AI and College Essays: Why Using Artificial Intelligence Can Hurt Your Application

The Perils of AI Use When Writing College Essays

As artificial intelligence tools become more accessible, more students are using them to help write college essays. This blog explains why that approach often hurts applicants, how admissions officers detect AI-generated writing, and what strong, authentic college essays actually look like.

Key Takeaways:

• AI-generated college essays often sound polished but generic, making them easy for experienced admissions readers to detect
  
• Admissions officers are highly attuned to voice and authenticity, and AI writing undermines both
  
• Over-reliance on AI can weaken students’ critical thinking and ability to communicate in their own voice
  
• The strongest college essays come from personal reflection, revision, and collaboration with trusted advisors
  
  

Why AI Is Tempting for College Applicants

Like many people, my relationship with AI is complicated. I’m in awe of the technology and the conveniences it can bring to our lives. But I’m also unsettled by just how extensively some people rely upon it, especially when they write about themselves, or as a substitute for their own critical thinking and reflection.  

Achieving some sort of equilibrium in my perspective isn’t easy. The technology is here to stay, and young people (e.g., applicants to college!) are seamlessly fluent with it, a fact I take as my baseline. However, given my career, I’m also attuned to how AI is reshaping the college admissions world, especially the risks it introduces when students use it for some or all of their application essays. The reality is that AI often produces terrible material across the spectrum of admissions tasks, putting college applicants who use it worryingly at risk. 

Why AI Writing Is Easy for Admissions Readers to Detect

Most of my time is spent reading and editing applicant essays, meaning a large part of my job is to help people curate their unique, distinguishing voices. As such, AI use is easily detectable to me. Here’s why: while it writes grammatically perfect sentences, they’re incredibly generic and often lack depth or substance. In other words, it all sounds the same. Polished, yes. But also pedestrian. Somehow, despite lots of nice words, AI produces sentences that seemingly don’t say anything or just relay known facts in bland language.



How AI Weakens a Student’s Voice and Credibility

At least twice per month, I have an uncomfortable conversation. It happens when someone submits material to me, under the pretext that it’s written by them, but I can easily detect it as AI-produced. I then must delicately:

1. suggest that they didn’t write what they submitted

2. explain why it reads like AI-generated content

3. convey how the choice to submit this writing will be a death blow to their applications  

    

But my most important point is this: to date, never once have I been wrong—the person who used AI typically sheepishly admits to it and apologizes, after which we regroup. In this sense, AI has created more work for me by opening the door to previously unforeseen and time-consuming challenges.

The Risk of Using AI for “Why This College?” Essays

By way of example, most schools have a prompt along the lines of: Why are you applying to this school? Students often use AI for this response, thinking they really can’t go wrong by asking AI to summarize a school’s strengths. However, what AI produces when given this prompt is material that restates the strengths of the program, typically as seen on the school’s website. The problem? Admissions readers don’t need students to tell them what is on their websites; they wrote it in the first place!

The winning approach to this prompt is actually quite nuanced—to carefully highlight attributes of the program that resonate, building a personal connection to the school. Credibility comes from explaining how the program’s values, opportunities, and strengths are a natural extension of the student’s efforts to date. AI cannot do this.

Long-Term Consequences of Over-Relying on AI

I am also unsettled by the occasional person I meet who cannot, despite real effort, write in their own voice because they have become so accustomed to letting AI do it for them. Not only has AI diminished their communication skills, but it has seemingly diminished their critical thinking skills, too. This past application cycle I saw more of this than ever, showing just how quickly AI is subbing in for truly critical functions in our world, but not in a valuable way.

But my larger point is this: If I, someone who reads the writing of just dozens of people per year, can easily detect AI because it has such a distinct and generic cadence, then I assure you that college admissions professionals have incredibly refined detectors for this stuff, too. They can identify AI-generated writing far better than I can, no doubt.

And don’t forget, at some point in your life, you will actually have to be this person. One reason schools conduct interviews is to confirm that the people they read about on paper manifest the same way in real life. Can you be the embodied version of this AI voice, no matter its quality?

What Strong College Essay Writing Actually Looks Like

If you’ve been persuaded by my perspective, you might wonder: what does strong writing look like? Strong writing starts with you—your voice, your character, your values and identity, your priorities and commitments. When you write for yourself, there is an intrinsic voice. Strong writing means broadcasting that voice and then working with trusted advisers (parents, teachers, college advisers) to help you edit and refine your words.

But in the end, it’s all you. A distinct voice and perspective are so much more compelling than perceived superlatives. When you use your voice, this is when you’re most likely to demonstrate your creative self, your intellectual edge, and your very identity.

The Bottom Line on AI and College Admissions

I understand the impulse to use AI. The admissions process requires a stunning amount of work, and it’s hypercompetitive. It’s also laden with stress, pressure, and uncertainty, so people naturally seek a leg up. But I am firmly convinced that the over-use of AI in this process is the quickest path to an application being rejected. In truth, I think AI may make admissions professionals’ lives easier by helping them quickly identify which applications will land in the “no” pile—that is, all the writing that reads like it was written by a bot, with a voice that is similar to other materials they’re seeing.

Do not let AI be the standard-bearer for what polished, effective writing looks like. Doing your own work and being yourself is the winning approach.