As a college admissions counselor, I have edited hundreds of essays. This is the first year my students asked whether they should use artificial intelligence to write them. I warned them not to. I told them it would flatten their voices, that there would be no metaphors, dialogue, sensory details — the things that make an essay feel alive. But few listened to my advice.
During one session, a student had her mom run her supplemental essay for her application to Cornell University through ChatGPT. When I read it, I had to admit that it was better than the version I had worked on with the student. It had, I confess, a stronger metaphor and ending. Another student asked me if I could tell that their essay was AI-generated. I couldn’t.
With acceptencre rates falling at many U.S. colleges thanks to an increase in applications, students feel pressure to apply to more schools, and AI programs help them do that faster. ChatGPT, for instance, is being used increasingly to help construct essays. Rather than fight against it, I reluctantly provided feedback on the AI-enhanced drafts, trying to ensure that my students were turning abstract ideas into concrete ones. Following the maxim “show, don’t tell,” some essays needed a paragraph rewritten. Others benefited from minor adjustments, like removing cliches.
When early application results came in, my students using AI-generated essays got into their top choices: Georgia Tech, University of Michigan, University of Virginia and other schools. One even earned a Coca-Cola Scholarship, a prestigious $20,000 award with a less than 1% acceptance rate. With each acceptance, I had to admit I’d been wrong about using AI.
Submitted April 3, 2026 at 07:33AM by Cool-Present7260 https://ift.tt/pK2vnOW
