Why AI Wont Write a Winning College Essay

Students looking to use tools like ChatGPT for their college admissions essays might want to reconsider. A new study reveals that artificial intelligence tools tend to write highly generic personal narratives, even when prompted to adopt the perspective of a specific race or gender.

The Problem with AI-Generated Essays

Researchers from the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science have found a significant gap between human and AI-written college essays. They compared 30,000 essays written by students to those generated by eight popular large language models (LLMs), including ChatGPT. The results were clear: even with detailed prompts specifying a person's race, gender, and location, the models produced uniform text that was easy to distinguish from genuine human writing.

Rene Kizilcec, associate professor of information science at Cornell and senior author of the study, emphasized the essay's role. “The admissions essay is an opportunity for applicants to offer a glimpse into who they are, beyond all the structured information on the application form,” he said. Kizilcec added that while AI can be a useful tool for weaker writers seeking feedback, “asking for a full draft will yield a generic essay that just does not sound like any real applicant.”

AI Lacks a Personal Voice

The study, titled "Poor Alignment and Steerability of Large Language Models: Evidence from College Admission Essays," highlights how difficult it is to make an LLM's writing style truly unique, making it a poor choice for high-stakes writing. The college essay is meant to showcase a student's unique personality, background, and experiences. Co-author AJ Alvero, an assistant research professor, noted, “You want to sound as much like yourself – and only yourself – as possible. With AI tools, students might be shooting themselves in the foot inadvertently.”

Researchers found that instead of crafting engaging stories, the AI models simply repeated keywords from the prompt and listed personal details in a formulaic manner. For example, one AI-generated essay began: “Growing up in Lexington, South Carolina, with my Asian heritage, I often felt like a bridge between two cultures. My parents, both college graduates, emphasized the importance of education and hard work.” The researchers were surprised to find that adding more personal details to the prompt sometimes made the AI's writing sound even less human and more structured.

Easily Detected and Potentially Harmful

While the exact number of students using AI for their applications is unknown, a report from foundry10 estimates that about 30% are using these tools for their essays. A critical finding from the Cornell study is how easily AI-written essays can be identified. When the researchers trained an AI model to differentiate between human and AI-generated text, it performed with near-perfect accuracy. This suggests that colleges and universities can likely identify essays that are primarily written by AI if they choose to look.

Smart Ways to Use AI

Given that school policies on AI use vary, the study's first author, Jinsook Lee, advises students to use their own ideas for brainstorming and writing the first draft. If permitted, AI can then be used as a tool for refining and proofreading. Lee recalls her own essay-writing experience as a positive one, stating, “It was a great opportunity to look back on my life and my background. I think it was the first experience for me to be really reflective.”

This research underscores a crucial point for applicants: authenticity matters. The college essay is a chance to share your unique story, a task that, for now, remains profoundly human.