ChatGPT for College Essays: Will they get you into college?

ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence platforms can be used for a multitude of things: resumes, cover letters, school work, and evidently, college application essays.

College application essays are personal statements that are integral portions of the admissions process. They range from topics requiring students to describe their leadership experience to describing why they want to attend that particular institution. On average, students may have to write one main essay (if they are using Common App) and up to three supplemental essays per college. This can be a laborious and stressful process, especially for high school students who are used to writing academic essays, not personal insights.

What Works

In analyzing essays produced by ChatGPT, we noticed that regardless of the way we presented the question and how much detailed information we put into the task, ChatGPT provided responses that appeared to be written by real students, not a chatbot. It appears that the program is able to generate clear structures, show ideas for transitions and write in the first-person narrative format. However, the essays the AI generated were cliche as the program was not able to grasp onto the key details we provided that it could have capitalized on to make the essay more personable and heartfelt. This leads us to think about what did not work.

What Does Not Work

While the essays produced have the solid basics of grammar, structure, and prose that students often have difficulty with, ChatGPT was not able to generate essays that conveyed stories in a meaningful and genuine way. In essence, it sort of does the opposite of what we do at SK Education in helping students develop voice and meaning. If students are looking for a tool to help organize their ideas, ChatGPT could definitely help. Will this help students get into top universities? No, but it can potentially help struggling writers get into college.

Ethics 

Oftentimes with tools like ChatGPT, we come to ponder which demographic of students these tools can be best used. There are plentiful resources for students to use to help them write, with Grammarly being the most common student online tool. ChatGPT can assist students in a similar way and can be used for people who are intending to write a quick run-of-the-mill essay, but that begs the question: What does it say about colleges that accept students who put in little to no effort into their essays? And do you even want to attend a college that does so? These are definitely things to consider and we at SK Education are here to assist you along your journey.

Key Takeaways

• ChatGPT is able to generate essays with solid grammar, structure and prose and can be used as a tool to help students generate ideas.
• ChatGPT is unable to generate essays with a personal flair.
• ChatGPT generated essays can potentially get you into college, but definitely not top tier colleges.