Artificial Intelligence and College Applications
Background:
With the growing use of AI writing tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and DeepSeek, higher education is in the midst of a sea change when it comes to how to teach writing, evaluate student writing, and enforce plagiarism rules. College admissions is no exception.
While few colleges have outright banned the use of AI tools in the admissions process, they are clear in specifying what they consider to be the “ethical use” of AI in college applications. For example, the University of California system states: “While using AI as a tool is one thing, using a completely AI-generated answer is another — and one that is equivalent to academic dishonesty. UC runs plagiarism checks on applications, and if your PIQs [essays] are found to have been generated by AI with unattributed sources, you could be disqualified from UC admission entirely.”
The Common Application also explicitly states: “Your personal essay must be your own work. Do not use another writer's work, and do not use Artificial Intelligence software (Chat GPT, Bard, etc.) to write your essay.”
Against this backdrop, our College Admission Coach team wants to articulate how we, as a practice, will be responding to this new technology, with all its accompanying advantages and disadvantages. Please see below for our current policy, with the caveat that we will be updating it depending on any new policies enacted by schools or higher education organizations like NACAC and HECA
With the growing use of AI writing tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and DeepSeek, higher education is in the midst of a sea change when it comes to how to teach writing, evaluate student writing, and enforce plagiarism rules. College admissions is no exception.
While few colleges have outright banned the use of AI tools in the admissions process, they are clear in specifying what they consider to be the “ethical use” of AI in college applications. For example, the University of California system states: “While using AI as a tool is one thing, using a completely AI-generated answer is another — and one that is equivalent to academic dishonesty. UC runs plagiarism checks on applications, and if your PIQs [essays] are found to have been generated by AI with unattributed sources, you could be disqualified from UC admission entirely.”
The Common Application also explicitly states: “Your personal essay must be your own work. Do not use another writer's work, and do not use Artificial Intelligence software (Chat GPT, Bard, etc.) to write your essay.”
Against this backdrop, our College Admission Coach team wants to articulate how we, as a practice, will be responding to this new technology, with all its accompanying advantages and disadvantages. Please see below for our current policy, with the caveat that we will be updating it depending on any new policies enacted by schools or higher education organizations like NACAC and HECA
Our Current Policy
- It’s essential that all the writing students submit to colleges is their own writing. In fact, that’s something students sign an agreement attesting to when submitting their applications.
- AI tools can be useful, especially for research. Filling out your school-specific research form and trying to find a professor's research that aligns with your interests? Use it for that! Planning a spring break college trip? Use it for that! Student with Celiac disease that needs a school where gluten-free food is taken seriously? AI can help. But writing essays for applications? Absolutely not.
- Our team is going to ask every student: “Did you use AI to help you write this essay?” Since it’s very difficult these days to ascertain whether writing is or is not AI-generated, we’re asking everyone. Asking this question does not imply an accusation; we’re just uniformly asking every student to start the conversation.
- If a College Admission Coach team member discovers a student has not been submitting their own writing for feedback, whether that’s because an older sibling wrote it or ChatGPT wrote it, the coach will discuss the ethical infraction directly with the student, inform the student’s parents, and insist that the student use their own writing. Our team will not be party to the submission of work that is not the student’s own work. This is the ethical course of action, and it’s also the course of action in the student’s own best interest! Colleges put application essays through plagiarism checkers, and AI-generated text regularly plagiarizes existing writing.
- If a school allows AI-writing tools, our policy is still to ask students not to use AI, as the Common App explicitly forbids it.
- Our team is here to help our students write their best essays, in their authentic voice, and become better writers in the process. We’re not blind to the exciting new potential of AI tools, but it is not ethical to substitute that for a student’s own writing.