AI and College Admissions Essays: Don’t Rely on ChatGPT to Write Your College Essay
As a longtime admissions essay consultant and the founder of College Essay Advisors, anytime news is announced in the world of writing education or college admissions, I receive a flurry of text messages. So you can imagine the avalanche that crashed down when OpenAI announced the release of its most recent AI-powered text generator, ChatGPT.
“Is this the end of the college admissions essay?” “Will students even need to learn how to write anymore?” “Are you worried?” “Are you worried?” “STACEY, ARE YOU WORRIED?!”
To address the last and most frequently lobbed question first: No, I am not worried, not one bit. If there are any arenas {AREAS?} that are safe from the circuit-driven claws of AI, they are the bastions of creativity, sincerity, and humanity, and these are essential ingredients in a successful college admissions essay.
Like so many others interested in the impact of this technology on the admissions process, I have spent the last six months immersed in ChatGPT, feeding it questions and requests, trying my darndest to help it assemble or at least approximate the stories of a living, breathing teenager with 17 years worth of personal history and reflection to unpack. I am here to tell you that, no, the college admissions essay is not dead. Yes, students still have to learn how to write (and that’s a good thing). And no, I am not worried about our future as humans or writers or communicators. AI is a tool and we will learn how to use it to its best effect. It just so happens, it’s not an effective tool for personal essay writing.
As I see it, there are three core reasons why:
- ChatGPT can build on ideas, but it can’t generate a winning topic for you.
- Since ChatGPT doesn’t know you, much of what it writes “about you” is a lie.
- ChatGPT essays are reductive, formulaic, and generally a snoozefest.
One of the most daunting challenges of writing a winning college admissions essay is deciding what to write about. This is a process that often requires many rounds of brainstorming, journaling, spitballing, and head-against-wall-banging. Magic topics are often found in the middle of freewriting that students consider to be throwaway material at first, or are spun out of random mentions of a favorite car model or a “record my dad put on last Christmas.” AI is not built to have these generative conversations with you — at least not yet. It doesn’t know your history and the stream of adventures you’ve been on. It won’t ask you about the time you climbed Mount Fuji or your indie comic book fandom or figure out that your most important bonding moments with your mom happened during your 5 a.m. car rides to gymnastics. Until AI can access your most formative memories and foundational feelings (I know, I’m sure the technology to facilitate these connections is coming), the only one who can do the work of excavating a meaningful topic from the depths of your psyche is you. Remember: