The mainstream arrival of ChatGPT has sent all organizations – businesses, schools, academia – into a frenzy, trying to figure out if it is good or bad and how they need to adapt to it. The college admissions process is no different, with students using it for essays and schools trying to figure out what their long-term plan is. We will see over time – and as ChatGPT becomes even more useful – if essays get de-emphasized or eliminated in admissions considerations at some schools. For now, it is here though and it is naive to think students won’t use it.
But should you? And how?
First, a little bit on how ChatGPT works
It’s important to understand how ChatGPT works under the covers, at least at a high level, to understand its capabilities and limitations.
I’ll start with a horribly oversimplified analogy. Think of your iPhone’s predictive texting – your iPhone has learned (been “trained”) from past messages what words are most likely to come next and then shows you (“predicts”) the three most likely words to follow. Below, I started typing “Colleges are getting harder to get into because” and just chose the suggested next words:
No, Apple’s predictive texting isn’t getting you into any colleges… But at a really simplified level, ChatGPT works similarly – training on input data and predicting outputs, or inference.
The differences in specifics are massive though. Instead of being trained on past text messages, ChatGPT is fed massive amounts of data from the internet, books, computer programs, and other sources. This data is stored into a neural network – similar to how the human brain stores data, this neural network identifies relationships across the data and is the basis of how AI works. Then when you ask ChatGPT a question, it uses probabilities of words (or more accurately, “tokens”) to be associated with a prompt and to be the next word in a response.
There is much more complexity to both ChatGPT’s training and responding that greatly improves its ability to understand context of questions and resulting data, but at a really high level, this is how it works. ChatGPT is trained on existing data from sources, stores the data, and responds to prompts by “understanding” context and using probabilities of which words or concepts should come next.
What this means for college essays
Now that you know how ChatGPT works, understanding how it will write a college essay is easier. Feed it a prompt and it will generate an incredibly well-written essay, capped to a certain length. But remember how it got here – pulling from training data and selecting its winding path through its story using neural network probabilities, ChatGPT will deliver you a great essay that is not “you”. Because it hasn’t been trained on you and your experiences, anecdotes, and feelings.
To show this, let’s compare a real “overcoming an obstacle” essay used to get into Yale with one that ChatGPT generates.
First, let’s start with the ChatGPT essay using the prompt “write an essay no more than 500 words long about the challenges I faced failing classes for the first time and being diagnosed with ADHD in high school”, ChatGPT delivered this (I only pulled the first three paragraphs, not the entire output):
High school is a pivotal time in a student’s life, filled with both triumphs and challenges. For me, it was a period marked by unexpected academic struggles as I faced failing grades for the first time. Amidst the confusion and disappointment, the discovery of my Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) diagnosis added another layer of complexity. This essay explores the challenges I encountered while failing classes and navigating the path to understanding and managing my ADHD in high school.
ChatGPT generated Essay
Entering high school with high hopes and academic achievements behind me, I never anticipated the tumultuous journey that awaited. The rigorous coursework, increased responsibilities, and higher expectations placed immense pressure on my academic performance. As the challenges mounted, my grades began to decline, a stark departure from my previous successes.
One of the most significant challenges I faced was the emotional toll of failing classes. The disappointment in myself and the fear of disappointing my parents and teachers weighed heavily on my mind. I felt ashamed and discouraged, questioning my abilities and self-worth. Navigating the academic environment with failing grades also impacted my self-confidence and social interactions. I withdrew from friends and avoided discussing my academic struggles, further isolating myself in a sea of self-doubt.
Well written? Absolutely. But now let’s look at the essay written by the real student. This again only includes the first three paragraphs, you can see the entire essay on Shemmassian’s website here):
I was a straight A student until I got to high school, where my calm evenings cooking dinner for my siblings turned into hours watching videos, followed by the frantic attempt to finish homework around 4 am. When I got an F on a chemistry pop quiz my mom sat me down to ask me what was happening. I told her I couldn’t focus or keep track of all my materials for classes. I thought she would call me lazy, accuse me of wasting the gift of being an American that she and my father gave me. Instead, she looked around at the walls covered in sticky notes, the index cards scattered on the computer desk, the couch, the table, and she said, “How are your friends managing it?”
College Application Essay, source Shemmassian Academic Consulting
It turned out while my peers were struggling to juggle the demands of high school it didn’t seem like they were working as hard to complete simple tasks. They only had to put things in a planner, not make sure the deadlines were placed in multiple locations, physical and digital. At my next doctor’s appointment my mom mentioned that I had a learning problem, but the doctor shook his head and said that I didn’t seem to have ADHD. I was just procrastinating, it’s natural.
My mom took off from her grocery store job to take me to two more appointments to ask about ADHD, the term the doctor had used, but other doctors were not willing to listen. I had As in every class except for World Literature. But I knew something was wrong. After our third doctor visit, I worked with the librarian after school to sift through research on ADHD and other learning disabilities until we came across the term executive functioning. Armed with knowledge, we went to a new doctor, and before my mom could insist that we get testing or get referred to a specialist, the doctor handed us a signed referral.
The ChatGPT essay hits the same points but it lacks any personality. No fear of what his or her mom would think, lacking details on the chemistry quiz or staying up to 4 AM or the mom taking off from her grocery store job. These seem like little things, but they give the essay personality and allow schools to understand “you”.
Tips for writing your essay
The admissions essay is an incredibly important part of the application process and really the best way for you to stand out, especially for the more selective schools.
- Start early and iterate – I have my students start their essay early in the summer before their senior year and usually take several drafts and updates. No great essay gets done in one or two sit downs and you want to have it wrapped up before your senior year begins.
- Look for a unique topic – You when pick your topic, ask yourself “is it likely that an admissions director is going to read essay after essay on the same topic?” Like the time you scored a goal / hit a home run / made a basket / etc. in a game… or the single mission trip that everybody else went on. Your goal is to stand out and be noticed. I spend a lot of time with my students early in the process going through ideas that will resonate.
- Make the reader hear your voice – This one hits the point of this article on ChatGPT. You want to sound like “you” and the reader should walk away thinking “I could see this student here”. I talk to admissions directors all the time and they know when an essay wasn’t written by the student. With the essay, “you” is much more likely to stand out than “perfect”.
Yes, ChatGPT will be used and is such an amazing resource and I’m not here to tell you not to use an amazing technology that is going to be so impactful to so many areas. But hopefully you understand why it has limitations and, because of how it is built, it won’t know “you” which is the most important goal of the essay.
