college essay using ai

1 in 3 College Applicants Used AI for Essay Help. Did They Cheat?

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Last spring, Makena, then a high school senior, was deep into cranking out some 70 essays for 20 college applications when her creativity started to wane.

So, she turned to a high-tech brainstorming partner: artificial intelligence.

One essay prompt asked Makena to describe a class she’d want to teach if she were a college professor. “I had no idea,” said Makena, who asked to be identified only by her first name to speak candidly about the admissions process. “I had never thought about it.”

She put her intended major and some favorite topics into an AI tool, which spit out a list of potential courses. Makena selected one and crafted her essay around it, without any further AI assistance.

In Makena’s mind, this wasn’t cheating.

“I wrote my own essays, 100 percent,” she said. After all, she could have found the same information on Google or by picking up a course catalogue. AI was just more efficient.

About a third of high school seniors who applied to college in the 2023-24 school year acknowledged using an AI tool for help in writing admissions essays, according to research released this month by foundry10 , an organization focused on improving learning.

About half of those students—or roughly one in six students overall—used AI the way Makena did, to brainstorm essay topics or polish their spelling and grammar. And about 6 percent of students overall—including some of Makena’s classmates, she said—relied on AI to write the final drafts of their essays instead of doing most of the writing themselves.

Meanwhile, nearly a quarter of students admitted to Harvard University’s class of 2027 paid a private admissions consultant for help with their applications .

The use of outside help, in other words, is rampant in college admissions, opening up a host of questions about ethics, norms, and equal opportunity.

Top among them: Which—if any—of these students cheated in the admissions process?

For now, the answer is murky.

Colleges permit students to use pricey admissions coaches . But they are mostly silent on how AI can be used in crafting essays.

That’s created “this ethical gray area that students and [high school] counselors don’t have any guidance” on how to navigate, said Jennifer Rubin, a senior researcher at foundry10 and the lead author the report.

A ‘double standard’ on college admissions

Generative AI tools like ChatGPT have put a high-tech twist on decades-old questions of fairness in the college admissions process.

The system has “never been a level playing field,” Rubin said, citing the advantages that mostly benefit wealthier students, such as SAT tutors, paid college admissions coaches, and savvy, college-educated parents. “I think [AI] is just complicating it a little bit more because it’s a tool that’s readily available to everyone.”

To get a sense of the public’s perceptions on AI in college admissions, foundry10 included an experimental portion in its survey.

Participants reviewed an identical portion of a college essay. But one group was instructed that the applicant had help from ChatGPT in brainstorming ideas, refining content, and polishing the final draft—essentially the same tasks Makena used AI for.

Another group was told the applicant got assistance with the same parts of the writing process, from a paid college admissions coach. A third group was informed that the student worked entirely alone.

Participants rated the applicant who used ChatGPT as less authentic, less ethical, and less likable than the student who paid for professional help. (The student who worked solo got the highest ratings.)

Rubin perceives a “double standard” at work.

A student who can pay “thousands of dollars to someone who has the knowledge of how a [particular college] works and what’s needed or wanted in a college admissions essay is going to have an undue advantage,” she said.

College admissions coaching services typically cost from $60 to $349 per hour, according to data cited in Rubin’s report from Prepmaven, an admissions-preparation company.

The website of one such service, Ivy College Essay , advertises its Harvard connections. For between $1,500 and $4,800, depending on the number of applications, students receive help in brainstorming topics and “extensive written notes, comments, and guidance, focusing on both content and structure,” according to the site.

“We go back and forth as many times as needed until we have a very strong and solid Ivy League college application!” the company promises.

Assistance from ChatGPT on similar tasks “probably isn’t going to be as strong” as what such a service offers, Rubin said. “But it might provide students some form of feedback that they might not be able to get in their lives because they don’t have parents or caregivers” who have the savvy to help.

These issues are especially personal for Rubin, a first-generation college graduate who attended a private high school on scholarship. She had the help of her school counselors in applying to college.

But that assistance couldn’t make up for the gap between Rubin and many of her peers with highly educated parents, who could offer all sorts of support, she said.

Big questions on AI use go mostly unanswered by colleges

For now, high school counselors aren’t sure what to tell their students when it comes to how AI can be ethically used in the admissions process.

“My seniors have come to me and said, ‘Hey, I’ve got to write an essay about this. Where do I even start?’ Or ‘is it OK if I use ChatGPT?’” said Melissa Millington, a school counselor in Missouri. “I just really hit on, you cannot pass that off as your own work, because that’s not ethical.”

But, like Rubin, she sees some possibility for the technology in crafting applications that stop short of making AI a sole, uncredited ghost writer.

