606: Navigating College Applications with AI (Part 2): What Colleges Say + My Advice to Students and Counselors

The College Essay Guy - Episode 606 - College Apps and AI Use_otter_ai

The College Essay Guy - Episod... 606 - College Apps and AI Use

Wed, May 07, 2025 3:25PM 16:07

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

AI in college applications, AI safety, Common App guidelines, authenticity, ethical AI use, personal development, self-awareness, vulnerability, emotional intelligence, environmental impact, AI research, college essay writing, AI tools, college admissions process, AI policies.

SPEAKERS

Ethan Sawyer

Ethan Sawyer 00:00

E

Jen, Hey friends, and welcome back to the podcast. So in our last episode, I interviewed Jen Rubin from Foundry 10 on how students and counselors are using AI in the college admission process. And in that conversation, we covered, among other things, why higher income students were more likely to use AI in their applications than lower income students? How educators can increase their students AI literacy and some resources and tools that Jen recommends for students and counselors navigating this new technology. In today's episode, I'm going to get into what colleges have to say and what advice I would give to students and counselors as a result. Specifically, I'll talk about my biggest concern with AI and spoiler alert, it's a lot bigger than college applications. I'll share my concerns related to AI use in the college application process. I'll talk to you about what the common app actually says, like, what its guidelines are and what some colleges have to say about AI use, what I believe students might miss out on if they use AI to write their essays for them. And like I said, what my advice is going to be to students and counselors. You'll find links to everything I talk about in the show notes at college essay guy.com/podcast let's do this. So right after chatgpt was released in 2023 our editorial director here at CEG Andy Simpson wrote a piece called cegs Thoughts on AI and college application essays, and it's a pretty great piece. Check it out. It's in the show notes. In the past two years, I've shared my thoughts on AI at conferences, in YouTube videos, on a number of webinars and in my courses, but I hadn't written a blog on this yet as of early 2025 and hey, this stuff's changing so fast. So in this podcast episode and in the show notes, you'll find a blog that shares some of these links and thoughts. Are some ways that I'm thinking about AI use in the college essay and application process. First, my biggest concern is AI safety, like in the big sense. And this probably isn't the thing you were looking for when you started listening to this podcast, but I can't not at least mention it. There's a lot more that can be said about this. But my friend Duncan Sabian, who works at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, also known as Miri, talks about the potential dangers better than I could in a post on AI safety, which I'll link to in the show notes. And by the way, if you don't have 30 minutes to read the whole article, I'd say scroll down and read the last section, which is Section 11, called and the trap swings shut. And I'm hoping that'll inspire you to read the entire piece. If you really want to take a deep dive on this, you might check out the article called AI 2027 also linked in the show notes. But content warning, reading that piece really messed me up for a few days. And by messed me up, I mean that it frightened me enough to consider that there is a non zero chance that the world could end in a few years, and actually had me rethinking my life choices for a few days. So fair warning on that front. Now, as it relates to the college admissions process, my second concern is I really want a student's work to align with what the common app requires of students and what colleges are requesting. So first, let me share the common app guidelines that a student agrees to when they submit their application. The affirmation statement reads, I certify that all information submitted in the