Artificial intelligence is transforming virtually every aspect of human activity – and the college admissions process is not immune. And it’s on both sides of the ball: applicants and institutions. Here are some of the do’s and don’ts when it comes to your child using AI.
But first, let’s get a lay of the land from my colleague Alvin Carter, a senior admissions officer at CollegeAdvisor.
“AI tools are completely reshaping both sides of the college admissions desk right now,” Alvin confirms.
For applicants, the temptation is to turn to AI agents to help with the application essay(s).
“It has leveled the playing field for students who cannot afford expensive private consultants, but it also creates a massive sea of generic essays,” Alvin says. “Admissions offices are noticing a huge spike in essays that sound exactly the same, using the same repetitive vocabulary and perfectly polished but soul-less structures.”
Do: Use AI to catch errors of grammar or spelling. Do not: Tell AI to generate an entire essay about how important your child’s community service has been to their personal growth.
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Setting aside the ethical problems with having a machine completely write what is supposed to be your applicant’s personal essay, they risk submitting a cookie-cutter piece that may be structurally flawless but could have been sent in by anyone. It’s the opposite of authentic.
And not only are admissions officers getting better at spotting AI-generated materials, they are looking for “human vulnerability and unique personal voice,” Alvin notes. Take that out, and an applicant will have less of a chance of getting in.
Some schools are explicitly forbidding the use of AI to do the heavy lifting.
Yale University, for instance, says “submitting ‘the substantive content or output of an artificial intelligence platform, technology, or algorithm’ constitutes application fraud” and may result in “admission revocation or expulsion.”
Georgetown has one of the toughest policies, Alvin says, a total prohibition “including brainstorming, drafting, and even basic grammar checking or editing” and a requirement that applicants sign a statement confirming they did not use AI.
CalTech takes a slightly different approach, listing what it considers unethical and ethical uses of AI for its admissions essays.
Unethical: Copying and pasting directly from an AI generator, using AI generated content to outline or draft an essay, “replacing your unique voice and tone with AI generated content” and using AI to translate an essay written in another language.
Ethical: Using AI to review grammar and spelling, having AI generate “questions or exercises to help kick start the brainstorming process” and using AI to research the college application process.
Some schools will tolerate some AI use but require an applicant to disclose what tool they used and what they used it for. Others forbid its use even for brainstorming.
Do: Research each school’s policy on AI use in applications. Don’t: Assume they all take the same position and conclude that they won’t catch you anyway.
How do they do that? In this CollegeAdvisor webinar, former Georgetown admissions officer Dr. Aya Waller-Bey points to several trip wires, like technically proficient essays bereft of human emotion, a flattened tone and an essay that describes what happened but can’t explain why they matter to the applicant.
Mind you, human-written essays can also be flat and uninteresting. But that’s a topic for a different column.