will no longer count essays as part of their scoring system.

Why? Here's what the dean of undergraduate admissions said: "We’re just no longer assuming that the essay is an accurate reflection of the student’s actual writing ability.” He pointed to the increasing prevalence of AI-generated writing as a major motivator for this change.

So, let's talk about what this actually means. In the past, the Duke admissions office gave each applicant a score in six categories: curriculum strength, academics, recommendations, essays, extracurriculars and test scores. The max you could score in each category was 5 points. Now, Duke will no longer give students points in the essays and test score categories.

It's somewhat confusing, though, because Duke's dean of undergraduate admissions said that essays will still be an important part of a student's application. In his own words: “Essays are very much part of our understanding of the applicant." He also said that the essays will continue to give “insight into who the unique person is whose application we’re reading” and that “content and insight matter more than style.”

So....essays still are important to Duke? Pick your story, man!

In a Reddit discussion about the change, and its confusing implications, one user commented that statements like this from admissions officers are why "applicants and their parents don't know what schools are looking for."

But the situation becomes clearer when we pay particular attention to this part of what the dean said: “content and insight matter more than style.” It strikes at the heart of a crucial misunderstanding my students (and their parents) have about college essays.

My students often obsess over the style of their essays, worrying about their grammar or whether they are using enough vivid imagery. They see the essay as an important demonstration of how well (or not well) they can write. But this isn't really the way that admissions officers read essays. According to Michelle Hernandez, a former AO at Dartmouth, "Admissions officers are reading the essays more for content. They’re almost speed reading them for content.”

When I interviewed an admissions officer from Tufts, he told me that the first thing he asks after reading an essay is "What did we learn about this student?" Certainly, one of the things he could have learned was that the student was a good writer. But admissions officers want to learn more than that. They want to learn what kind of role you play in your community, what you are like as a friend, sibling, and student. There is so much they can learn about you in your essay, but very often, applicants fumble this opportunity.

The Tufts admissions officer told me, "Very often, we are at a loss of something to grab onto." Because, as I've seen so many times with my own students, applicants are more focused on writing something resembling a PR statement rather than sharing the little, glorious details that make up their daily lives.

When Duke announced that they no longer assume the essay is a reflection of the applicant's writing ability, they mean that it's no longer a "thing" they can learn about an applicant from their essays. But there is still a lot the essays can tell them about the applicant that they can't learn anywhere else in the application. As Duke's dean of admissions said, “content and insight matter more than style.”

Although essays won't contribute to an applicant's score at Duke, the admissions officer considers more than just this score when making decisions. It's not as though a student with a score of 15 will get in but a student with a score of 10 won't. This is because Duke has a holistic admissions process, and essays will continue to provide the context they need to make these "holistic" decisions.

So, is Duke's announcement really all that earth shattering? Not really. Even before the rise of ChatGPT, admissions officers were well aware that many applicant's essays were written with a "it takes a village" approach. Essays have been and will continue to be more about content and context than reflective of the student’s ability to write.