“If you are going to use it to get a starting point, that’s totally fine,” she said she’s told students. “Or if you want to write your essay, and then put it in there and ask it to clean [the] grammar,” that’s likely fair game.

While most colleges and universities are silent on the AI issue, some individual institutions have given applicants the green light to use AI in a limited fashion.

One of the country’s most prestigious institutions focusing on science, math, engineering and technology, CalTech, tells prospective students that it’s unethical to copy and paste an essay written entirely by generative AI. But it is acceptable to use AI to brainstorm or check grammar and spelling, the college says.

Georgia Polytechnical Institute, another highly regarded STEM-focused university, has a similar policy .

“If you choose to utilize AI-based assistance … we encourage you to take the same approach you would when collaborating with people,” the school’s website says. “Use it to brainstorm, edit, and refine your ideas.”

But for other colleges, any use of AI is unacceptable, at least officially. Brown University, for instance, cites its fraud policy and tells applicants that the use of AI is “not permitted under any circumstances.”

‘It always been an honor system’

Brown and other institutions have no real way of enforcing those policies, Rubin said.

AI detectors are notoriously unreliable. And they are disproportionately likely to flag writing by students who are not native English speakers, even if they didn’t use AI.

In fact, Kristin Woelfel, a policy counsel specializing in equity in civic technology for the Center for Democracy & Technology, a nonprofit organization that aims to shape technology policy, has gone so far as to say the detectors have the potential to violate students’ civil rights .

It doesn’t really matter if colleges have guidelines that prohibit AI use, Rubin said, because there’s no way to check on what kind of assistance an applicant received, human or not.

“It’s always been on the honor system,” she said.

Colleges that haven’t outlined their policies on AI in the application process are ignoring the obvious—and making life harder for high school counselors and their students, said Maritza Cha, who worked as a school counselor in Southern California for nearly a decade and has taught high school counseling as an adjunct professor.

“We’re at the point of either you can kind of put your head down in the sand and pretend it’s not happening, which is not realistic,” Cha said. “Or you can just acknowledge that they’re using some kind of AI” in the admissions process.

Counselors can model proper use of AI in the college search

While much of the work in setting clear guidelines needs to happen at the college level, there are steps high school educators can take.

Rubin believes that if counselors and teachers are really thinking about leveling the playing field between first-generation college students from low-income families and their peers, it might be helpful to show how generative AI can ethically guide the college admissions process.

For instance, students could put areas of study they are interested in and a desired geographic region into a tool like ChatGPT and ask for recommendations on where to apply.

“Generative AI can provide them some really concrete information,” Rubin said. Even though they should check that data against more accurate sources, it can help a student narrow their search.

Students can even have a “conversation back and forth” with AI if they don’t have access to a college counselor at school who can meet with them consistently, she said.

And they can model how to use AI to spur their creativity or proofread final drafts, without crossing the line into wholesale cheating, she said.

But, ultimately, high school educators and college officials need to have conversations about what responsible use of AI looks like, including in crafting college applications, Rubin said.

In Rubin’s view, those discussions should acknowledge that many students already have access to other types of help—whether that’s from professional consultants or parents and older siblings familiar with the process of applying to college.

Makena, for instance, thinks she can write a stronger, more personal essay than anything ChatGPT could cook up. She didn’t feel the need to pay a private counselor either, since she wanted to rely on her own voice as much as possible.

She did, however, have a low-tech, presumably cost-free assistant: Her father, who edited all 70-plus of her essays.

A version of this article appeared in the August 14, 2024 edition of Education Week as 1 in 3 College Applicants Used AI For Essay Help. Did They Cheat?

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• Tech & Innovation
• Artificial Intelligence

Can AI Help a Student Get Into Stanford or Yale?

Two entrepreneurial Stanford students fed hundreds of essays—both high and low quality—into an AI model to train it on what top-tier colleges look for in admissions essays.  

By  Lauren Coffey

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Two Stanford students have created an AI-focused company that helps students with their college admissions essays.

Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | Getty Images | Rawpixel

Scott Lee was scrolling through LinkedIn in June when he came across a post touting exactly what he was looking for: an AI machine called Esslo that provides feedback on college essays, based on those that have helped students gain admission to top-tier universities like Harvard and Stanford.

Lee, a student at Sacramento City College looking to transfer to the University of California system, had been using ChatGPT to review his admissions essays in the absence of friends and mentors on campus during summer break. But while ChatGPT “said what you wanted to hear” and failed to provide concrete fixes, Lee said Esslo met his drafts with “brutal honesty.” His essay had a “strong opening,” it told him, but didn’t capitalize on its full potential. And while his extracurricular activities were impressive, he hadn’t delved into the personal growth he gained from them or the challenges he faced.