admission process, including this application and any other supporting materials, is my own work, factually true and honestly presented, and that these documents will become the property of the institution to which I am applying and will not be returned to me. Now there's more. You can find the link in the show notes, or you can just Google Common App affirmation statement. So that's pretty clear and straightforward, the work that you as a student submit must be your own. But what do colleges have to say about AI use in the application process? I spent some time researching this, and I was surprised that more colleges haven't come forward yet with a statement on AI. I imagine that they're dealing with a lot of other things right now, but this quote from Karen Richardson, who's the Dean of admission at Princeton, seemed to be broadly representative of what many college admission officers have to say. Karen Richardson says AI is not inherently bad, quote, unquote, but I caution against it in your college application. First and foremost, I guarantee that any essay one writes with the help of AI is not going to be nearly as good or authentic as one that an applicant composes on their own. And remember, we're trying to build a community of learners who will contribute to the academic and social fabric here, so we count on authenticity in the application. Also, you're asked to sign off on your application verifying that the work is yours alone. End quote in. Now separately, here's a quote from Caltech, but you'll notice a common theme here. So Caltech says quote, your essays are where we hear your voice. Relying on AI, specifically large language models such as chat, GPT or Bard to craft your essay will dilute your unique expression and perspective. While we know AI tools have become readily accessible over recent months, overuse of AI will diminish your individual, bold, creative identity as a prospective techer. What are some examples of unethical uses of AI for Caltech admissions essays, copying and pasting directly from an AI generator, relying on AI generated content to outline or draft an essay, replacing your unique voice and tone with AI generated content, translating an essay written in another language. What are some examples of ethical uses of AI for Caltech admissions essays, using AI tools like Grammarly or Microsoft editor to review grammar and spelling of your completed essays, generating questions or exercises to help kick start the brainstorming process using AI to research the college application process, and they end their section here, saying, if you are still wondering whether your use of AI in crafting your application is ethical, ask yourself whether it would be ethical to have a trusted Adult perform the same task you are asking of chatgpt, would a teacher be able to review your essay for grammatical and spelling errors? Of course, would that same teacher write a draft of an essay for you to tweak and then submit? Definitely, not. Above all else, remember to be authentic to yourself when writing your essays. Our Caltech supplemental questions are designed to spark your curiosity, to make you think deeply about whether you see yourself as a techer, and to jump start your creativity. Don't let a reliance on AI tools take that opportunity from you. Exclamation point. End quote. I like Cal Tech's advice. I like how specific it is. It's relatively brief, and I too, want students to submit work that is their own on their college applications. So here's a good guiding question for students who are going through this process, if a college admissions officer asked you how you used AI in your college application, what would you feel proud to say? And that's a good one to just sit with for a second again. If a college admission officer asked how you used AI in your application, what would you feel proud to say? But there's another reason that I think students should do their application writing on their own, and it has to do with my second concern. I worry that students who use AI to write their college essays will miss out on some important nutrients.

