Undoubtedly, generative AI has revolutionized the landscape of college applications. Some admissions officers, such as Yale’s, have bemoaned in an unofficial capacity the plagiarism that goes hand in hand with AI-assisted essays. They have also criticized AI’s writing abilities. The argument goes that resources such as ChatGPT, Claude, and Google Bard at once proliferate cheating and create generic essays devoid of creativity.
Still, other educators have voiced opposing opinions. For instance, Juan Espinoza, director of undergraduate admissions at Virginia Tech, commended AI for democratizing knowledge in college applications, where low-income families are often disadvantaged. His view is based on the common sentiment that we must adapt to the times. He says, “Students are using it to answer these essay questions, so we need to think about how they are using it.” For now, at least, I take the pro-AI stance, specifically concerning college application essays. Here, I will show you how, contrary to the anti-AI camp, you can use ChatGPT to craft beautiful college application essays.
Using ChatGPT to Craft Essays: A Quick Reminder
I will say this upfront: ChatGPT’s performance in terms of college guidance could be more reliable. Specifically, the results are hit-or-miss if you ask ChatGPT to write a college application essay. So, think twice if you want to cheat by having ChatGPT do the heavy lifting. Instead, the renowned chatbot shines in terms of rephrasing text for brevity and clarity and outperforms humans by finding areas for improvement that we might have missed. Its feedback, though imperfect (more on that later), is good.
So, how do you take advantage of ChatGPT’s writing capabilities in your race to America’s most elite colleges?
The Short Answer
The short answer? Treat ChatGPT as you would a reasonably intelligent human but still find professional guidance. (Most advice from admittees to elite colleges who didn’t pay for help constitutes decent professional guidance. However, you ideally want someone with a long track record for helping students get into top-ranking schools.) That means you can ask ChatGPT to brainstorm with you. You can also ask it to give you feedback for an unfinished or finished paper or to revise an essay for brevity and clarity. However, remember that ChatGPT feedback cannot replace human guidance (yet) and that, without well-articulated prompts, AI is prone to error.
The Long Answer
Brainstorming
General Prompts
Even in the early stages of your writing process, your essay can benefit significantly from ChatGPT’s ability to facilitate brainstorming. For instance, when prompted to create a list of story ideas, ChatGPT created this one narrative that I find interesting:
Historical Fiction
Set during the Renaissance, follow the life of a talented but unknown artist who becomes embroiled in a political conspiracy when they are commissioned to paint a portrait of a powerful noblewoman.
The Renaissance? A talented but obscure artist entangled in political intrigue involving a powerful woman? As someone who usually pays scant attention to history and politics, I would never have come up with these ideas.
What is most important here is not whether these specific ideas can be used directly. Instead, it is that ChatGPT can stimulate our minds in unexpected ways, turning us into better storytellers in our college applications, where creative and narrative essay skills are essential.
Complex, Specific Prompts
Another helpful feature of the chatbot is its ability to process more complex and specific commands, which may help with brainstorming. Moments ago, I fed ChatGPT this prompt in which I pretended to be my high school self:
I am writing a Common Application essay to apply to multiple colleges. I am an accomplished piano player who sucks at the double bass, which I learned for three years. Also, I was president of the student council in middle and high school. For other extracurriculars, I participated in the school soccer team and MUN, where I first worked as a delegate and then became a reporter for the MUN newspaper. I also enjoy bodybuilding and gained twenty kilos of muscle in less than two years. I would describe myself as a quirky individual. Help me brainstorm some Common Application essay ideas.
In response, ChatGPT replied with eight essay ideas. They weren’t spectacular but gave me ideas I would not have considered myself.
Specific, ChatGPT-Generated Ideas
For brevity, I attached the two that I found most promising:
The Harmony of Contrasts: Explore how your diverse interests harmonize to define you. You could juxtapose your piano skills with your struggles in learning the double bass, reflecting on how this contrast has shaped your approach to learning and perseverance. This theme can extend to comparing the discipline of bodybuilding with the teamwork of soccer, and the leadership in student council with the collaborative nature of MUN.
The Journey of Muscle and Music: An essay centered on your passion for bodybuilding and piano, showcasing the discipline, dedication, and patience required for both. You can discuss the physical and mental transformation journey, paralleling gaining muscle with mastering piano pieces, and how these experiences have prepared you for the rigors of college.
Again, I could be more impressed with ChatGPT’s brainstorming, but it does help. For instance, without ChatGPT, I would never have thought of writing about my failures as a double bass player. I would also probably not have thought about how my first dog, Squeak, would silently shuffle away when I played the bass. Indeed, this amusing anecdote may be an engaging beginning of a Common Application essay, so don’t underestimate ChatGPT’s ability to inspire you.
