Artificial intelligence has been growing for decades, but in the past few years, it has completely transformed. Within years it went from playing chess against a friendly interface to writing thousand word-long descriptive essays.
For such a powerful tool, you’d expect it to be expensive and hard to obtain. However, in reality, it is extremely easy to obtain and can be used by anyone. Platforms like ChatGPT have fallen into the hands of high school students, but more importantly college applicants.
Colleges and universities are now faced with the new challenge of weeding out the applications that use AI. This is not only important but also exceedingly difficult due to the nature of AI constantly changing.
In response to this challenge, highly selective universities such as UC San Diego, Harvard, Stanford, and USC all forbid any sort of use of the tool. They all stress on top of the fact that they want to know about students and their ideas without the help of AI.
In an email inquiring about AI’s role in admissions, Stanford’s Office of Undergraduate Admission said, “We appreciate your question. We’re aware of the tool and its capabilities, and at the same time, applicants should, to the best of their ability, express their ideas in their own words and in their own style.”
While these universities have implemented policies against AI use in applications, enforcing these new policies still remains difficult. AI continues to evolve and become more advanced, and applicants will likely find new and creative ways to use it in their applications while evading detection.
College counselor Sarah Carillo-Sarr said that a lot of essays are focused on individuality, and the use of AI takes away the personal quality of their application.
“These essays are focused on getting to know the students individually and just the essence of who they are,” she said. “So I think it would be really obvious if a student just used that.”
Venice High Student Evan Lin believes that a student should be able to use AI as a format for their essays but not for the whole thing. “I think it’s okay to use for a template or base, but not for writing the whole essay,” Lin says.
