Rick Clark, Georgia Tech’s executive director of undergraduate admissions, and his staff spent several weeks this summer using an AI chatbot to pretend to be high school students and fill out college applications.
Each admissions representative played a different character from their high school, including a swim team captain, an Eagle Scout, and a musical theater performer. He then entered personal information about a hypothetical student into ChatGPT and had the AI chatbot create a list of extracurricular activities and a personal essay commonly requested on college applications.
Clark hopes to see how AI chatbots have the potential to reshape the admissions process this fall (the start of the first full school year when the tool will be widely available to high school seniors), and to help students apply. He said he would like to come up with guidance for the to Georgia Tech.
“Students at a certain level will be able to access and use AI.” Mr. Clark Said. “The big question is, knowing it’s out there and available to them, how do you want to direct them to it?”
The easy availability of AI chatbots like ChatGPT, which can produce human-like text in response to short prompts, has upended the traditional undergraduate application process at some universities and eliminated automated plagiarism. era, or when students have democratic access to essay writing support. . Or maybe both.
Digital disruption is at a tipping point for higher education institutions across the United States. After the Supreme Court ruled in June that race-based college admissions programs are illegal, some selective universities and colleges have decided to I would have liked to have relied more on essay questions about my upbringing, identity, and community.
Personal essays have long been a staple of the elite college application process, not to mention the bane of generations of high school students. Admissions officers often employ an applicant’s essay as a lens through which to analyze an applicant’s unique character, courage, potential, and ability to cope with adversity. As a result, some former students say they felt tremendous pressure to develop, or at least invent, unique, personal texts.
But new AI tools threaten to recast college application essays as a kind of generic cake mix, where high school students simply add lard or spices to reflect their own tastes, interests, and experiences. Yes, calling into question the validity of the applicant’s essay sample. Authentic and personalized admission criteria.
“That makes me sad.” lee coffinsaid Dartmouth College’s dean of admissions during the event. college podcast This year, we touched on AI-generated application essays. “The idea that central elements of this story could have been fabricated by someone other than the applicant is disheartening.”
Some teachers said they were troubled by the idea of students using AI tools to create themes and text for college essays for deeper reasons. Outsourcing writing to bots can prevent students from developing important critical thinking and storytelling skills.
“Part of the college essay process is finding expression in your writing through all of the drafting and revision,” says Susan Barber, Advanced Placement English Literature teacher at Midtown High School, an Atlanta public school. . “And I think that’s what ChatGPT is trying to take away from them.”
In August, Ms. Barber assigned her 12th grade students to write a college essay. This week, she held a class discussion on ChatGPT, warning students that using AI chatbots for idea generation and writing could make college essays all too common. She advised them to focus more on their personal views and voices.
Other educators said they were hopeful that AI tools could have a democratizing effect. These experts believe that wealthy high school students have access to resources such as parents of alumni, family friends, and paid writing coaches to help them brainstorm, draft, and edit their college admissions essays. He pointed out that this is often the case. They say ChatGPT could serve a similar role for students who lack such resources, especially those at large high schools where college counselors are overworked and have little time for individualized essay guidance. said.
But so far, few U.S. universities have published admissions policies regarding the use of AI tools by applicants.
Recently the University of Michigan Law School Published guidelines “Applicants should not use ChatGPT or other artificial intelligence tools as part of the drafting process.” However, law schools allow applicants to ask mentors, friends, and others for “basic proofreading help and general feedback and criticism.”
Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O’Connor School of Law takes the opposite position. The law school’s website states that applicants “may use AI tools to prepare their applications as long as they:Please use this technology responsibly” and certify that the information submitted is true.
After experimenting with ChatGPT this summer, Georgia Tech’s admissions team opted for a third method.Recent university websites Posted guidelines Encourage high school applicants to “brainstorm, refine, and edit” their ideas using AI tools as collaborators. At the same time, the site warned applicants, “Please do not copy and paste content that is not your own creation directly into your entry.”
Clark, the Georgia Tech admissions officer, said ChatGPT can’t compete with live writing coaches or knowledgeable parents when it comes to providing feedback on high school students’ personal writing. But he hoped it would help more students get started.
“It’s free and convenient to access,” Clark said. “That’s progress toward equity.”
Several high school seniors said in interviews that they chose not to use AI tools to draft their essays. Partly because I wanted to tell my own personal story, and partly because many universities don’t have a clear stance on applicants’ use of AI tools. be. Chatbot.
“The ambiguity and ambiguity is kind of hard on us,” said Kevin Jacob, a fourth-year student at the Gwinnett School of Mathematics, Science and Technology in the Atlanta area. This public high school has a dedicated writing center where students can receive feedback on their college essays.
Common App, a nonprofit organization that runs an online system that allows high school students to apply to many universities at once, has not taken a public position on its use of AI chatbots. The organization requires applicants to certify that their writing and other materials they submit as part of their college application: our own work. However, the group has not updated its academic integrity policy on its website to include artificial intelligence tools.
“This is the first full application cycle that ChatGPT has been available to students, and this technology is constantly changing.” Common App CEO Jenny Rickard said in a statement.
“As we all learn more about these tools, it is important for member institutions and K-12 partners and counselors to set reasonable parameters for how they can and cannot be used. It is important.”
The New York Times emailed more than a dozen colleges, including large state schools, Ivy League schools, and small private colleges, about their policies for high school applicants who use AI tools to write admissions essays. Asked. The majority did not respond or declined to comment.
In an emailed statement, the University of Michigan’s Office of Undergraduate Admissions said the school was “aware of the new technology” but “did not make any changes to the undergraduate application process.” Stated. our essay questions”
Ritika Vakaria, a fourth-year student at the Gwinnett School of Mathematics, Science, and Technology, said she asked ChatGPT to generate ideas for college admissions essays. But she felt her response was too broad and impersonal, even though she detailed her extracurricular activities, such as teaching dance classes to young students.
She said she is currently working on coming up with more personal college essay topics.
“I feel a little bit of pressure to create very unique and interesting topics like this, because basic topics these days can only be generated with ChatGPT,” Vakharia said.