For “The Journey of Muscle and Music,” the alliteration and juxtaposition in the phrase might add a nice touch to my essay if I seamlessly integrate the expression in my writing. This idea adds uniqueness to my writing. After all, how often do you hear of bodybuilders who are also pianists?
Research
General Research
With a more precise direction for your paper, you will have fewer problems coming up with research questions to ask ChatGPT. Take, for example, a student who wants to write about the application of Augmented Reality (AR) to the disarming of unexploded ordnance (UXOs). He asked ChatGPT,
What are some things about Augmented Reality that a computer science major applying to top-ranking universities in the United States can learn so that he can apply these skills and knowledge to the defusal of UXOs?
Without getting into the nitty gritty, I have summarized the main points of ChatGPT’s response:
- Understanding of AR Fundamentals:
- Core Concepts
- Spatial Computing
- AR Development Skills:
- Framework and SDKs
- Computer Vision
- 3D Modeling and Simulation
- UX/UI Design for AR
- GIS and GPS Integration
- Sensor Technology
- Machine Learning
- Data Security and Privacy
- Collaboration and Communication
- Ethics and Local Context
ChatGPT elaborated on every item, explaining its relevance to the defusal of UXOs. This is when a combination of hard work and AI assistance pays off. The student can now look into the university’s faculty members, courses, and research opportunities to see if any of them are relevant to the list above. By combining UXOs with computer science and using ChatGPT to guide him in the right academic direction, he can now more easily write an essay that stands out for being well-researched. This brings us to ChatGPT’s potential for school-specific research.
School-Specific Research
Consider one of this year’s Dartmouth College application prompts:
Dartmouth celebrates the ways in which its profound sense of place informs its profound sense of purpose. As you seek admission to Dartmouth’s Class of 2028, what aspects of the College’s academic program, community, and/or campus environment attract your interest? In short, why Dartmouth?
What in the world does “sense of place” mean? ChatGPT has a knack for coming up with ideas for school-specific prompts like this one. For example, after conversing with the chatbot, I discovered that Dartmouth College has a flexible scheduling system called the D-Plan, that the school is located in the Upper Valley, and that the campus is close to natural resources like the Connecticut River and the Appalachian Trail. These facts are potentially helpful for polishing an application essay for Dartmouth, as smoothly incorporating these facts into your piece shows Dartmouth that you’ve done your homework and didn’t just Google things up in the last ten minutes.
Feedback for an Unfinished Paper
How to Write a Helpful Prompt
Once you’ve brainstormed, researched, and begun writing, you can immediately receive further feedback from ChatGPT to ensure you are headed in the right direction. I usually ask it to give me a score on a scale from 0 to 100 to maximize specificity. I also provide it with enough context to generate reliable feedback. For example, I typed this into ChatGPT while I worked on my first blog post:
This is a draft of the very beginning of the first blog post of my college prep and admissions company website, milestoneadmissions.com. Score it on a scale from 0 to 100 and give feedback. Remember, it’s just the beginning, so grade accordingly.
The feedback, while a tad harsh (it gave me a 75/100 on my first attempt), was instrumental in making me write a better blog post, which is now more relevant to Milestone College Consulting’s focus on college prep and admissions.
Exercise Caution and Sound Human Judgment
My students have used ChatGPT similarly to get feedback for their college application essays. In the interest of privacy, I cannot reveal their papers here. However, ChatGPT’s scoring generally leans on the harsh side the more incomplete your writing is. This is true even after you repeatedly ask it to “remember” that “it’s just the beginning” and to “grade accordingly.” That said, the feedback is almost always helpful, provided you exercise caution and sound human judgment. This, for example, is a snippet of the ChatGPT feedback on an application essay for Carnegie Mellon:
Given the current content and structure, and considering the areas for improvement, I would give this essay a score of 80 out of 100. It effectively communicates your experiences and goals but could benefit from deeper reflection and a stronger connection to Carnegie Mellon. […] Enhancing [your essay] with […] specific references to Carnegie Mellon’s resources and opportunities would make it even more compelling. Remember, a great application essay […] reflects your […] potential contribution to the university community.
The essay writer responded to ChatGPT thus:
The next CMU prompt is “Many students pursue college for a specific degree, career opportunity or personal goal. Whichever it may be, learning will be critical to achieve your ultimate goal. As you think ahead to the process of learning during your college years, how will you define a successful college experience?” Do you think it necessary to mention CMU in the first prompt, then? If not, what score would you give the essay I last submitted here?
