AI tools like ChatGPT are disrupting educational norms, including the college application essay. A simple prompt typed into ChatGPT can instantaneously produce content across broad subjects. While educators grapple with handling this new technology, you should know its impact and implications as you write your college application essays.  

While colleges and universities develop their AI policies and invest in AI detection software, educators at all academic levels recognize its inevitable use by students. Some believe AI can enhance rather than impede learning, but there is no widespread agreement about the appropriate use of AI by college students.

Along with ChatGPT, its creator, OpenAI, developed one of several tools to help educators differentiate between AI-generated and human-written text.  

Chat CPT acquires new content from every single user. Chances are high that it will reuse content from one person’s essay elsewhere. With improving detection devices, opportunities both for plagiarism and detection are ever-expanding.

You can prompt ChatGPT to write about your passion for a particular field of study or your exuberance, charging past an impenetrable goalie to win a soccer game. But don’t expect ChatGPT to express your euphoria. It may offer flowery adjectives without replicating your authentic experience. The results are often cliché and flat.  

ChatGPT can’t expand an original thought. It generates existing information to fill in the blanks of your queries. It cannot differentiate, evaluate, or advise what content would make the strongest point in your essay. Also, its simplistic language can reduce your clever wit to a watered-down version of your ideas.

Business Insider and Forbes independently asked college admission readers to critique ChatGPT-generated college application essays. The readers agreed the essays could pass as actual student work (without AI detection software), but the essays were rated “mediocre” and considered middle school-level quality.

While AI can deliver an entire essay in nanoseconds, it can never replicate your unique voice, articulate your heart, or express your intellect. Writing, rewriting, and editing your college application essay may be tedious, but creating a cogent, well-written essay will impress readers, and help you develop lifelong skills.