“That is something I can implement, versus ChatGPT, which is very broad,” Lee said. He said he used Esslo “mainly for my early drafts, where it gave a lot more feedback so I’m not handing off something super underdeveloped to my friends and mentors,” who will help with the final version.

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Lee is among hundreds of students trying out Esslo—whose name is a mashup of the words “essay” and “Elo,” a ranking system used in chess and esports. The program is the brainchild of two Stanford University students looking to tackle what they believe is one of the most stressful parts of college applications: the admissions essay. 

How It Works 

When budding entrepreneurs Hadassah Betapudi and Elijah Kim began looking for a potential start-up project in the education-technology world, they started by asking friends and peers about some of the biggest gripes they had when it came to applying to colleges.

The normal topics cropped up—the steps involved in the application process, for one, and finding time to tackle the tasks involved. But the Stanford students soon realized the crux of the issue wasn’t about finding time: It was the daunting task of creating a good-enough essay to gain entry into top-tier schools.

“What we heard super consistently with college applications was that students had never written an essay like that before,” Kim said. “It was big and intimidating and it sets the trajectory for the rest of your life, so we heard a lot of stress over that—and we thought we could build something to help.”

Kim, now a graduate student at Stanford studying machine learning, compiled a data set of essays from students who’d gained admission to top-tier universities, including Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford, and trained artificial intelligence models on those roughly 500 essays. He also included essays that were cited as “bad” examples from various college websites and admissions consultants.

Any student can now plug in their own essay, which brings up a list of suggestions such as avoiding clichés, using imagery effectively or getting more granular with details. Esslo also gives a score for writing, detail, voice and character. There is a free version and a paid version—the former of which gives students a round of line-by-line edits for one draft, the latter of which gives unlimited line-by-line edits. For every paid version Esslo sells, the creators promise that a student at a Title I–designated high school—which typically has fewer resources—will receive the paid version for free.

Both Kim and Betapudi were quick to say the technology will not write an essay for a student, or even serve as a brainstorming tool. But they think it can help fine-tune an essay—providing feedback that’s similar to the advice you might get from a parent, college counselor or paid college consultant.

“We want to train students to be better writers and train them on what colleges are looking for, versus doing it for them,” Kim said. “It’s no different than showing it to an English teacher and asking for feedback.”

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Another Admissions Counselor?

Rick Clark, executive director of enrollment management at the Georgia Institute of Technology, sees AI as the equivalent of using an admissions consultant—except that it’s more affordable for those who cannot pay for the often-pricey consultants.

“Using ChatGPT and copy and pasting it will create a horrible essay because it’s not specific and detailed, but using [this] to get feedback? In that regard, I’m all for it,” Clark said. “It’s democratizing resources, advice and consults, and it’s available 24-7, where sometimes adults are sleeping or working a second job.”

Few universities have policies on using technology for admissions essays. Most of those that address AI at all issue a blanket statement banning the use of the technology in the admissions process entirely.

David Hawkins, the chief education and policy officer for the National Association for College Admission Counseling, said NACAC has steered clear of creating any policy on supplementary generative AI use thus far, as the organization is still in the “information-gathering stage.” He echoed Clark’s notion that it could be seen as similar to using admissions consultants but added that the “most important human” intervention comes from the students themselves.

“They have an authentic story to tell, and the authenticity is what admissions officers are looking for,” he said. “Whether an institution allows AI or whether they don’t—both are looking for some expression of authenticity in essays. It certainly is still down to the student as to the quality and the depth of what they submit.”

Arnold Langat, a senior at Stanford applying for medical school, said he was encouraged by Esslo to replace “a few clichéd phrases with more personal reflections to better showcase my unique perspective.” Faced with writing more than 50 unique essays, he used ChatGPT for brainstorming and, similarly to Lee, used Esslo to fine-tune a first draft before passing it along to mentors, friends and family for further review.

Kim and Betapudi say they hope Esslo will close some socioeconomic gaps.

“Any student with an internet connection can find a standard high school or college prep course, but there’s still a huge gap in terms of access to quality guidance,” Kim said. “And we feel technology has caught up to where we can meaningfully close that gap.”

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Using AI tools

Using ChatGPT to Write a College Essay | Tips & Examples

Published on June 26, 2023 by Koen Driessen . Revised on December 8, 2023.

A good college essay helps to distinguish your application from those of other candidates. It conveys your experiences, values, and character traits and indicates why you would make a good addition to the university you’re applying to.

