The trap of AI college help

Artificial Intelligence is an incredibly popular and wide-ranging topic, encompassing everything from new image recognition technology to generative systems. As with every round of hype, it can be hard to separate out the factual from the fantastical, and this is especially the case when it comes to college admissions.

Our goal here is to showcase how colleges actually consider AI in admissions, and why turning to many of these tools for help can, in fact, hurt your chances of success. AI is a powerful tool, but like all tools, it can do more harm than good when used incorrectly. A hammer and nails are great for hanging a painting, but less ideal for fixing a laptop. Let’s go beyond the buzzwords and down to the facts on what colleges are saying, which uses of AI in college applications are acceptable, and what are the practices students should avoid.

How Colleges View AI

The first wrinkle, and the most important, is how colleges view the use of AI in applications. In general, they hate it. Here are some examples from top colleges on their AI policies:

Yale:

• As detailed in the above statements, Yale’s policy is that submitting “the substantive content or output of an artificial intelligence platform, technology, or algorithm” constitutes application fraud. Submitting personal statements or other written application responses composed by text-generating software may result in admission revocation or expulsion.

Caltech:

• Your essays are where we hear your voice. Relying on AI, specifically large language models such as ChatGPT or Bard, to craft your essay will dilute your unique expression and perspective. While we know that AI tools have become readily accessible over recent months, overusing AI will diminish your individual, bold, and creative identity as a prospective Techer.

Cornell:

• If you choose to use generative AI in your application process, we expect you to do so ethically. Ethical uses of generative AI include researching colleges, brainstorming essay topics, and reviewing the grammar and spelling of your completed essays. Unethical uses include (but are not limited to) using generative AI to outline, draft, or write your essays; translating an essay written in another language; and creating images for a required portfolio.

It is important to note that not all colleges have explicit policies regarding the use of AI in application essays, despite many now rolling them out more broadly across campuses. These tools are changing fast, and admissions offices are often slow to adapt. Universally, though, those schools that do have statements on these tools warn against using them in crafting, drafting, or translating your essays.

Why don’t colleges want AI in essays?

The policies listed above cite similar reasons, but let’s go a little more in-depth. The first thing to consider is the reason why colleges ask for essays in the first place. It isn’t from a love of reading (though they do love that); it’s because they want to get to know you, your thoughts, dreams, and ambitions, who you are as both a person and a student. An essay is a limited view, yes, but it’s still a window into your experiences.

Thus, getting an essay written by an AI instead of by you completely contravenes this purpose; it’s like submitting an essay written by your friend. The college wants to know you, not the AI, not your friend; they want your writing, your thoughts, and your ideas. AI can make very pretty-sounding language, but it cannot capture your inner reality.

The writing you should submit must be yours, and AI simply isn’t that, as far as colleges reckon. They do sometimes carve out exceptions for AI grammar tools, but here we recommend caution; fixing grammar is one thing, but rewriting is another. Make sure you know what tools you’re using.

AI and Application Reviews

As AI tools increasingly become a go-to, taking the place of Google (or being implemented by Google), it is common for students to rely on them to answer a number of questions. When it comes to college applications, we see this trend continue, as evidenced by contributions to the subreddit r/ApplyingToCollege.

Here’s a sampling of posts where students asked a variety of AI tools for input, and received…interesting results:

• I asked AI to make the ultimate top 20 colleges list
• College Essay feedback from AI
• ChatGPT ChanceMe, Valid?

This is only a small number of posts, but it gives a sense of scale here. Many students are turning to AI to ask a wide range of questions about the admissions process, from reviewing their essays and chances of admission to creating lists of top colleges to apply to.

These are reasonable questions to ask and concerns to have. AI tools, however, are not equipped to give answers to them.

When an AI tool generates text, it is not thinking the same way a human does; it does not have insights into the minds of admissions officers, and it does not “know” things the way we do. It simply puts text together based on the patterns it has learned. Thus, it can make text that sounds very good, but which may or may not have any actual basis in reality.

An AI cannot accurately evaluate your chances of getting into a top college. An AI may be able to fix your grammar, but it cannot accurately evaluate an essay for quality. An AI cannot give accurate college rankings, or indeed tell you anything you couldn’t find through Google. Moreover, it may provide you with information about colleges that is not factually accurate.

There are many actual uses for these tools, but you must exercise caution when using them as broadly as this, especially when asking them to review your college applications or give you advice on where to apply. These are tools; they do not possess knowledge as we understand it, they simply generate text.

AI and College Counseling

There is an increasing push to find use cases for AI. Indeed, it is useful in numerous fields, as shown by emerging tools for new medical diagnoses and database searches. Machine learning techniques and tools are already proving valuable in the sciences as a whole. In other aspects, however, their use case is harder to find, and this is the situation that college counseling finds itself in.

There are a number of firms that have begun advertising AI tools specifically for college admissions, promising everything from helping you find the right match to giving you aid in drafting your essays. These tools are shiny and new, and hold a bright appeal due to this glittering newness. This, however, is not a reason enough to use them.

As we have seen, colleges do not want AI writing in admissions essays; they want your words, your thoughts, your soul in the piece. Now, you can certainly get help in doing so; college counselors have been aiding students with their essays for ages. But this takes a different form; a counselor sits with a student and talks with them, helping to coax out ideas and lay the groundwork for an essay. Advice and guidance to create something wholly the student’s own.

Other AI tools used by counselors have similar pitfalls, though the essay writing applications are the most actively harmful. Here are some other issues with using AI tools for these applications:

• While AI tools can sometimes browse the internet, they are trained on old data. Thus, they may reference canceled programs or have outdated statistics; they may also be unaware of new developments.
• AI tools can hallucinate and often fail to cite sources. They can easily pull together a list of the ten best colleges for you, but they can’t cite reasons why.
• Many AI tools default to effusive praise, and so are unlikely to give you honest feedback on any writing you submit to them.

If this technology continues to develop (and, based on corporate announcements, it seems likely to), there will likely be a time in the future when AI tools find some use in the college counseling process. Currently, however, these tools generally cause more problems than they solve, and students are best advised to avoid them.