CHATGPT and the Admissions Essays: What Universities Have Said Sarah ONeill

 By Sarah ONeill / Supreme Editing

GPA in tact? Check. Community service meets standards? Goes above and beyond? Check. Summer research and preparatory programs completed? Check. School service? Check. College admissions essays? Let's talk about it.

Since ChatGPT's inception in 2022, I have searched far and wide in Google results for opinions regarding its use for college admissions essays. As I sifted through the commentary, I usually bypassed what consulting businesses and editors were saying about it because, let's be real, they make money from it so they are protecting their livelihoods - I get that. Although, most consulting firms consist of former admissions officers, anyway.

It begs the question: what is the purpose of the personal essay? Isn't it to allow your authentic voice to be heard beyond the grades and objective information you are submitting?

Think about it: every day we use virtual assistants for timers and weather, and we use GPS in our vehicles to get us to where we need to go. Sure, we don't know how to use longitude and latitude from a paper map anymore, but it sure has been easier and more efficient. Plus, we can keep our eyes on the road. And where would I be without my Alexa alarm?

But, last year, when I first started tinkering around with this AI chatbot, I just had to know what admissions at major universities were saying (from the horse's mouth). Below, I am including quotes from sources like The Washington Post, podcasts, university website statements, and university newspapers.

This is what I have pithily gathered so far for your information with just a sliver of my commentary:

Yale Daily News: it's plagiarism (from the Yale podcast with two admissions officers)

"When students submit written content to colleges, Dunn and Mendlowitz said in the episode, they must sign a statement affirming that all work submitted is the applicant’s own. Submitting work written by ChatGPT or another generative AI model violates this affirmation, they said.

When I listened to the podcast, both representatives sounded adamant that it goes against the policy that applicants submit their own works.

Princeton: it can be likened to a calculator but still can be detected and not acceptable.

"A written statement to the 'Prince,' University Spokesperson Jennifer Morrill wrote, 'An essay generated by an AI platform is unlikely to be as rich and nuanced as a student's own words.' "

The fact that a Princeton student created ZEROGPT to detect it says it all.

Duke: Threw out scoring essays altogether, but they are still considered in the process 

"Duke University has stopped numerically scoring applicants' essays in their admissions process primarily due to concerns about the increasing use of AI-generated writing and the potential for ghostwritten essays from college consultants. That essays are a definitive reflection of a student's actual writing ability; instead, they evaluate essays holistically within the context of the entire application."

Cornell & UPenn (coauthors in Cornell Chronicle): Using ChatGPT makes your work sound male-dominated 

“It’s important to remember that if you use an AI to help you write an essay, it's probably going to sound less like you and more like something quite generic,” he said. “And students need to know that for the people reading these essays, it won’t be too difficult for them to figure out who has used AI extensively. The key will be to use it to help students tell their own stories and to enhance what they want to convey, not to replace their own voice.”

In essence, I did not write this to woo you or to demonstrate my writing skills. I am writing this as a way to alert you before you use this chatbot to its fullest capacity or submit a completely generated essay to colleges. I wanted to put what I knew in one spot. Whether we concede or not to it being an excellent "tool" when you begin the process of writing is yet to be evaluated.

Sarah ONeill / Supreme Editing



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