Your college essay should be your own work. However, AI tools like ChatGPT may be helpful during the preparation and revision stages of your writing.

You can also use the essay checker , so you don’t have to revise your writing yourself.

You can use these tools to:

• Brainstorm essay ideas
• Develop an outline
• Generate feedback

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Table of contents

Brainstorming ideas, developing an outline, generating feedback, limitations of using chatgpt, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions.

Your college essay topic should reveal something distinctive about your personality and have a unique angle.

Brainstorming a range of potential ideas is a good place to start. This can help to stimulate creative thinking and prompt self-reflection. It can also help you draw connections between seemingly unrelated experiences or ideas.

You can use ChatGPT to generate questions to help you brainstorm.

Example: Using ChatGPT to brainstorm ideas

• Generate 10 questions to help me brainstorm topics for my college admission essay.
• How has a particular life experience shaped your perspective on a specific issue or topic?
• What challenges or obstacles have you faced, and how have they influenced your personal growth?
• How has your involvement in extracurricular activities impacted your character development and contributed to your identity?
• In what ways have you demonstrated leadership skills and made a positive impact on your community?
• Describe a significant academic achievement or project that showcases your intellectual curiosity and passion.
• How have your cultural background and family values influenced your aspirations and goals for the future?
• Reflect on a time when you had to step outside of your comfort zone to achieve a meaningful outcome. What did you learn from this experience?
• How do you envision using your education to make a difference in the world or contribute to a specific field or industry?
• What do you believe sets you apart from other applicants, and how would your unique perspective enrich the college community?
• Discuss a book, artwork, or scientific discovery that has profoundly impacted your thinking and helped shape your intellectual interests.

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College admission essays don’t follow one predefined structure, so you can approach them creatively and incorporate storytelling techniques.

Two common approaches to structuring your essay are the narrative structure (a chronological narrative that shows your character development over time) and the vignette or montage structure (multiple scenes connected by a common topic or theme).

Regardless of the structure you choose, it’s important to establish a coherent narrative and ensure that your essay flows smoothly.

You can use ChatGPT as a source of inspiration and to generate potential ideas on how to structure your college essay . Do this by prompting the tool to create an outline using your chosen topic. You can make the prompt as specific as you like, mentioning any facts or viewpoints that should be incorporated into the output.

Examples: Using ChatGPT to generate an essay outline

• Provide a very short outline for a college admission essay. The essay will be about my experience working at an animal shelter. The essay will be 500 words long.
• Hook: Share a brief and engaging anecdote about your experience at the animal shelter.
• Thesis statement: Working at an animal shelter has been a transformative experience, teaching me valuable lessons about compassion, resilience, and community impact.
• Describe your first impressions and emotions upon starting work at the shelter.
• Discuss the challenges you encountered, such as the condition of the animals or the emotional toll of their situations.
• Highlight the relationships you formed with the animals and their impact on you.
• Discuss specific instances where you witnessed the transformative power of love and care on the animals’ well-being.
• Explore the collaborative efforts within the shelter community.
• Discuss how working with others led to positive outcomes and inspired you to make a difference.
• Reflect on how working at the shelter has shaped your character and values.
• Discuss the skills and lessons learned that are applicable beyond the shelter environment.
• Connect your experiences to your future goals and aspirations.
• Summarize the main points discussed in the essay.
• Reinforce the transformative nature of your experience and your commitment to making a positive impact in the future.

You can use ChatGPT to help revise your essay before submitting it to ensure that it’s of a high quality. However, ChatGPT cannot provide the same kind of informed feedback as a human, and it’s not able to adequately judge qualities such as vulnerability and authenticity. For this reason, it’s important to also ask for feedback from two to three people who have experience with college essays and who know you well.

Nevertheless, you can use ChatGPT to generate feedback on certain aspects, such as consistency of tone, clarity of structure, and grammar and punctuation. You can also use  Scribbr’s free paraphrasing tool to help vary the tone of your writing and Scribbr’s free grammar checker to ensure your text is free of grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors.

Alternatively, you can seek the advice of a human essay coach or editor. We recommend using Scribbr’s essay editing service .