Now, what do I mean by nutrients? I'm talking about healthy stuff that'll make you a better, more thoughtful human. I believe the college essay writing process offers students a valuable opportunity to learn a whole lot about themselves through writing. And while large language models can help draft an essay faster. I worry that if a student's focused only on the product, like a final essay, and speeds through the process of getting there, like all the brainstorming and drafting and redrafting, then they might miss out on some great opportunities to gain some important nutrients. In other words, some stuff that can be really good for them. Now, what do I mean by these nutrients? Here's some examples of what I'm calling nutrients that I believe the college admission process can provide first potential for personal development and self awareness, discovering not just how you think, because I think writing can help reveal that, but why you think that way. Vulnerability, the kind of vulnerability that comes with putting down on paper your skills, qualities, values and interests, and getting the chance to be seen for all of those qualities, the inspiration that you get for searching for and then finding that perfect detail for that third essay that you're writing, the freedom that comes when you're given the chance to story your own life, yeah, story as a verb, and the sense of autonomy that you can get when you're deciding how your story is told, there's a particular sense of ownership that I believe comes from looking at a piece of writing about your own life that you've spent a few hours on and thinking, that's me. I wrote that there's confidence that comes from taking on a hard thing and succeeding. I think there's value in collaborating with a trusted counselor or essay coach or mentor or even peer on redrafting and not to mention the emotional intelligence, the storytelling skills and the beauty in starting over, and, of course, lots more. Now that might sound like a soapbox moment, but hey, I love this process. I wouldn't be doing this all if it were just about getting into college. I think it's about so so much more. Put simply, though, I worry that AI could lead to the essay writing process becoming even more transactional when I believe this process can be. At its best, transformational. Now I don't want that to get missed, so I want to say that again. I want this process to be not just transactional, but transformational. And I think it can be further. Several colleges have publicly said that any use of AI in the application process is prohibited. To give another example, brown clearly states in their artificial intelligence, in the application process statement, which is on their website, quote, as per the common apps policy linked above their definition of application fraud includes submitting plagiarized essays or other written or oral material or intentionally misrepresenting as one's own original work, one another person's thoughts, language, ideas, expressions or experiences, or two, the substantive content or output of an artificial intelligence platform, technology or algorithm. And they continue by saying, brown affirms this definition and reiterates our own independent policy that the use of artificial intelligence by an applicant is not permitted under any circumstances in conjunction with application content, while an applicant may use artificial intelligence to assist with spelling and grammar review in the same way as any other platform that supports basic proofreading, the content of all essays short answer questions and any other material submitted by an applicant must be the work of that individual. So given this and given what other colleges and universities have shared, and I'll put some links in the show notes to what other colleges have said at College Essay Guy, we advocate that students, counselors and essay coaches align with what these colleges, universities and the common app have said publicly. We do not advocate for the use of AI or chatgpt in writing the college essays or application. And just to be clear, even if a school hasn't published their AI policy, we prefer to err on the side of caution and to not use AI to write the personal statement, the supplemental essays, the additional info section or activities list. Now can chatgpt and AI be useful in certain contexts? Absolutely, as an example, when I was researching this article, I used chatgpt to research college and university policies. Why? Because, as I imagined trying to research every single college and university to find their AI policy, it would have taken me hundreds of hours, but the writing that I did and the analysis and my take is mine alone, and the writing was mine. Could students maybe use AI to research what colleges might be a fit for them? I believe looking up information on colleges is okay. For example, you know which colleges and universities might be a good fit for me if I'm interested in studying theater at a mid sized University in the Midwest, give me links so I can do further research. Now, I think that could be a potentially useful application of something like chatgpt, as long as students are not using AI to write their essays. Now, if students do decide to use chatgpt, I think it can be useful and maybe even important to disclose how they used it, as I did just a few seconds ago. Stay tuned for more guidelines on the use of AI in research in colleges later this year, in the meantime, and you'll find these linked in the show notes. I found some publicly posted comments from different colleges and universities, and I've tried to find a variety. So I found one from the University of California system, that's a public university, Gonzaga University, which is private Southern Methodist University's Graduate School, also University of Melbourne. So that's outside the US, and like I said, you'll find those all in the show notes if you want to find out more. Finally, just a short note on AI use and environmental impacts. Using large language models has a pretty big impact on the environment, in fact, and you'll find this article linked as well in the show notes. Shelley Ren, who's an associate professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at UC Riverside, who was featured in an article on Yale environment, 360 has been studying the water costs of computation for the past decade, and they estimate that a person engaging in a session of questions and answers with GP chat, GPT three. So this is like maybe 10 to 50 chat responses drives the consumption of a half liter of fresh water. And you'll find more on the details of just how many hundreds of billions of gallons are being used of water each year by companies like open AI and Microsoft. So in summary, the common app and some colleges, at least the ones who publicly post their guidelines, ask students to write essays on their own without the help of AI and at CEG, we recommend the same. If colleges update their position, we might update our position, but as of this writing, that's where things stand. If you'd like to stay up to date on AI use in the college admission process. Jeff Neal is an awesome counselor who publishes a weekly newsletter called technology, and I recommend it. It's got really interesting things, whether you're. Student, parent, or especially a counselor, to stay up to date on all of this and stay tuned to the podcast, as this is truly a developing story, and I'm excited next week to share with you a brand new series on our college admission nutrients. And these are essentially qualities that from our studies, we found that these are the things that colleges are really looking for. So we do a deep dive on each of the nutrients with some fabulous guests I'm excited to introduce you to. So stay tuned for that. Thanks, friends as ever, you'll find links to everything I mentioned in the show notes at college essay guy.com/podcast if you want to stay up to date on what's happening in the college admissions world, just go to college. Sa guy.com and opt into anything on our site, we'll share our best free resources, info about our upcoming webinars, our pay what you can courses and lots, lots more. Thanks. Be well and stay curious. You.