In light of this prompt (which only caution and sound human judgment can write), ChatGPT revised its score, giving the student an 85/100.
Feedback for a Finished Draft
As you finalize a draft, it’s generally a good idea to solicit ChatGPT’s feedback again. Did your score increase, decrease, or stay the same? Whatever the result is, be sure to ask the chatbot why your final score is what it is. Its response may be telling.
For the introduction of an application essay written for NYU Shanghai, for instance, ChatGPT gave a 75, explaining that the paper could benefit from (among other things) a more reflective tone, engagement with the university, and appreciation for the Shanghai campus’s multiculturalism. Upon finishing the essay, the student resubmitted it to ChatGPT and received a score of 90 and then 92 upon further revision. This was what she later typed into ChatGPT:
I appreciate the much higher score now. Can you briefly explain the leap from 75 to 92?
ChatGPT explained that the leap is due to her adding “specific references to NYU Shanghai,” “integration of personal and professional goals,” “clarity and depth in technical aspects,” a conclusion that ties back to the beginning, and overall changes based on previous feedback.
Conversely, lower or unchanged scores can be attributed to a lack of responsiveness to ChatGPT’s feedback. In this respect, ChatGPT is surprisingly human. It works similarly to a strict but fair English teacher who notes whether you heeded his or her advice at various stages of the writing process.
Further Revisions
Brevity
Earlier, I wrote that ChatGPT “shines in terms of rephrasing text for brevity and clarity and outperforms humans by finding areas for improvement that we might have missed. Its feedback, though imperfect (more on that later), is good.” Here, I will first talk about ChatGPT’s impressive performance in revising texts for brevity and clarity before delving into the flaws of its otherwise robust feedback capabilities in the next section.
Again, in the interest of privacy, I will not paste any student’s work here, but I did ask ChatGPT to give me feedback on my Common Application transfer essay, written fourteen years ago in 2009. I inserted the following prompt:
What about this super old Common App college application essay? It shouldn’t be specific to any university because it is a Common App essay. Point out specific phrases that can be condensed and suggest how to condense them.
Below is the first sentence of my Common Application transfer essay alongside ChatGPT’s suggested revision for conciseness.
Original Phrase: “I hope to transfer to a university with a highly competitive environment where the life skills and intellect I will acquire after surviving college will prepare me to become a successful lawyer.
Suggestion: “I aim to transfer to a competitive university that will equip me with the life skills and intellect necessary to thrive as a lawyer.”
The original contains 32 words, the revised 24 words–a 25% reduction. Since I had 777 words in total for that essay (max word counts were much higher back then), we can expect a drop to approximately 583 words, giving me an extra space of 194 words to delve into whatever quality content the essay lacks.
Clarity
ChatGPT’s clarity, too, is exemplary. Consider its ability to find apt terms for concepts one might find hard to articulate in college application essays. Recently, I asked ChatGPT, “What is a word or phrase to describe the butterflies in your stomach when a car hits a bump or suddenly moves up then down?”
Its response:
The sensation you’re describing is often referred to as a “stomach drop.” This feeling can occur when there’s a sudden change in motion or altitude, like when a car goes over a bump or during takeoff in an airplane. It’s caused by the organs inside the body momentarily moving due to the change in gravitational force or acceleration.
Imagine not knowing the term “stomach drop” and trying to begin your essay like this: “Butterflies fluttered in my stomach as I went down on the rollercoaster.” Compare that sentence to, “My stomach dropped upon plummeting on the rickety rollercoaster.” Furthermore, consider the feedback I received from ChatGPT when I asked whether there is a better way to phrase the sentence so it is more evocative. It answered as follows:
As the rickety rollercoaster plunged down its precarious track, a wave of exhilaration swept through me, my stomach somersaulting in a thrilling dance of fear and excitement.
While this wording seems more evocative in some respects, I prefer a different style. Indeed, something I can’t quite pinpoint seems somewhat AI-ish to me. This, then, brings us to my caveats.
Caveats
Keep in mind several caveats when you use ChatGPT for college applications. ChatGPT has a distinctive writing style, boding ill for those who rely heavily on the chatbot for essays. Besides its idiosyncratic writing, ChatGPT can be fickle, and its scores might fluctuate widely. I will also touch on ways to circumvent this problem.
ChatGPT Idiosyncrasies
Coming Off as Trying Too Hard
Recall the example of the ChatGPT revision on the topic of stomach drops. As ChatGPT put it,
As the rickety rollercoaster plunged down its precarious track, a wave of exhilaration swept through me, my stomach somersaulting in a thrilling dance of fear and excitement.