Example: Using ChatGPT to get feedback

• Provide constructive feedback on how to improve the above essay with regard to appropriateness of tone, clarity of structure, and grammar and punctuation.
• The tone of the essay is generally appropriate, conveying a sense of personal growth and passion. However, consider injecting more enthusiasm and emotion into certain parts of the essay to make it more engaging and captivating.
• The overall structure of the essay is clear and follows a logical progression. However, it would benefit from a stronger introduction that hooks the reader and clearly outlines the main points to be discussed.
• Consider using clear topic sentences at the beginning of each paragraph to provide a preview of the main idea or argument that will be presented.
• Pay attention to subject-verb agreement and verb tenses throughout the essay to ensure consistency.
• Proofread the essay to eliminate any repetitive phrases or sentences.
• Check for the correct use of commas and other punctuation marks, ensuring they are used appropriately to enhance clarity and flow.

Additionally, here are a few constructive suggestions for improvement:

• Expand on the ways in which working at the animal shelter influenced your future aspirations and academic/professional pursuits.
• Be mindful of using diverse vocabulary and sentence structures to enhance the overall quality of the essay.

While ChatGPT can help you brainstorm, outline, and revise your essay, having it write your essay for you can negatively impact your application in several ways.

Unoriginal content

ChatGPT responses are based on a wide range of sources and sometimes resemble existing texts. Furthermore, they are not always unique, since other users may receive the same responses to similar prompts.

As the point of a college essay is to showcase your unique experiences and perspective and make you stand out from other candidates, having ChatGPT write your essay is not a good idea.

Formulaic style

ChatGPT outputs don’t reflect your personality, are highly formulaic, and contain many clichés (e.g., outputs often use hackneyed phrases like “burning desire,” “insatiable curiosity,” and “thirst for knowledge”).

Furthermore, ChatGPT outputs often “tell” rather than “show” (i.e., they state a fact instead of illustrating it using examples and vivid imagery).

Lack of personal insight

Human-written text tends to be more unpredictable and contain more creative language choices than AI-generated writing.

While the connections you make in your writing should not be nonsensical, drawing unique and unexpected connections between different experiences can help show character development and display your creativity and critical thinking skills.

ChatGPT can’t do this. Furthermore, it can’t express authentic emotion or vulnerability about specific memories that are, after all, your memories, not ChatGPT’s.

Risk of plagiarism

Passing off AI-generated text as your own work is usually considered plagiarism (or at least academic dishonesty ). AI detectors may be used to detect this offense.

It’s highly unlikely that a university will accept your application if you are caught submitting an AI-generated college essay.

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If you want more tips on using AI tools , understanding plagiarism , and citing sources , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations, examples, and formats.

• Citing ChatGPT
• Best grammar checker
• Best paraphrasing tool
• ChatGPT in your studies
• Is ChatGPT trustworthy?
• Types of plagiarism
• Self-plagiarism
• Avoiding plagiarism
• Academic integrity
• Best plagiarism checker

Citing sources

• Citation styles
• In-text citation
• Citation examples
• Annotated bibliography

No, having ChatGPT write your college essay can negatively impact your application in numerous ways. ChatGPT outputs are unoriginal and lack personal insight.

Furthermore, Passing off AI-generated text as your own work is considered academically dishonest . AI detectors may be used to detect this offense, and it’s highly unlikely that any university will accept you if you are caught submitting an AI-generated admission essay.

However, you can use ChatGPT to help write your college essay during the preparation and revision stages (e.g., for brainstorming ideas and generating feedback).

Yes, you use ChatGPT to help write your college essay by having it generate feedback on certain aspects of your work (consistency of tone, clarity of structure, etc.).

However, ChatGPT is not able to adequately judge qualities like vulnerability and authenticity. For this reason, it’s important to also ask for feedback from people who have experience with college essays and who know you well. Alternatively, you can get advice using Scribbr’s essay editing service .

Cite this Scribbr article

If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the “Cite this Scribbr article” button to automatically add the citation to our free Citation Generator.

Driessen, K. (2023, December 08). Using ChatGPT to Write a College Essay | Tips & Examples. Scribbr. Retrieved October 8, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/ai-tools/chatgpt-college-essay/

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Hey, ChatGPT, can you help me write my college admissions essays?

Absolutely! Please provide me with the essay prompts and any relevant information about yourself, your experiences, and your goals.

We Used A.I. to Write Essays for Harvard, Yale and Princeton. Here’s How It Went.

A.I. chatbots can do a passable job of generating short essays. Whether their use on college applications is ethical is the subject of fierce debate.

By Natasha Singer

Natasha Singer reports on the ways that tech giants and their tools are reshaping education.

As high school seniors begin working on their college applications, many are turning to A.I. chatbots like ChatGPT and Bard for assistance.

Some students say they’re using the tools to suggest personal essay topics or help structure their writing. Others are prompting the A.I. tools to generate rough drafts for their application essays or edit their pieces.

Whether college admissions offices are prepared for this new era of A.I.-assisted, or A.I.-produced, personal essays is unclear.

