I believe colleges need to rethink the role of the essay. Its value diminished long before AI as students increasingly relied on parents, teachers, counselors, paid advisers, and even online forums like this for feedback and editing. Editors with the best of intentions often overstep. Colleges have never been able to verify who truly authored these essays. All they really know from the essays is how a student wants to represent themselves by what they choose to submit. If colleges genuinely believe essays provide meaningful insight, they should require students to write them in a controlled environment, such as a testing center, responding to a prompt without outside help or AI tools. As it stands, the current system makes little sense to me.
Some colleges are starting to do this, at least with the common app personal statement (of course some never looked at essays, like CSUs.) Northwestern does not require the common app essay and in AO sessions they’ve said they don’t weigh it much, if at all, if you send it in (which is a little different than what their website says.) Northwestern does read and place weight on their specific essay questions.
There are other colleges (selective to highly selective) I know where the personal essay is similarly not important, but for their own unique reasons these schools have chosen to not publicize that (which I know is less than helpful.)