AI tools could democratize the college admissions landscape — if used properly

When ChatGPT was released in November of last year, it quickly became popular among teenagers and adults alike; however, it caused controversy in academia — a new, incredibly accessible approach to “cheating” had apparently been placed in the hands of many students.

Many college counselors and admissions officers remain firm in their stance that AI is unacceptable, some even going so far as to ban applicants from utilizing such bots during the application process. 

By any measure, it’s unwise to use AI to write your application essays, especially if certain colleges have specifically released policies against such software. Many admissions offices have probably spent the entire summer testing and analyzing ways to detect and adapt to possible AI usage by applicants, and “cheating” being your first impression is a surefire way to earn a rejection.

However, while I agree that students should avoid using ChatGPT to write their essays, if used appropriately, AI tools can be just as valuable as the services offered by most expensive private college counselors for socioeconomically disadvantaged students.

Most private college counselors cost anywhere from $10,000 to upwards of $40,000. However, they usually all do the same things — help construct your college list, edit your essays and answer miscellaneous questions.

Though ChatGPT 3.5 boasts an astonishingly low overall response accuracy rate of 12.2% — yet another reason students should not use it to directly write their essays for them — it can do pretty much all of what a college counselor does. 

AI results are usually only inaccurate when the data it relies on is wrong or outdated. However, since there generally isn’t much misinformation about grammatical rules and college history facts, I’d argue that ChatGPT’s responses are generally reliable for answering basic college admissions questions.

For instance, it can be used for research purposes, such as narrowing down the nearly 4,000+ colleges in the U.S. to build a balanced application list (though you should definitely take everything with a grain of salt and double-check any important information). Instead of students having to click through dozens of links on Google to find the answers to simple questions like “Haverford College architecture program facts” or “Best UC for Bioengineering,” ChatGPT offers a quicker, more condensed presentation of (usually) the same information.

As for essays, I beg of you to only use ChatGPT for topic brainstorming and a way to get the ball rolling with specific prompts. If you work with a draft that ChatGPT wrote the first version of, I can guarantee you it will come across to readers as exactly what it is — a ChatGPT creation. The same thing, however, goes for private college counselors — if they write your essay for you, more likely than not, it will sound the same as the dozens of essays they are probably writing for their other clients.

Instead, think of ChatGPT as a free version of Grammarly Premium. Students can use it to make structural revisions, refine word choice and correct their grammar. 

This approach is already being adopted by schools such as Georgia Tech, which released a statement from an official saying that if you use “AI-based assistance while working on your writing submissions for Georgia Tech, I encourage you to take the same approach you would when collaborating with people. Use it to brainstorm, edit and refine your ideas.”

Moreover, many schools such as most Ivy Leagues and the UCs are now test-blind or optional, dropping their long-standing requirement of submitting SAT or ACT scores. This change is driven by a commitment to fairness and bridging the equity gap in college admissions. So, in the same spirit of equity, authorizing and enabling students to responsibly utilize AI tools is the right move — it acts as a resource for all, being particularly beneficial for underprivileged students who cannot afford to drop thousands on a private counselor, especially when AI can do just about anything that a counselor can.

 In the long run, AI is constantly evolving and updating; and, despite their numerous faults, AI platforms such as ChatGPT can give valuable second opinions on essays. AI will only continue to become more sophisticated and hopefully reliable, as demonstrated by ChatGPT 4’s significant enhancements compared to version 3.5. Society’s increasing dependence on AI is inevitable, so the admissions process may as well embrace this and make the shift toward a more equitable approach.