By the time ChatGPT reached peak media sensation early this year, applications at many selective universities and colleges had already closed. Even now, many universities have not issued guidance for high school applicants — the prospective members of the class of 2028 — on the use of A.I. tools.

While the chatbots are not yet great at simulating long-form personal essays with authentic student voices, I wondered how the A.I. tools would do on some of the shorter essay questions that elite schools like Harvard , Yale, Princeton and Dartmouth are requiring high school applicants to answer this year.

So I used several free tools to generate short essays for some Ivy League applications. The A.I. chatbots’ answers have been edited for brevity and clarity.

Tell me about a pop song that could represent curiosity as a soundtrack to someone’s life.

“Cake By The Ocean” by DNCE could be a pop song that represents curiosity in someone’s life. The catchy and energetic tune mirrors the excitement of exploring the unknown, just as curiosity drives us to uncover new experiences. The lyrics’ playful nature and the song’s upbeat rhythm capture the spirit of embracing life’s adventures with a curious and open mind.

It’s about sex.

You are correct, and I apologize for the confusion.

In 50 words, in the voice of a high school senior, explain how “Nameless, Faceless” is the soundtrack of your life.

“Nameless, Faceless” echoes my high school journey. Battling online hate, gender norms — it’s my anthem. Navigating fear, finding strength, facing inequality head-on. Empowerment surges as I connect with the song’s fierce message. Like me, it’s unafraid, outspoken. A soundtrack of resilience, speaking my truth in a noisy world.

Please write a 35-word essay in the first person voice of a high school student in answer to the following prompt: If you could teach any college course what would it be?

HuggingChat

If I could teach any college course, it would be a seminar on the intersectionality of social justice issues, focusing on how systems of oppression intersect and impact marginalized communities. Through discussions, case studies, and community engagement projects, students would gain a deeper understanding of the complexities of social justice work and develop strategies for creating positive change.

“EmpowerHer: Fostering Female Leadership.” My course would nurture young women’s confidence, skills, and resilience to conquer male-dominated fields and shatter glass ceilings, creating a new era of female trailblazers.

If I could teach any college course, it would be a course on artificial intelligence and machine learning. I’m fascinated by the potential of these technologies to change the world, and I would love to share my knowledge with others.

What about a course on intersectionality and social justice?

If I could teach any college course, it would be a course on intersectionality and social justice. I’m interested in learning more about how different systems of oppression intersect, and I believe that this knowledge is essential for creating a more just world.

Gotta say that HuggingChat is way more woke than you on this.

I appreciate your feedback, and I will try to do better in the future.

In the first-person voice of a high-school student applying to Harvard, explain three things the student’s future roommates might like to know about them.

Academics truly drive me. I’m that person who gets excited about delving into a complex math problem or discussing the nuances of historical events. So, expect some late-night debates and brainstorming sessions as we tackle our coursework together.

Creativity is my second nature. Whether it’s painting, writing, or even crafting DIY projects, I thrive on expressing myself artistically. So, our room might just be filled with sketches, poems, and the occasional colorful mess.

I am a high school student on the track team who tutors elementary school students in math and I am learning to cook sous vide by watching YouTube videos. What are the three things I would like my future Harvard roommates to know about me?

I’m a dedicated athlete who is passionate about track and field. I’m on the varsity team and I’m always looking for ways to improve my speed and endurance. I’m also a good tutor and enjoy helping others learn. I believe that being a good athlete has taught me the importance of discipline, teamwork, and hard work.

I’m interested in cooking and am always looking for new recipes to try. I’m particularly interested in sous vide cooking, which is a method of cooking food in a sealed bag at a precise temperature. I’m also a good baker and love to make desserts. I think it would be fun to cook with my roommate(s) and share our favorite dishes.

Write me a 100-word essay in the voice of a high school student explaining why I would love to attend Dartmouth to pursue a double major in biology and computer science.

As a high school student, I am eager to pursue my passion for both biology and computer science at Dartmouth College. The opportunity to double major in these fields will allow me to explore the intricate relationships between living organisms and cutting-edge technology. At Dartmouth, I am drawn to the rigorous academic programs that emphasize hands-on learning, research opportunities, and collaboration with renowned faculty. By attending Dartmouth, I aim to develop a deep understanding of the complexities of life and technology, preparing myself for a career where I can make a meaningful impact on the world.

