AI and Your College Process
Can you just “ChatGPT it”?
There is a lot of misinformation out there about correct and ethical usage of generative AI to support the college process. It is worth considering the ways that you could potentially use generative AI for good – and also to note the ways that it might be easy to abuse the principle and start to cross solid ethical boundaries with your AI use. It is important to say right at the outset that all work you submit to a college must be your own – and for great reasons! They are admitting YOU to be a student on their campus and in their classrooms. The work you submit in your application is how they can best evaluate your fit for their program and the value that you’ll add to their community.
That said, there are a lot of really positive ways that ethical use of generative AI can support your college process, both in the discovery and research phases as well as in the application stages.
Discovery and Research:
ChatGPT is a wonderful thought partner to help you brainstorm colleges to fit your criteria!
If your high school uses Naviance, Scoir, or Maia Learning, you can use one of those programs to run an “Advanced College Search” that asks you to put in your “limiting criteria” (student population, geography, majors, admit rates, etc…) and will generate a list of schools to fit this criteria.
ChatGPT will do the same – and more!
Enter a prompt like this one (but use your own criteria):
“You are my college counselor. I am looking for a list of 15 colleges that meet the following specifications: fewer than 8,000 undergraduate students; a pretty campus; a location near a city; a state on either the east or west coast of the US; a strong economics department; great placement opportunities for student internships; some fun campus traditions that bring the community together; and, a basketball team that people like to support”
In response, ChatGPT reminded me about some schools like Davidson College and Santa Clara University, which both fit these specific criteria well, but it also added schools like Gonzaga University and the College of William and Mary, which both also fit this criteria but would not have been right at the front of my mind!
Once you find a college you like, ChatGPT can also help you to identify other schools that are similar to that school but might have different admissibilities – therefore be more of a target or a likely on your balanced list.
Enter a prompt like this one (but use your own criteria):
“You are my college counselor. I really loved my recent visit to Georgetown University, but I’m worried because it’s really selective. Can you tell me about 10 schools that have the same vibe and academic focus as Georgetown but that admit more than 20% of the students who apply?”
In response, ChatGPT reminded me about Seattle University, American University, and Villanova University (among others), focusing on the strong spirit and traditions along with parallel academic disciplines.
ChatGPT is a wonderful travel agent and can help you to plan your college tours! It can help you think about how long you might want to spend on each campus, how long the travel would be between schools (or from college campus to airport), and also provide you with some other ideas for activities and attractions to explore while you are in town!
Enter a prompt like this one (but use your own plans):
“I am planning a trip to Chicago to visit colleges (Northwestern, University of Chicago, and Loyola University Chicago). Help me to plan a 4 day trip – I will be flying in on the first morning and leaving on the 4th evening – to see these schools and also gives me a chance to explore the area.”
Not only will ChatGPT help you think about what to do when, it will also give you fun restaurant recommendations and other area attractions to explore!
Application Process
As students look at the volume of supplemental essays required by some colleges, it is tempting to consider just outsourcing the writing process to their favorite generative AI “friend” and breezing through the work. However, the essays that ChatGPT creates, while technically executed and on point, lack soul, spirit, originality, and humanity. When you read a lot of college essays every day, it is easy to tell which college essays have been written by generative AI. Students might not craft sentences with the same degree of grammatical correctness, but student writing always feels like it was written by a person.
That said, there are still a number of ways you can utilize the tools of ChatGPT to support your application process. Here are two!
- Getting your activities list down into the 150 character “Description” box on the Common App: You can ask ChatGPT to help you pare down your activities to fit into the description box on Common App by giving it a prompt like this:
“I need your help writing about my activities. I’d like to have them described in a format that uses only phrases, each starting with a unique verb. The phrases should be separated by a ; punctuation mark. The whole description can be no longer than 150 characters. Now use these rules to describe my work on [insert activity here]”
- Learning about campus specifics to support your “Why do you want to attend [College Name]?” essays: You can ask ChatGPT to help you with some details that will enhance your writing on your “Why X College?” essays. Say your weekend job at home is in a specialty grocery store. Ask ChatGPT to tell you about the best specialty grocery stores near the college campus. What if you participate in a mentoring program for young musicians in your hometown. Ask ChatGPT to tell you about some of the music-related community service work that students do on that campus. Additionally, have ChatGPT tell you about favorite campus athletic traditions; cozy campus locations to read a good book; the best coffee shop within walking distance of campus; or, remind you of the name of the student internship placement program. A good “Why X College?” essay will include some great proper nouns associated with the school, and ChatGPT is an excellent thought partner to find yours!
Again, it is unethical and wrong to have ChatGPT do more for your process than to participate in some of these exercises. It cannot write your essays, or edit them for you! That said, leveraging the power of generative AI can be supportive of both your list building and writing efforts!
Don’t just take our word for it! Want to learn more? Read these two excellent blog posts from the Georgia Tech Admissions Office: