Students today are concerned about whether the use of AI is allowed in college admissions essays, whether schools use AI detectors, and whether an application can be rejected due to suspicious AI content.
As artificial intelligence increasingly makes its way into our lives, we are entering a new phase of college admissions.
Increasingly, AI is becoming second nature to students in their schoolwork while relevant teachers and professors try to catch up. These are significant concerns and raise issues of academic integrity, the nature of learning, and even fundamental questions such as “What is the purpose of education?“.
Fast results:
- Most colleges do not have a formal AI policy
- None of the responding colleges used AI detectors
- Misuse of AI can lead to rejection
- All colleges emphasized authentic student voices
These concerns are now front and center in the college admissions process, and as a college counselor, I hear about them almost daily from concerned students and parents. Terrified students reach out to me all the time with questions like these:
“I don’t use AI in my writing but when I plug my article into the checked AI, it shows very high levels of AI so I get nervous :-(”
“I wrote my article about the difficulties with my surgery, and the AI detector said the AI was 96%, and now I’m worried and don’t know what to do.”
There are very important questions at the heart of this:
- Can a student use AI in his or her college essay or other parts of the application?
- What is appropriate use and inappropriate use of artificial intelligence?
- Do colleges use AI detectors?
- If so, is it reliable?
Most important of all, can a college reject me if it believes, correctly or incorrectly, that I used AI inappropriately on my college application?
What is happening?
You would think that colleges would give us clear answers to these questions. Unfortunately they are not.
This just feeds the anxiety and anxiety of students and families as they try to navigate the stressful and often overwhelming college admissions process.
So I took it upon myself to investigate. I reached out to admissions departments at 24 colleges across the country — a mix of public, private, and Ivy League colleges — and asked them the following questions:
- What are appropriate and inappropriate uses of artificial intelligence to help write a student’s college essay?
- How do you know if a student has used artificial intelligence in his or her college essay?
- What happens if you strongly suspect but can’t necessarily prove that a student used AI inappropriately in their college essay?
- What happens if you can conclusively prove that a student used AI inappropriately in his or her college essay? Do you have any examples of this?
Their answers, or lack thereof, were quite telling.
Of the 24 schools contacted, 16 did not respond, even after sending follow-up emails. This is honestly quite strange, but it indicates one of two things, either these colleges did not have specific AI policies or They were not comfortable writing their answers.
Among the colleges that responded, here are the top takeaways:
@unlocking.college Read responses from college admissions officers below: “Appropriate uses of AI include tasks such as brainstorming, generating prompts or questions for self-reflection, outlining, or editing for clarity and length. These uses help students refine their own ideas without replacing their voices. Inappropriate uses of AI may include relying on it to produce personal essay content. Because AI tools do not truly know the student, essays written primarily by AI tend to lack the originality, depth, and human perspective that personal data is intended for.” Conclusively determining that an applicant has violated expectations of academic integrity, the situation will be taken seriously and, in severe cases, could impact the admission decision, similar to other integrity-related issues “We currently do not have guidance on the use of AI in applications, and therefore I do not have specific answers to your questions. We simply recommend students to show their true selves in the app. Let me know if you have any other questions! “…an independent policy stating that the use of artificial intelligence by the applicant is not permitted under any circumstances in relation to the content of the application. All essays, short-answer questions, and any other materials submitted by an applicant must be the work of that individual, without the assistance of artificial intelligence. ” #ai #University_sayings #University saying #University_Acceptance #collegeapps ♬ original sound – College admissions open
1. Most colleges do not have any formal AI policy as part of the college admissions process
This may be surprising to many students, parents and professionals, but colleges have responded with comments such as:
“We have no formal policy on AI or the use of the technology.”
“At _____ we currently do not have guidance on the use of AI in applications, so I do not have specific answers to your questions.”
Only one college, an Ivy League school, said it had a specific policy. "The use of artificial intelligence by the applicant is not permitted under any circumstances in relation to the content of the application."
2. None of the colleges that responded used AI detectors
This may also come as a surprise to many reading this, but it should give some peace of mind to students who are worried that their essay will be flagged as written by an AI when in fact they wrote it themselves.
Please note that this does not apply to college professors who often use AI detectors, as one admissions officer explained to me.
3. College admissions officers can generally tell if an AI (or others — like a parent) wrote the essay
As a college counselor, I read about 100 college essays in an application season, and I can usually tell when parts of a student's essay seem like they weren't written by them. College admissions officers read hundreds if not thousands of essays every year, so this wasn't surprising to hear.
This alone should give any student pause when considering whether they should inappropriately use AI in their college applications.
4. Most colleges have approved some use of AI
In general, colleges that responded said that appropriate use of AI includes brainstorming, grammar review, and simple polishing of the essay. But even in these answers, the colleges were not consistent, which seemed to feed further confusion.
Ivy League schools appear to be taking the harshest stance against AI.
For example:
“Appropriate uses of AI include tasks such as brainstorming, generating prompts or questions for self-reflection, outlining, or editing for clarity and length.”
“Using it for grammar and structure can be similar to using spell check, however, using it for brainstorming may give students commonly used or suggested ideas or prompts.”
Two Ivy League universities responded more harshly, suggesting they did not believe any use of AI was appropriate.
“Using it for grammar and structure can be similar to using spell check, however, using it for brainstorming may give students commonly used or suggested ideas or prompts.”
“We ask students to write their college essays independently without the assistance of other individuals or technology in shaping their thoughts or crafting the words in their applications.”
5. Colleges are willing to reject applicants who misuse AI
Although this is very rare, some colleges have made it clear that they can reject students outright if they are found to have used AI inappropriately in their college applications.
"If we can conclusively determine that an applicant has violated expectations of academic integrity, the situation will be taken seriously. In severe cases, this can impact the admissions decision."
6. Students need to highlight their authentic voice
More than anything, These colleges have made it clear that they want to hear the student's true voice in their essays and throughout the application process.
As a college counselor, this is what we tell our students over and over again, so it was good to hear admissions officers repeat it. Writing in an authentic student voice is often the most challenging part of the college essay writing process, as high school students are accustomed to writing history papers and analytical essays about a novel they have read, rather than introspection and reflection about themselves, their values, challenges, and goals.
Here are some of the more telling comments admissions officers have made about the importance of an authentic voice in a college essay.
“Because AI tools don’t really know the student, essays written primarily by AI tend to lack the authenticity, depth, and human perspective that personal data is intended to convey.”
“We simply recommend students show their true selves in the app.”
“The purpose of the essay is to understand the student as an individual, so outsourcing this material is not appropriate.”
“We read every essay that is submitted, so our first piece of advice to students is not to focus on it being perfect, but rather to make sure it is written in their own voice. Grammar, spelling, etc. are not our primary concern when reading essays. The value of essays comes from the content and how well they allow us to get to know the applicants.”
conclusion
It is clear that college admissions departments, like teachers, professors, the rest of the educational community, and society at large, are still grappling with the changes that AI brings.
For the college admissions officer, though, at least one fact remains unchanged: They want to hear the student's real voice on their college application.
Although I would argue that there needs to be more transparency on the part of colleges regarding their AI policies (or lack thereof), it is clear that for the most part they agree that limited use of AI, such as brainstorming or grammar review, is acceptable.
Anything beyond that is crossing the line, both ethically and practically, as essays that make heavy use of AI can lose the student's real voice and in the worst cases lead to outright rejection from the college.