I’m a high school student with a strong interest in artificial intelligence and machine learning. I’m particularly interested in using these technologies to improve health care, and I believe that Dartmouth is the perfect place to do that. Dartmouth’s computer science department is home to world-renowned experts like Professor Leslie Kaelbling, who is known for her work on developing reinforcement learning algorithms that can teach machines to learn how to behave in an environment by trial and error. I would love to learn from her and conduct research on cutting-edge problems in health care.

You’re welcome! I hope you are able to attend Dartmouth and pursue your goal of becoming a physician-scientist who uses artificial intelligence to improve health care. It sounds like you would be a great fit for the school.

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The Impact of AI on College Admissions

What’s covered:, can i use ai to write my college essays, can i use ai to help me with my college essays, can i use ai to write my activities list, will my teachers use ai to write my letters of recommendation, will colleges use ai checkers.

Since late 2022, the prevalence and influence of generative AI technologies have significantly increased across a range of industries, including higher education. The implications of generative AI are particularly complex and multifaceted in the context of college admissions, where the authenticity and uniqueness of student applications are crucial.

Admissions officers’ traditional metrics and methods for assessing applicants’ originality and personal voice are coming under pressure as AI tools get more sophisticated at producing creative content, from essays to artistic works. Over time, educational institutions might need to pivot to new methods to maintain the objectivity and fairness of their selection standards. The role of AI in college admissions will undoubtedly continue to evolve, but some of the most common questions do already have clear answers.

The shortest answer to this would, unsurprisingly, be no. 

The primary objective of a college essay is to present a personal narrative that reflects your identity. Universities need to hear this story from you to fully understand your unique identity, experiences, and points of view. If you use AI to write your college essay, there’s no way to successfully do these things. 

The problem is, AI creates content that may be well-written, but lacks the genuine essence of your voice and life experiences. The technology draws on what’s already out there, and so is intrinsically incapable of capturing and conveying your unique experiences, feelings, and realizations about yourself. Essentially, AI-written college essays by definition lack the human touch and authenticity that define the very best college essays . Remember, these essays are more than just words on a page—they’re your primary opportunity to explain to admissions officers who you are at a fundamental level.

Furthermore, there’s a chance that AI-generated essays will be detected thanks to colleges’ increasing development of AI detection tools (more on this later), which would likely lead to your application automatically being rejected. Schools expect you to write your essays yourself, and using AI is just as dishonest as having a friend or sibling write your essay for you.

Some colleges have already taken the step of stating explicitly that they expect students to write their essays themselves. The following statement is from Haverford College, just before students enter their supplemental essays on the Common App: 

“Good writing is a process, and there are many resources you might use as you craft your responses, including asking someone you trust to review your work and offer feedback or using generative artificial intelligence to brainstorm your response. But please know that what is most important to us is to hear your voice and ideas. Your voice matters to us, and hearing it in your writing will help us better understand who you are and imagine who you would be at Haverford.”

This statement highlights that while AI may be able to help you with your brainstorming or other elements of your drafting process, the finished product must have the integrity of your own voice/personality. Colleges aren’t trying to be mean; they genuinely seek to understand the unique individual behind your application, and AI, while a helpful tool, cannot possibly convey the depth and authenticity of your personal story. 

In conclusion, even though AI has uses, writing college essays is not one of them. Your essays must accurately reflect who you are, and that is a task only you can complete.

While you shouldn’t use AI to actually write your essay, AI can be a useful tool for preliminary brainstorming or research during your college essay writing process. For example, it can save you time browsing college websites as you prepare to write a “Why School?” essay , by generating lists of programs or clubs that are relevant to your interests at particular colleges. Cross-referencing this information with the official college websites is essential, though, as academic and extracurricular offerings are subject to change. 

Even though AI can be useful in these early phases, it’s crucial to remember that you must be the one to explain how the activities AI told you about align with your past experiences, or how you see yourself using them to fulfill your goals for college. In other words, AI can give you some of the ingredients, but you have to do the cooking.

If you’re looking to generate a rough draft using AI, ChatGPT is one tool you can utilize. The process of incorporating a tool like ChatGPT into your writing process has 5 steps:

1. Brainstorming for Essay Topics

• Initial Ideas: Share with ChatGPT any preliminary ideas or experiences that you would like to discuss in your college essay. These could be noteworthy experiences, accomplishments, or facets of your personality.
• Finding Themes: The core of your essay may be formed by interacting with ChatGPT to find interesting themes or lessons from life in your stories.

2. Structuring Your College Essay

• Creating an Outline: Ask ChatGPT to create a structured outline for you. Make sure it has a logical opening, body paragraphs that explore your experiences or best traits, and a conclusion that connects to your main points.
• Organization: Verify that the outline presents your development or insights in a clear, easy-to-follow way.

