Yeah, one degree program that I worked with required an introductory essay as part of your application process. We ended up with a few students in the program who literally could not write at all. Some internet sleuthing revealed that they were using an online service that does exactly that - you just enter your personal details and the site generates a standard introductory letter.
So, yeah, we started having students write a short, one-page essay in person, with pen and paper, on a fairly bland “what I did last summer” kind of thing. It was an allied health program, so students would be charting and taking notes by hand, anyway. It really made us re-think how much written vs Word doc assignments we wanted them to do.