The passage is evocative but has room for improvement. Let us first consider the positives. ChatGPT has retained “rickety,” which I used initially. This keeps the phrase’s onomatopoeic and alliterative elements. The word “plunged” alliterates with “precarious,” and the personification manifested by the word “somersaulting” adds a nice touch.
But the expression “a thrilling dance of fear and excitement” comes off as trying too hard, in my opinion. I prefer to keep the phrase concise and sensorily descriptive, perhaps by writing something like, “While the rickety rollercoaster plunged down its precarious track, I screamed as my stomach dropped and did several somersaults.” Given the subjective nature of writing, ChatGPT’s version might still be better. But the point is that ChatGPT tends to mar otherwise evocative phrases with an elusive sort of mechanical insensitivity.
Out-of-Context Responses
Another issue is that ChatGPT answers your prompts without asking for additional context. You must remember to provide the chatbot with pertinent information, such as your intended major and the school you are applying to. Otherwise, ChatGPT may give you unreliable scores and feedback.
That said, more contextual problems remain. One ChatGPT pattern I noticed is how the chatbot frequently suggests that you mention what you aspire to contribute to the university of interest and what specific university resources you hope to use. While this suggestion is often helpful, following it mindlessly risks appearing a bit sycophantic. As I mentioned in the section “Feedback for an Unfinished Paper,” ChatGPT gave this feedback on a Carnegie Mellon paper:
[Your essay] effectively communicates your experiences and goals but could benefit from deeper reflection and a stronger connection to Carnegie Mellon. […] Enhancing it with […] specific references to Carnegie Mellon’s resources and opportunities would make it even more compelling. Remember, a great application essay […] reflects your […] potential contribution to the university community.
As I also mentioned, my student realized this shortcoming of ChatGPT and asked the chatbot whether it might be inappropriate to write specifically about the school when that opportunity is already present in another essay prompt. ChatGPT acknowledged the “oversight” and revised its score.
For these reasons, you should provide ChatGPT with adequate background information so it takes into account the context of your prompt when scoring.
Pet Words
Off the top of my head, here are some terms ChatGPT tends to use: “pivotal,” “enhance,” “readability,” “dismissive,” and “warm regards.” ChatGPT often describes a moment as “pivotal” in one’s success. The chatbot frequently advises writers to make revisions for “enhanced readability.” Similarly, it has a penchant for the term “dismissive” when describing negative tone, and while revising letters of recommendation, it almost always ends with the complimentary close “warm regards.”
Unfortunately, I have not identified a clear pattern of pet words that ChatGPT uses while revising essays, but it is conceivable that some admissions officers have. Indeed, this spells trouble for plagiarizers relying on ChatGPT. Moreover, this hurts honest writers who may coincidentally write in a style similar to ChatGPT’s by arousing the suspicion of paranoid admissions officers.
Fickleness
Lastly, I’d like to point out that ChatGPT’s scoring and feedback are fickle. The best way to handle this issue is to keep each set of college essays in its designated conversation. If you are working on Cornell essays, for example, ask ChatGPT for advice on Cornell essays in the same conversation. Doing so makes ChatGPT’s scoring more responsive to your revisions. However, if your papers are already reaching the 90s, and you want to receive more diverse feedback, asking ChatGPT to give your essay a grade and feedback in a new conversation might provide a fresh perspective.
Conclusion
In navigating the intricate dance of crafting a standout college essay, ChatGPT emerges not as a solo performer but as a valuable partner in your creative process. We’ve journeyed through the various stages of essay writing, from the initial brainstorming spark to the final touches of revision, uncovering how this tool can amplify your voice and sharpen your narrative.
Remember, ChatGPT is a tool, not a ghostwriter. It’s here to nudge your creativity, refine your thoughts, and sometimes challenge your perspectives. But the essence of your story, the unique melody of your experiences and aspirations, must be composed by you. As you harness the power of AI, let it enhance, not overshadow, your authentic self.
So, what’s your next step? Begin by experimenting with ChatGPT on your essay drafts. Play around with prompts. Seek feedback. Don’t shy away from using it to add some creative flair to your writing. But always keep your goals in focus and your narrative genuine.
And if you find yourself hitting a wall or need a fresh pair of eyes, don’t hesitate to contact us at Milestone College Consulting. Whether it’s a nudge in the right direction or a deep dive into your essay’s structure and content, we’re here to help you turn your college application journey into a personal and academic milestone.
Your story is waiting to be told. Let’s make it unforgettable.
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