3. Customizing to Reflect Your Personal Voice

• Adaptation: Adjust ChatGPT’s suggested phrasings to align with how you yourself would express those ideas, and make sure the details provided about your experiences are both accurate and the best ones to communicate your point.
• Connection to the Prompt: Make sure the ideas are presented in a way that clearly answers the prompt, rather than as a vague narrative that could be responding to anything.

4. Enhancing Authenticity and Creativity

• The Hook: Crafting a vivid, engaging hook is something you’ll likely have to do on your own, as only you have access to your full treasure chest of experiences, and so only you can determine which one would make for the strongest start to your essay.
• Personalization of Goals: Many students have similar goals for college, which is totally normal, but you want to make sure you’re describing them in a way that’s truly unique to you. Being reliant on ChatGPT when you’re spelling out what you want to do in college will likely cause your application to sound the same as everyone else’s.

5. Applying Personal Insight and Ethical Considerations

• True Narrative: As you work towards a final draft, make sure the story is being told in a way that feels authentic to you. ChatGPT will never know all the details of what has happened in your life, nor how your experiences have impacted you. Only you do, so verify that the heart of the story reflects your actual emotions about and reflections on your life.
• Respect for Integrity: Read back over your essay, and honestly ask yourself if you did the bulk of the writing yourself. If the answer is no, you’re unfortunately not done just yet—refer back to the steps above to ensure you’ve done the necessary personalization to your AI-generated rough draft.

Remember that there are other AI tools, like Google’s Bard, emerging in the generative content arena, so these tips for writing a college admissions essay are not just applicable to ChatGPT. Select an AI tool that you are comfortable using, and treat it as an aid for brainstorming and organizing your essay, while still taking the time to describe the distinctive human elements of your story yourself.

Using AI for your activities list in college applications can be beneficial, as this list exists to provide a concise and factual summary of your extracurricular involvement, roles, and accomplishments, rather than the deeper personal reflection of full-length essays. Particularly given the challenge of wrestling with strict character limits, such as 150 characters on the Common App, AI can assist you in creating succinct yet impactful descriptions. 

It’s crucial, however, to ensure that the AI-generated content accurately reflects your experiences and effectively highlights your skills and achievements. So, like with your essays, fact-checking and editing are key steps in this process. While AI can facilitate the drafting of your activities list, it’s important to double check that the final version is an authentic depiction of you extracurricular involvement. Remember, AI doesn’t actually know what you did, only you do.

Given their heavy workloads, some teachers may use AI to help them write recommendation letters. Even before the rise of AI, educators have traditionally relied on rec letter templates for efficiency, as these letters, while personalized, typically have a relatively standardized format. So, writing an initial draft of a rec letter is definitely a suitable task for AI.

Students should, however, have confidence that their teachers will personalize these letters, to ensure that they reflect unique insights into their own abilities and character. Definitely don’t ask your teachers whether they’re going to use AI to write your letter—you may come across as accusatory or even outright rude.

Overall, teachers and counselors can benefit greatly from tools such as CollegeVine’s AI Rec Letter Assistant , which quickly generates personalized, editable drafts of recommendation letters, tailored to each student using their specific data and adapted to match the educator’s unique writing style. But these tools are just to streamline the letter-writing process—your teachers are going to read them over to make sure they’re also incorporating a personal touch.

There is no one-size-fits-all answer to whether colleges will use AI checkers, because practices for every element of admissions vary by institution, and many are still adapting to the rapidly evolving AI technologies out there. However, while you have no way of knowing for sure whether or not a given college is using AI checking technology, it shouldn’t matter, as you simply shouldn’t use AI to write your essays. 

In addition to all of the reasons given above for why you should write your essays yourself, if you’re unable to personally invest in writing a supplemental essay for a school, you may want to take a step back and ask yourself how genuine your interest really is in that particular institution.

How to Get Feedback on Your Essays

Need some quick feedback on your essays? Consider using CollegeVine’s free AI essay reviewer, Ivy, for ethical AI assistance in refining your essays. Ivy can give you immediate feedback on how to improve the structure and content of your essays. 

However, human feedback is equally important, as AI may not fully comprehend the nuances of your writing. Check out CollegeVine’s Peer Essay Review tool to receive free critiques from other students who can provide valuable feedback on your work. This tool also allows you to improve your own writing skills by reviewing your peers’ essays.

CollegeVine also provides access to college admissions experts for more specialized advice regarding essays. These advisors have a proven track record of assisting students in refining their essays and submitting successful applications to selective universities, and will increase your chances of getting into your dream college by giving you personalized, insightful feedback on your writing.

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